I would still support Bernie's bill. Walmart pays the least of any major retailer. The market power they push onto communities undermines much of the social fabric of America. Small retailers really can't compete with Walmart and a lot of small business owners would feel guilty asking their employees to go on welfare.
Charging Walmart for employees who apply to welfare would likely lead to pay increases and more small business competition.
Walmart struggles to retain people so I honestly doubt they would fire them for going on welfare they would be billed for (regardless if it legal or not).
Individual companies raising their minimum wage is perfectly reasonable. They know what their bottom line can handle, and any consequences are fairly limited to the company itself and its competitors, for good or ill.
An entire national economy raising a minimum wage is pulling yourself into the air by tugging on your bootstraps - futile, and likely to make you keel over instead. There's no alternatives if it fails or has catastrophic effects.
Much like software, businesses work best when there aren't single points of failure - damage is limited when things go wrong. Individual companies can experiment and make decisions that would be dangerous for an entire economy, with nowhere near the same level of risk for anyone except the people at the top.
> An entire national economy raising a minimum wage is pulling yourself into the air by tugging on your bootstraps - futile, and likely to make you keel over instead.
There was a time not very long ago when (inflation adjusted) minimum wage was much higher than it is today. The economy did not "keel over."
It has been pretty plain to see that relying on individual companies to raise minimum wages has failed and that companies see no need to increase wages from their myopic perspective.
A country knows what their bottom line can make good decisions as well.
They employ economists and other experts who can assess the effects of raising a minimum wage in a way that an individual company cannot assess.
Countries can also experiment and make decisions on available data and have controls like inflation and other macroeconomic levers to adjust wage levels to prevailing economic conditions.
I think shutting off an entire sector of economics and leaving it purely to the 'free' market is a dangerous suggestion
This is a case of seeing what they want to see, though: they'll listen to economists who tell them what they want to hear, i.e. that more government power will be helpful, and ignore the vast number of economists that take a more durable analysis.
Also, I'm not sure if you're reading the same article as I am; this is a private company raising its own minimum wage, from its own myopic perspective.
Wasn't that the bill the encouraged employers to only hire people without dependents, because more dependents = more benefits, which the bill does not adjust for at all?
> Wasn't that the bill the encouraged employers to only hire people without dependents, because more dependents = more benefits, which the bill does not adjust for at all?
Employers already have incentive to not hire people with dependents. The media criticizes tech companies for having a young male workforce all the time for this. They feel hungry young men without social attachment will work harder and longer for them and keep their health care costs low.
If an employer feels incentive to discriminate in favor of those without dependents because of this law, they likely already were.
Also this bill only applied to large employers, those with severe market power over labor and markets that really can afford to pay more and are in the best position to exploit welfare benefits.
So since they already have incentive to not hire people with dependents you ... want to make it worse??
Am I missing something?
> If an employer feels incentive to discriminate in favor of those without dependents because of this law, they likely already were.
Except now the inventive is MUCH greater. Before it was some nebulous "they'll work harder", but with this bill it's cold hard cash, and potentially a lot of it.
> Also this bill only applied to large employers, those with severe market power over labor and markets that really can afford to pay more
That doesn't make it better, that makes it worse. That means that the largest portion of the labor force is now closed to people with a lot of kids.
> and are in the best position to exploit welfare benefits.
Meaning they are able to lobby lawmakers to reduce benefits, so that their taxes from this bill go down?
I have a feeling you don't understand just how bad this bill is.
I would still support Bernie's bill. Walmart pays the least of any major retailer. The market power they push onto communities undermines much of the social fabric of America. Small retailers really can't compete with Walmart and a lot of small business owners would feel guilty asking their employees to go on welfare.
Charging Walmart for employees who apply to welfare would likely lead to pay increases and more small business competition.
Walmart struggles to retain people so I honestly doubt they would fire them for going on welfare they would be billed for (regardless if it legal or not).