Wal Mart increases starting wage

[Haipule]

Licensed optician. We opened the store on Maui on Halloween day 2000. Starting pay was $7.50p/h but few would take it as McDonalds starting pay was $10.00p/h. They started as a 24 hour store. They very quickly shortened the hours of operation and raised the starting pay to $10.00 but where 100 employees short for the holiday season. It was a mess!

A few years later they raised it to $12.00p/h and experienced cashiers could start at 14-15p/h. Now there going to raise it again.

On this island we have Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot, Lowes, Target and a closed K-Mart. We have about 150 to 160 thousand residence and those companies must compete for the employees. Yes, you can make more money here but a studio apt with one parking stall starts at $1.600 p/month.

And that is the problem, you'd still be behind on that rate, especially if you have kids and the rent is higher if you have more than one room.

Yes! You have to buy here to control housing costs. Buying is cheaper then renting. Real-estate taxes here are reasonable. However, the state taxes they take out of your paycheck is outrageous! Three times higher than California. It's a great place to be rich but tough to work here.

However, making wealth is easier here because we are all on a island with needs. Tourists come here with needs. Providing needs will prosper you. This world is changing very fast which creates more need whether real or imagined.

I myself am cell phone free and have never owned one and am holding out as long as I can. But, that stupid thingy has changed everything! The everything it is changing creates opportunities that never before existed. Hawai'i is a great place to be rich and to get rich. For instance, if you can put in pools where basalt exists you got it made! There are just not enough pool guys here and they only provide the elaborate $120.000.00 pools and don't have time for a simple $50.000 project.

[The Grand Nudger]

You looking for partners in an excavation business?  I can dig holes in hawaii.  

(honestly though, I'd love to own a pineapple plantation)

[Brian37]

And that is the problem, you'd still be behind on that rate, especially if you have kids and the rent is higher if you have more than one room.

Yes! You have to buy here to control housing costs. Buying is cheaper then renting. Real-estate taxes here are reasonable. However, the state taxes they take out of your paycheck is outrageous! Three times higher than California. It's a great place to be rich but tough to work here.

However, making wealth is easier here because we are all on a island with needs. Tourists come here with needs. Providing needs will prosper you. This world is changing very fast which creates more need whether real or imagined.

I myself am cell phone free and have never owned one and am holding out as long as I can. But, that stupid thingy has changed everything! The everything it is changing creates opportunities that never before existed. Hawai'i is a great place to be rich and to get rich. For instance, if you can put in pools where basalt exists you got it made! There are just not enough pool guys here and they only provide the elaborate $120.000.00 pools and don't have time for a simple $50.000 project.

While I like the social stance of liberal states, it still amounts to workers in every state not having enough to make ends meet.

The only way you fix that long term, is to raise wages, keep costs of living down and middle class and poor taxes down. The only bracket that needs to be taxed more are the billionaires first, multi millionaires. I still cannot shed a tear for some asshole like Trump who won't end up eating cat food if he gets taxed more.

You get taxed less in Red States, but you also make less, but even there costs are increasing at a faster pace than a worker can keep up with. 

When you average out the gap in all states, it still falls relatively in the same range and it is still growing.

If one looks up the tax rate between 48 and 1980 it was far higher on the rich than it is now, and that high tax helped create the economic boom in that time.

But since Reagan, the GOP have managed to con people into thinking small increases and small tax breaks for the middle class and poor will produce long term gains. But those minor breaks get beaten and eaten by the vastly bigger corporate welfare and those big corporations STILL raise prices which eats up any crumbs they give workers. IT IS A SCAM and it always has been.

Silicon Valley in CA and Farfaix County in Northern Va where I grew up, are now TWO of the most expensive places to live outside say big cities like NYC or San Fran Even the well of in Silicon Valley see that, not just fast food workers, but even middle class teachers have it really hard and they bleed off workers whom move because of the cost.

Then what? You move to say rural Oklahoma where it is cheaper, but you also don't make as much? 

Even where I live in rural NC better paying jobs can require you to drive further. One of my mom's former Nurses whom worked at the long term care travels an HOUR each way to work. Even the poorly paid aids there travel from a poor rural county for an hour too. 

It's nuts. And even from what you are telling me, while Hawaii is a more liberal state, I couldn't live there on the jobs I had. I wouldn't even move there with what my mom left me because it would get eaten up quickly. 

I don't see how anyone working retail or fast food there survives. But I can say that about NC too.

[Haipule]

Yes! You have to buy here to control housing costs. Buying is cheaper then renting. Real-estate taxes here are reasonable. However, the state taxes they take out of your paycheck is outrageous! Three times higher than California. It's a great place to be rich but tough to work here.

However, making wealth is easier here because we are all on a island with needs. Tourists come here with needs. Providing needs will prosper you. This world is changing very fast which creates more need whether real or imagined.

I myself am cell phone free and have never owned one and am holding out as long as I can. But, that stupid thingy has changed everything! The everything it is changing creates opportunities that never before existed. Hawai'i is a great place to be rich and to get rich. For instance, if you can put in pools where basalt exists you got it made! There are just not enough pool guys here and they only provide the elaborate $120.000.00 pools and don't have time for a simple $50.000 project.

