

D.C. Council approves ‘living wage’ bill over Wal-Mart ultimatum - thejteam
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-council-approves-living-wage-bill-over-wal-mart-ultimatum/2013/07/10/724aab6e-e96f-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html

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JunkDNA
This article almost willfully leaves out a pretty crucial detail: the living
wage only applies to businesses that have non-union employees. So let's be
clear what this is: it's an effort to give union-run stores a labor advantage
and protect them from non-union competition. Safeway and Giant foods don't
have to worry about competing with WalMart or Target's rock-bottom prices[1]

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732439940457858...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324399404578583650562822608.html)

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stephengillie
Safeway and Giant (and Kroger and Supervalu etc) are forced by the UFCW to pay
high wages ($18/hour in Seattle), and fully fund medical insurance for every
employee working more than 20 hours _per month_.

As a system admin, it's taken me 6 years after college to get back to the wage
I made as a grocery store checker.

~~~
thejteam
The west coast stores and east coast stores must have different unions. When I
worked at non-union Kmart I made more per hour than I could have made at union
Safeway (east coast).

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stephengillie
As far as I know, they're all the same union (UFCW), but they have regional
contracts. I'm pretty sure Portland (Oregon)'s grocery workers have a lower
top pay.

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binarymax
I like to think of governments as old software programs. When they are first
built, they are built with enthusiasm and passion to create the next new shiny
thing. After a couple hundred years, they evolve into a giant pile of organic
hacks for features to satisfy their users, and changes to fix existing bugs
just result in regression. This is one of those patches, and it will regress.

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autodidakto
Why stop at living wage? Everyone deserves to be comfortable, no? They should
pass a 'comfortable wage' bill. Heck, it should be illegal to work for
anything less than $50 an hour. What we need is politicians with the
leadership necessary to outlaw poverty.

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lolwutf
Hopefully you're being sarcastic?

If not, my response to that there should never be a 'comfortable wage'.
Everyone needs that crappy job they hate - dishwasher, ditch digger - that
pays nothing in order to motivate them to get out of said situation.

We all (most of us) worked that crappy job when we were younger, and hated it,
and one of many reasons I stay motivated to provide value now is, well,
because I don't want to be a dishwasher.

That's the beauty of The Market.

~~~
Fargren
That's disgusting. We should make sure people have the chance to suffer
because suffering makes us better people? That's moralistic crap. If we have
the resources to diminish suffering without causing harm, it is wrong not to
do it. If all work could be automated, it would be wrong to have people who
don't want to work working.

I think there is a reason for not having a mandatory comfortable wage; some
people would simply not find jobs if we raised the minimum wage to a point
were it becomes unprofitable to pay it. But that's the only reason for paying
less. Not some BS sanctity of hard work thing.

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drcode
No, you have it all backwards...

Working at a crappy job causes suffering. Not having ANY job causes MORE
suffering.

The solution you put forward (making crappy jobs illegal) is not somehow going
to magically make poor people suffer less.

~~~
Fargren
I didn't put that solution forward, another poster did. I don't really agree
with him, because I think under the current circumstances, making all crappy
jobs illegal is bad, as you say. I do believe some of the crappiest jobs
should be illegal (that's why I agree with minimum wages as long as the amount
is well thought), because that keeps the worst abusers in check. However, I
think justifying it with "the market" and "Everyone needs that crappy job they
hate in order to motivate them" is wrong. The only reason for that jobs to
exist is that we can't provide better ones right now.

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FreezerburnV
So what are the "crappiest" jobs then? What metric would you use to measure
them? Should all jobs (or most) seen on the show Dirty Jobs be outlawed? How
many of those being outlawed would it take before society collapses due to no
garbage being collected, maintenance being done on bridges, fishing not
happening, etc. And are those jobs actually crappier than working at Wal-Mart
or K-Mart? Which should be outlawed, under your scenario?

~~~
Fargren
No. No particular job should be outlawed, probably (that is, nothing that is
legal to do for free should be illegal to do for money). But the point of
minimum wage, as I see it, is to keep potential employers from abusing people
who are not in a position to demand better wages, because if they won't work
for almost no money, they won't get to work at all. The idea is that if you
need someone to do work for you, you are generating profit from that, or you
wouldn't hire them. By having a floor on how much you must pay, you are trying
to keep people in bad situations from being abused by those who would exploit
them.

