If you don’t identify your sources, why shouldn’t anyone believe the truthfulness of your statements? By not qualifying statements, it’s very easy to mislead your reader.
I found an article on Prospect.org called Why You Shouldn’t Shop at on Wal-Mart on Friday. You can tell what the article’s about based on the title, and the first sentence really annoyed me:
A half century ago America’s largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today’s dollars, including health and pension benefits.
I want to begin by pointing out that there are no citations whatsoever for this statement. None. Why should I take this author, Robert B. Reich, at his word?
Okay, but since I’m not going to even bother to research his claim, I’ll believe him. Full-time workers earned an average of $50 an hour fifty years ago? Let’s take a look at some of the facts…
Does this include every worker at GM? Is this just the hourly employees who worked the lines or does it include others like engineers, management, and other professional fields? Surely, this would bring the averages up.
Fifty years ago, $50 would be worth $6.53. And really, that’s pretty good money back then, putting them in the top 17.7%. But is this a little misleading? I would say so since he’s including benefits payments in that number. According to FactCheck.org, United Auto Workers (UAW) employees earned about $70 an hour in 2008. But once again, that’s including benefits. The actual hourly wage earned by UAW employees (in 2008) was about $29 an hour. The $70 is also including benefits being earned by retired workers (the average is calculated by dividing the total monies being paid by only the number of employees currently working). Is this method also how the pay was calculated for the GM workers in 1962? I don’t know because the author didn’t cite anything or explain how any of this was calculated.
Does this 1962 value also include overtime? Was that overtime given as straight time, time and a half?
The main point of this article is to compare what GM workers made in 1962 to Walmart workers today and claim that the lack of unionization for Walmart employees is the cause. But how do you compare the two? They’re not using the same metrics, so any comparisons made are skewed from the start.
Working at Walmart is a pretty low-skill job. An autoworker, on the other hand, requires considerable training, knowledge, and marketable skills and would be paid accordingly. So of course Walmart employees earn less—they’re so much easier to replace and almost anyone can perform the job. Is it fair to compare what a doctor made in 1970 compared to a McDonald’s drive-thru attendant today?
If Walmart workers think they are worth more money, why don’t they find someone else to pay them more? If no one is willing to pay them more money, then maybe Walmart’s offer is what they’re worth as workers.
Hard to imagine that Robert Reich was the Secetary of Labor. I do believe Bill Clinton knew what he wanted to achieve and he knew that Riech would serve as a useful tool for the Clinton agenda. These days though, Reich just appears to be a tool. Too bad, because that does not reflect well on Bill.
“If Walmart workers think they are worth more money, why don’t they find someone else to pay them more? If no one is willing to pay them more money, then maybe Walmart’s offer is what they’re worth as workers.”
Are you seriously kidding me? Finding another job in the States today is like playing musical chairs, only there are literally thousands chasing a single chair. And when the economy is so bad, and so controlled by mega-billionaires, they can exploit people to the point of near-slavery. To not only tell workers if you don’t like it, go find another job (when there aren’t any to be had), but that they’re ‘only worth’ starvation wages as workers is unbelievably obtuse at best, downright evil at worst. Here’s another question – if Walmart were required to pay their employees a living minimum wage, then they wouldn’t have to depend on tax-payer supported food stamps and welfare to supplement their wages enough to eat. YOU are paying for that, so that Alice Walton doesn’t have to pay her employees enough to survive on. Even minimum wage earners like burger flippers should have a right to expect enough wages to pay for food and a roof over their head, and taxpayers have a right not to have to pay the difference.
If I own the only loaf of bread in town, I can command whatever price I want for it – does that make it ethical that only those with enough money eat and the rest ‘aren’t worthy’ enough to not starve? What’s next? Bring back unregulated child labour? Workhouses? SLAVERY? Sure, why not? Because if the free market isn’t controlled by something other than the bottom line, then slaves deserve whatever they get, and have no right to complain.
Is that your logic? The mind… and heart… boggles…
nonny mouse,
I appreciate you took the time to comment…let me answer some of your concerns.
We need to examine why this is the case. I despise the corporatism that controls the country’s economy. It is not representative of a free market but instead resembles more of a fascist economy. And so when businesses don’t have to worry about failure because the government will remove competition via regulation and laws and the government will bail big businesses out, we will observe businesses acting in ways contrary to practices that fear the wrath of the consumer and fear of a competitor that woos employees away with better compensation. Furthermore, to speak to the issue of low wages, why have prices risen the way they have? This is because of the government’s monetary policies that cause inflation, which isn’t very much of a natural occurrence in a free market economy.
So it make seem as though I’m being cold and heartless when I say, “If you’re unhappy with your pay, you need to try to find a better job.” As I said above, much of the problems are caused by government intervention, so why I would I approve of more government intervention to fix these problems? Even with restrictions on it, the market is the best way to solve economic issues. While well-intentioned, government programs aimed at helping those with economic troubles end up hurting them more. Remember, with big business so intimately tied to government, who do you think the programs will end up benefiting the most?
The economy isn’t good. It’s terrible, but when government intervention is what caused the issues to begin with, why would I suggest more government intervention would make things any better?
Wages are the selling price of a person’s labor. So when I say that you’re “worth” something, it’s how much money you can charge for your output given the job you’re going to do. For more information about wages and the idea of “livable wages,” see this post.
As far as being evil, I’m not the one advocating using violence to force people to pay someone a certain wage. If you want to force someone to do something, you have to demonstrate the proper authority to do so.
This is a good example of how the government getting involved tends to mess everything up. Paying the employees more might get them off government assistance, but it would likely cause Walmart’s prices to rise and/or layoffs for some of their employees to make up for the increased wages. This is all further jumbled up by the aforementioned inflation caused by bad government monetary policy.
And to force businesses to pay their workers a certain wage would require a rights violation against the owners of the business. So your concern doesn’t seem to be about rights violations, but it is a matter of you choosing whose rights should be violated.
If you were to own the only loaf of bread in town, I’m going to get in the business of bread too. The problem now is that the government would prevent me from getting into the bread business, allowing you to charge whatever you want without fear of competition.
Slavery? You don’t understand free markets and voluntarism if you think that slavery would be permissible (or even work very well).
Individuals act in their own self-interest. That is an axiomatic statement. Do you think that laws and regulations change that?
Minimum wage jobs were never intended for people to live on. They are entry level jobs for young people
Living at home with parents. People need to work their way up the corporate ladder to generate a livable wage