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Walmart's Low Prices And Big Profits Have A High Cost


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That's funny.  Family owned grocery stores paid well AND gave benefits?  What grocery was this?

I know back in like the late 70's and earlier farmer jacks was union, my friend worked there in 11th grade, he was making like 11 bucks an hr plus bennys, that job was one of the best jobs a guy could get in them days, and you could move up to butcher and alot of other things, alot of the independent grocerie stores paid a pretty good wage in the 70's, we had great scotts, A&P that was bought by farmer jack or vise versa, them big groceri stores were good pay, than in the detroit area you only had kmarts no super kmarts, than in came meijers they had it all in one building and that was the break down of the groceri worker union, The 1st mejiers thrifty acers I remember was on peirson rd in the flint area, they have been there since I was a kid, we started going to houghton lake from detroit (macomb county s.c.s) in like 67, Now With minimum wage around 7 to 8 and hr its a pretty good 2nd income for a house hold now!

 

We have all of these home health aids that go and take care of people in their homes, they take care of the pt's and clean the house, shoot my ole lady even shovels her pt's snow and cutts their grass, and they pay her 8.25 on pt's she dont need a crane to lift to get em out of bed and into showers, and 9.25 for the ones that cant move much, she needs to crane em out of bed, crane them to the toilet and shower, nap time and they only get a few hrs per pt in shifts!  I keep telling her she can make more a week at mcDonalds and she will just go to work for her 7 or 8 hrs and come home, no running all over the place to take care of pts and make more money per week, them home health aids dont get paid for travel or mileage,  so when she gets p'd off becuase she feels like she is being used, I tell her give em a 2 wk notice, tell them I can go flip burgers and make more, I can go do wall marts and make more, My old lady is too good for the company she works for, she has been there like 3 yrs now, and has trained so many other people to do her pts, most last less than a week and some actualy quit after the first day, alot of people dont have the stomach to clean up these old people, who always poop them selves at nite and p them selves, they cant help it, and it takes a certain kind of worker to be able to do it!

 

when I met her almost 7 yrs ago she was in the prison accademy, and she had to associate degrees in criminal justice thru kirtland com college, when she started doing the home health thing after filling out all kinds of apps to be a ..c.o she liked it, and I did all I could to help her like it, I didnt want her working at a prison up here or a county jail, ive been there, I know how a-holes act when locked up, especialy the ones waiting to be shipped to jackson intake,

 

Living up where I live a 8 to 9 bucks an hr isnt bad money, between both of our incomes we have no prob paying our bills and doing stuff with the family! and have good christmases, we need to live on a budget just like most of americans who fall under the 20k a yr income!

 

Our mortgage and taxes is less than most peoples mortgages or rent, our payment including taxes and ins is 470 a month!  I lived in a tiny house slab floor no garage last time i rented and it was 500 a month and it was like throwing it out the window, we will be happy with our 3 bdrm 2full bath house, finished basement, we couldnt rent anything up here for that price,  well something on wheels we could, I could have bought the peice of junk next door to me for 5 k, and had a much bigger yard, but the guy who bought it tore down the piece of poop trailer on it and it looks great, and its mine to use, his taxes went down, and we ger first choice if he sells it,  but right now we pretty much have our hearts set on building on some property I own in roscomon county in our older yrs!

 

 

 

Peace

Jim

Edited by phaquetoo
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We were sold out by our own government long ago. But now it is kind of silly to lay the blame on the people that are still here actualy putting people to work. I wish everyone that worked at wal mart could be paid GM wages, but that is unrealistic, isn't it? Raising the minimum wage does nothing to help the problem.  If you work a low skill job you should not expect high pay.  By raising the minimum wage you also in effect de-value the next two or three tiers of pay scale.  Do you think if you raise minimum wage to ten bucks and hour the guy that was making twelve is going to get a 2.00 an hour raise?  No, they won't.    If you do not like Walmarts pay scale, don't work there and don't shop there. Maybe they will figure it out.

 

We weren't sold out by our government.  Our government was bought from us by large corporations....like Wal-mart.  The fact that nobody was paying attention and we all let it it happen is the true tragedy here.

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is an interesting conversation for sure.  There is no doubt (at least in my mind - don't want to start an argument on this point) that the middle class is shrinking.  And it is near impossible to raise a faimly on minimum wage.

 

I would like to offer another perspective that often perplexes me.  I have been working in the corporate world for over 15 years, and one of the consistent challenges I face on a day to day basis is finding qualified candidates to hire for corporate white-collar jobs.

 

At my current employer, we have over 100 open positions.  The average wage for these positions is probably $80,000 annually with full benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k matching, paid vacation, etc, etc).  There are a lot of diversity in these openings both from skill set required to salary (the positions probably range from $30,000 - $150,000).

 

By all accounts, these would be considered "good jobs", yet it is so incredibly difficult to find people to fill them.  And this is not a new trend.  This is something that has been a constant for years.

 

All of these positions require college degrees, but the lower pay jobs don't require much, or any, experience. 

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This is an interesting conversation for sure.  There is no doubt (at least in my mind - don't want to start an argument on this point) that the middle class is shrinking.  And it is near impossible to raise a faimly on minimum wage.

 

I would like to offer another perspective that often perplexes me.  I have been working in the corporate world for over 15 years, and one of the consistent challenges I face on a day to day basis is finding qualified candidates to hire for corporate white-collar jobs.

