Wayne F. Cascio, in his article “The High Cost of Low Wages” compares the two large corporations Costco and Wal»Mart, and how low wages affect the companies and their employees, In the article, he compares the amount of money Costco and Wal—mart spend on their employees versus the amount of money each company loses because of turnover, What Cascio finds is that although Costco spends 72% more on their employees with just wages, Costco saves around 370 million dollars each year because they don’t have as high of a turnover rate as Wal- mart.
In the online document “The Low-Wage Drag on Our Economy: Wal»Mart’s low wages and their effect on taxpayers and economic growth,” by the Democratic staff of the US. House Committee on Education and Workforce, the staff examines Wal-Mart’s low waged pay, and what these low wages mean to taxpayers, The Workforce staff estimates that “a single 300- person Wal—Mart Supercenter store in Wisconsin likely costs taxpayers at least $904,542 per year and could cost taxpayers up to $1,744,590 per year — about $5,815 per employee.” This is important because Wal-Mart owns 3,275 supercenters in the United states, If the Workforce staff is correct, that means that Wal-Matt is using taxpayers to save over six-billion dollars a year from taxpayer funded government assistance programs. instead of paying their employees a
higher wage. However, they may not really be subsidizing Wal-Mart, but the employees with low pay. The Wal-Marts don‘t have to pay higher wages, and the assistance programs don’t cost them anything. Bousley, Heather, “Understanding How Raising the Federal Minimum Wage Affects Income Inequality and Economic Growth – Washington Center for Equitable Growth.” Washington Center for Equitable Growth 12 Mar. 2014, Web 7 May 2015 In the article, “Understanding How Raising the Federal Minimum Wage Affects Income Inequality and Economic Growth,” the author Heather Bousley explains the current minimum wage, and how increasing minimum wage would affect the economy. Bousley She supports these explanations with graphs and a few cited sources.
The most important points she makes are more in-depth than the other articles, and focuses on how raising a minimum wage will help the workers “Raising the minimum wage will have positive economic effects above and beyond lowering the poverty rate. Economic research points to the conclusion that a higher minimum wage does not cause greater unemployment, boosts productivity, and addresses the growing problem of rising income inequality”. In the article “The Pay Is Too Damn Low,” by James Surowiecki, Surowiecki promotes a raise in minimum wage. He justifies a raise in minimum wage by comparing the value of minimum wage in it‘s peak of 1968 to the value of modern minimum wage. He also explains how minimum wage has diminished because of when he compares how major employers have changed and how they currently operate, He explains that around 1960, the country’s largest employers were different industries from today, and they had the best pays, and also had high profit margins, “even as it was paying its workers union wages.”
However, in the modern day, the largest employers are from retailer and fast-food chains. These businesses all focus on keeping all costs low. “They make plenty of money, but most have slim profit margins: Walmart and Target earn between three and four cents on the dollar; a typical McDonald’s franchise restaurant earns around six cents on the dollar before taxes, according to an analysis from Janney Capital Markets. In fact, the combined profits of all the major retailers, restaurant chains, and supermarkets in the Fortune 500 are smaller than the profits of Apple alone. Yet Apple employs just seventy-six thousand people, while the retailers, supermarkets, and restaurant chains employ 5.6 million. The grim truth of those numbers is that low wages are a big part of why these companies are able to stay profitable while offering low prices”.
In the magazine article “Does Minimum Wage Kill Jobs?” by Bryce Covert, Covert tries to dispel certain misconceptions about minimum wage. He utilizes through the use of other sources‘ data. For example, he summarizes the findings of another source when he states “ In 2009, l-[ristos Doucouliagos and TD. Stanley published a paper that reviewed sixty-four studies and found that when the studies‘ findings were averaged out, the impact of raising the minimum wage on employment was close to zero. Also, the most statistically precise studies were the likeliest to find no impact.” This article has a great place to start for forming counter- claimst.