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txttran
Why is this targeted at large retailers? If the DC minimum wage is
insufficient for "living", shouldn't it be raised, instead of a somewhat
arbitrary law forcing only retailers to raise their wages?

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dnautics
oh, it's horrible. When I lived in the DC area, I used to volunteer for this
organization:
[http://www.foodforalldc.org/wp/](http://www.foodforalldc.org/wp/) \- and I
delivered food to the worst parts of the city, where people are very much
unemployed and living off of far less of an income than the minimum wage. This
law does nothing to help them, whatsoever.

I have no particular love for walmart besides their knack for being good at
delivering things efficiently (their aggressive use of eminent domain makes me
angry). But laws should be fair and applied equitably. What this law is - is
nothing but political posturing, demagoguery masked in the language of helping
the less well off. I wonder, do the DC council members actually lift a hand to
help out the people they say they care about, when a camera's not rolling?

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imgabe
This is smart and it's just DC protecting itself. When the full-time (actually
39 hour/week, so they don't get health insurance) Wal-Mart employee making
$8.25/hour still needs food stamps to live, who do you think gets stuck with
the bill for that? The DC government does.

~~~
drcode
Fantasic! Now these potential Wal-Mart employees are back to making
$0.00/hour. Oh, and they have to pay more for their groceries now, too.

Congratulations on a job well done, DC Council!

~~~
imgabe
Assuming Wal-Mart actually sticks to its ultimatum.

If one of the most successful businesses in history can't find a way to turn a
profit in one of the most populous, affluent areas in the country while paying
employees enough to live in the same area, then maybe they shouldn't be in
business after all. Like the article says, Wal-Mart needs DC. DC doesn't need
Wal-Mart.

CostCo has no problems here and they pay around $15/hour.

~~~
txttran
CostCo and Wal-Mart have pretty different business models despite being
competitors. It should be noted that CostCo's retail business, without the
membership fees, is actually not profitable. It's the membership fees that put
them in the black.

Source: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/26/why-can-
t-w...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/26/why-can-t-walmart-be-
more-like-costco.html)

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footoverhand
If 40 hours working at minimum wage is not enough to live on, shouldn't the
minimum wage be raised?

~~~
drcode
Why are people so eager to make it harder for poor people to get jobs by
forcing price controls onto employers?

footoverhand: I want as many people to be able to work as possible. If you
think it is too hard for people to live on the salaries that are available at
their skill level, then by all means we can talk about improving the social
safety net... but forcing companies to lay off people to maintain their salary
budgets through salary controls is NOT a good way to help poor people.

~~~
bostonpete
I don't necessarily agree, but couldn't this same rationale be used to argue
against any minimum wage whatsoever?

~~~
drcode
Yes, I believe minimum wage is in general bad for poor people.

No, I don't have a PhD in Economics and am willing to accept I could be wrong
in this assessment.

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t2d2
what do you think of the idea of a maximum wage. the most you could make if
you are not an owner or partner in a for profit company?

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lettergram
I feel like I read this somewhere before... Pretty sure it was Atlas Shrugged,
not the best literary work, but paints a pretty clear picture of a world where
people get money they don't earn.

~~~
johnrob
For all of its critique, Atlas Shrugged surprisingly seems to predict where
our government is headed.

~~~
lettergram
I've posted something twice citing that book and it always gets down voted, on
the other hand when I state some of the ideology of the book it gets up voted
(strange). Just thought i'd share.

Also, I agree it's where the government is heading. People need to learn that
life is what they make it, not what is handed to them.

~~~
drcode
It's overall a lousy book that happened to get some obvious things right.

The fact that people in her time disagreed with these obvious things does not
mean Ayn Rand was particularly prescient, it just means lots of people believe
obviously wrong things.

~~~
lettergram
Personally I agree, although I have had many friends who enjoyed the books
romantic style, they also like Jane Eyre, Wuthering heights, Frankenstein,
etc. Its just a style that I (and most) do not find enjoyable I guess.

I do however enjoy her non-fiction. Her arguments are much more concise (12
page explain her entirely philosophy as opposed to 1025 or w.e Atlas Shrugged
was).

