Walmart CEO announces a new policy, giving workers a 10% discount in the grocery aisle.
Here’s what he said:
I can think is about my associates back home,” the manager said, according to video viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “The associate pantry means everything to them because they don’t know how they are going to be paying their next meal, and now this is going to help, “
His employees “don’t know how they are going to be paying their next meal”, but a 7¢ reduction on a can of Sam’s cola in the break room (that’s where the Associates Pantry is) is going to make a difference. OK, other groceries too, but not all of them.
I have a different suggestion, and it starts with “pay” and ends with “check”. Too difficult, I guess.
Sure. $WMT can increase their hourly rate by $5 and that will wipe out all of their profits. Those who blindly push for higher wages at certain jobs are not realising it is actually killing jobs.
Seattle City has increased minimum wages, what that means is sandwich price is over $15, and a drip coffee to $5 ~$7. Many cafes/ deli’s have closed because between downtown crime, and salaries they are going broke. This is at a time when back to office has increased the people who eat at these shops.
Every time the government of the day implements a stupid policy, the solution is not raising wages. But address the policy stupidity.
Remember, $WMT can easily cut their store workforce by 5% or 10% and can still function without any impact to their service. If they start behaving like your tech companies… lot of low level jobs will go.
Let me expand on this bit more. Already, the container shipment to US from China are down, and along with that consumer spending are down because they don’t see the things they want and the prices are high.
As further consumer slowdown means, $WMT will likely see lower volume. That means, $WMT may not need as many employees as they have today. In a scenario where CEO’s are looking at the possibility of a layoff, saying CEO’s should think about raising wages shows a lack of understanding of how the economy works.
Well, I would be quite happy if WMart actually just closed their doors and went out of business. They are a bane to a healthy society and a destroyer of real small businesses throughout the country.
Spoken with a bleeding heart and not understanding the economics. $WMT’s ability to provide quality product and low prices have helped the consumers tremendously. It provides employment to 1.8 million people directly and some more indirectly.
It is the scale of economics that is what small businesses are up against, not WMT.
What next you are going to argue? If there were no railroad, or trucking industry we would be having a thriving buggy business?
Oh this is obviously wrong. In fact a couple years ago the CEO admitted that they had too few people to keep stock on the shelves, and it took them two years to get back to strength. And in fact their employee turnover is ridiculously high, as high as 70% by some estimates.
But let’s look for a moment: in FY 2025 ended Q1, Walmart had $170B in profit. They have 2.1M employees, Let’s guess at half of employees are in the lower paid positions. That would equate to about a million people who could use a buck and hour raise, and maybe not qualify for food stamps and other benefits. Is that asking a lot?
I’m not clear what the “stupid policy” is. Is it minimum wage? I think you’d find a lot of push back on that one.
That’s basically the price of everything everywhere… so doesn’t really sound like prices went up at all. I just paid 20 bucks for a jimmy johns sandwhich today in the small town of marysville (45 mins outside columbus). State min wage here is $10/hr for nontip and $5 an hour for tipped employees
Please learn the difference between gross profit and net profit. While gross is $170, but net profit is around $22~$23 B. First we need to get the basic numbers correct before you can stretch them.
Current policy that is causing issue is “tariff”. But $WMT is not paying minimum wage, but their lowest wage is $14 in rural areas and mostly $20 in cities. You can pushback as much as you want, but that doesn’t change the reality.
Yea shrinkflation doesn’t make sense here, you’re right.
Im just saying things cost more than we remember them being in our past. (Remember when the dollar menu used to have things for a dollar) but they charge these prices bc companies have figured out that’s the price ppl are willing to pay. If people were to start refusing to pay $5 for drip coffee, the price would go down. That’s how it usually works in a free market/capitalist economy. But while we complain we dont really change our habits, we still buy the coffee.
I think it has less to do with input costs than we like to think (whether labor or materials)
The chart clearly illustrates that consumer prices have risen much faster than producers’ input costs, especially during 2023, signaling how corporations were able to expand profit margins despite lower or stable input costs.
while input costs for companies have remained relatively flat—or even declined—companies continued to raise prices for consumers, boosting profits.
Specifically from April to September 2023:
Corporate profits were found to contribute 53% of inflation—a notable deviation from the 11% historical average over the 40 years before the pandemic .
During the same period, input costs drove only 1% of inflation, or in some cases negatively contributed to it .
