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Comment by timthelion | Hacker News Reader

utter nonsense. Walmart makes 131 BILLION dollars a year in pure profit [1]. Obviuosly, forcing walmart to pay their employees more could lead to them making less profit and the poor being better off.

EDIT: Basically there is no correlation between walmart's costs and how much the consumer pays.

[1] http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_(WMT)/Data/Gross_Pro...

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The page you linked doesn't tell the whole story:

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wmt/financials

The ~100+ billion number is revenue - cost of goods. Actual profit after _all_ expenses is around ~13 billion or so. Big number? Yes, but only around 3-4% profit margin. And it's been declining.

Walmart has 2.3 million employees. $13 billion doesn't make for huge pay increases when you've got that many people to cover.

Gross profit. Not Net profit. They made a tenth of that after all other costs are considered. [1] 13.6 billion spread over 2.1 million employees works out to about a $6500 per year raise or about $3.10 per hour given 2087 working hours in a year before they're in the red. It'd help a bit, but nothing life changing. You're vastly overestimating their ability to raise wages without raising prices.

[1]http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wmt/financials

Are you sure that a 35% increase in sallary wouldn't be life changing for a person making 18k a year? https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Walmart-Sales-Associate...

>forcing walmart to pay their employees more could lead to them making less profit and the poor being better off.

What's stopping them from passing on costs to consumers, given they have eliminated all competition in large parts of the country.

The same thing stopping them from rasing prices right away without any change in the law.

walmart and target pay the same wages.

How does that effect the conversation?

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