 

At my current employer, we have over 100 open positions.  The average wage for these positions is probably $80,000 annually with full benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k matching, paid vacation, etc, etc).  There are a lot of diversity in these openings both from skill set required to salary (the positions probably range from $30,000 - $150,000).

 

By all accounts, these would be considered "good jobs", yet it is so incredibly difficult to find people to fill them.  And this is not a new trend.  This is something that has been a constant for years.

 

All of these positions require college degrees, but the lower pay jobs don't require much, or any, experience. 

 

It might be because college degrees are getting to be so expensive.

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But sheer numbers of degrees are the same or higher than they were a couple decades ago.

 

 Is it that people are going to school for the wrong degrees, are unable to find the occupations and businesses hiring or are businesses not doing a good job of locating.

 

 

 Interesting concept.

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This is an interesting conversation for sure.  There is no doubt (at least in my mind - don't want to start an argument on this point) that the middle class is shrinking.  And it is near impossible to raise a faimly on minimum wage.

 

I would like to offer another perspective that often perplexes me.  I have been working in the corporate world for over 15 years, and one of the consistent challenges I face on a day to day basis is finding qualified candidates to hire for corporate white-collar jobs.

 

At my current employer, we have over 100 open positions.  The average wage for these positions is probably $80,000 annually with full benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k matching, paid vacation, etc, etc).  There are a lot of diversity in these openings both from skill set required to salary (the positions probably range from $30,000 - $150,000).

 

By all accounts, these would be considered "good jobs", yet it is so incredibly difficult to find people to fill them.  And this is not a new trend.  This is something that has been a constant for years.

 

All of these positions require college degrees, but the lower pay jobs don't require much, or any, experience. 

 

I'm going to say that college is not preparing people for jobs anymore.

Employers are too busy searching people's personal lives.

 

I think these two are probably the biggest culprits.

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@Malamute It's a pretty open minded place, and I'm not sure they would fire me for MM use, but I'm pretty sure they WOULD fire me for going public with it.  Especially if I, in any way, connected them to MM.  Let's just say that they won't be doing any drug testing soon (or we would lose half the company I imagine), but it's a bit of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

 

I can't say for sure what the root cause is for the difficulty in hiring for "good jobs".  

 

It could be that while we have an excellent university system in Michigan, many of our best and brightest leave the state.

 

Or possibly many recent college graduates don't want to start out at $30k a year and work their way up.  They seem to want to start out at higher pay and higher levels.  The problem is, almost everyone in a corporate setting has a college degree, so if the recent grads don't want to do entry level work, who will do it?

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@OG Fire Beaster - College's definitely don't prepare people for jobs; however, I'm not convinced they ever did.  I agree that employers do too much searching of personal lives.  While we don't have a policy of searching online for applicants behavior, and we don't drug screen, we still do background checks, and any conviction is going to give you difficulty in becoming employed.

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@Malamute It's a pretty open minded place, and I'm not sure they would fire me for MM use, but I'm pretty sure they WOULD fire me for going public with it.  Especially if I, in any way, connected them to MM.  Let's just say that they won't be doing any drug testing soon (or we would lose half the company I imagine), but it's a bit of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

 

I can't say for sure what the root cause is for the difficulty in hiring for "good jobs".  

 

It could be that while we have an excellent university system in Michigan, many of our best and brightest leave the state.

 

Or possibly many recent college graduates don't want to start out at $30k a year and work their way up.  They seem to want to start out at higher pay and higher levels.  The problem is, almost everyone in a corporate setting has a college degree, so if the recent grads don't want to do entry level work, who will do it?

 

I think a lot of the problem is the recent graduates grew up during a time of extreme prosperity. It is hard to spend between 30-50k(many times more than that) on an education to start out at what they perceive to be the bottom. Especially when at the collages they are telling them the whole time that once they graduate they will start at 45k minimum. I have a relative that makes 80k selling alarms 5 months out of the year. 30k is what? 16$ an hour? It is a shock to many of them. Most of the exceptional ones do leave the state. We do not exactly have a booming economy in Michigan anymore. Bartenders can make 30k easily.

 

Another part of the problem is they have spent 4-5 years thinking they are going to do one thing when in actuality they will almost never do it. I've hired no less than 10 buisness majors to do sales. You need almost no experience or education to do these types of jobs. I imagine it is highly frustrating for them. Throw in the near endless unemployment checks and bridge cards, not a lot of incentive to do something besides cut grass in the summer and hangout while you call Marvin twice a month during the "off season". It is kind of sad. Too much coddling. Not enough letting them fall on their butts a little bit.

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The problem is finding these jobs. Im 25 , have an associates in applied science , isn't really much but its better than nothing. Ive worked from the age 16 full time. Not flipping burgers or anything like that. ReAl work learning trAdes and skilled labor.Im unemployed now. The cost of tuition is rising, with alot of the populace just unable to afford it. Meaning they dont qualify for fed loans, and thier parents make just enough money to exempt them from those type of loans but not enough to pay for the school. I had this problem, its the reason i havent finished school. I could only work full time and go to school full time for so long before it drained me, and i still have 20k plus of student debt, which by the way is increasing as i type. Many employers turned me away that paid a decent wage because of my credit score, which was good before i started school. The system is flawed...this whole darn country is flawed. My food bill for the month almost equals my electricity bill and i run 4k watts and ac in flower. Living expenses for me and my wife far exceed min wage, thank god we do not have kids. Please sign me up for a 30k job immediately( This is what "they" have wanted all along.. Who "they" is I've yet to figure out)

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