While I like the social stance of liberal states, it still amounts to workers in every state not having enough to make ends meet.

The only way you fix that long term, is to raise wages, keep costs of living down and middle class and poor taxes down. The only bracket that needs to be taxed more are the billionaires first, multi millionaires. I still cannot shed a tear for some asshole like Trump who won't end up eating cat food if he gets taxed more.

You get taxed less in Red States, but you also make less, but even there costs are increasing at a faster pace than a worker can keep up with. 

When you average out the gap in all states, it still falls relatively in the same range and it is still growing.

If one looks up the tax rate between 48 and 1980 it was far higher on the rich than it is now, and that high tax helped create the economic boom in that time.

But since Reagan, the GOP have managed to con people into thinking small increases and small tax breaks for the middle class and poor will produce long term gains. But those minor breaks get beaten and eaten by the vastly bigger corporate welfare and those big corporations STILL raise prices which eats up any crumbs they give workers. IT IS A SCAM and it always has been.

Silicon Valley in CA and Farfaix County in Northern Va where I grew up, are now TWO of the most expensive places to live outside say big cities like NYC or San Fran Even the well of in Silicon Valley see that, not just fast food workers, but even middle class teachers have it really hard and they bleed off workers whom move because of the cost.

Then what? You move to say rural Oklahoma where it is cheaper, but you also don't make as much? 

Even where I live in rural NC better paying jobs can require you to drive further. One of my mom's former Nurses whom worked at the long term care travels an HOUR each way to work. Even the poorly paid aids there travel from a poor rural county for an hour too. 

It's nuts. And even from what you are telling me, while Hawaii is a more liberal state, I couldn't live there on the jobs I had. I wouldn't even move there with what my mom left me because it would get eaten up quickly. 

I don't see how anyone working retail or fast food there survives. But I can say that about NC too.

Your an interesting person Brian37! Your sense of humor is outrageous, even for me! People survive here, in Hawai'i well because of Ohana which means family. It is not unusual to see a multi-addition house with 6 mail boxes.

However, you cannot tax the rich because they have the means to leave. Boeing was always a big employer in Washington State. That is until they tried to tax them further. Then they moved to Chicago where they were given a tax break for just providing necessary jobs.

In California they tried to increase corporate taxes only to have the business and the jobs go next door to Nevada where there is no corporate tax. That was quite a boom for Nevada!

And if America wants to get rid of there rich, all they have to do is try and tax them unreasonably. There are places in the world BEGGING us to move there such as the Kingdom of Vanuatu. Does it really matter, in this computer-cell phone world were we choose to live?

I was amongst the richest on Maui and do you want to know what they brag about? How poor they are? Why? Taxes! Do you understand that I can pay a lawyer $10.000 dollars and that lawyer will structure me so I can qualify for Medicare?

You CANNOT fix the world, or this country, by overburdening rich people with taxes. They will just say FUCK YOU and leave! And they have the means to do so!

[The Grand Nudger]

Saying that our system favors wealth with mobility and influence doesn't demonstrate that the problem an't be fixed, Hai.  It's just an acknowledgement that we have a problem, and..ironically, an attached suggestion for just how we could fix it.....maybe we ought to do something about that sort of mobility and influence?

At present, a corporate interest can play two counties against each other and both for suckers. That's the principle model of manufacturing and development here in redneckistan. This is the context of the abandonment of the poor who must rely on extended family to survive - even if they work 80hrs a week.

[Amarok]

So Hap argument is that we should bend over and let the rich fuck people over . Because they will take there ball home if we don't . That sounds like being taken hostage . (oh FYI no taxing the rich does not make them leave . Because they want to live in a safe stable country ) 



(Give the rich whatever they want or else!)

[Haipule]

Saying that our system favors wealth with mobility and influence doesn't demonstrate that the problem an't be fixed, Hai.  It's just an acknowledgement that we have a problem, and..ironically, an attached suggestion for just how we could fix it.....maybe we ought to do something about that sort of mobility and influence?

At present, a corporate interest can play two counties against each other and both for suckers.  That's the principle model of manufacturing and development here in redneckistan.  This is the context of the abandonment of the poor who must rely on extended family to survive - even if they work 80hrs a week.

Of course you have a better idea then taxing the hell out of those fucking rich people right? Whom will just move to the other county/state/country seduced with tax favors because they voted for smart people rather then idiots!

Yet, people think "trickle down" won't work? Whereas, it is impossible not to work! Without rich people willing to invest everything for a dream, which includes loving and helping others to succeed, there ain't no jobs! Why would they ever invest without a return?

Money works harder and employs far more people then the fuckin' govermament!

When I developed real estate I didn't imagine how many people I was feeding, putting shoes on there children's feet, paying college tuitions, until I met them and they told me!

What? Is there a trickle up theory?

[vulcanlogician]

What? Is there a trickle up theory?

Why, yes there is. Do you think corporations are going to employ people to manufacture stuff that nobody can afford? When the working people have money in their pockets this weird thing happens--they spend it. They buy stuff with their money.

When the working people don't have money in their pockets, they don't buy stuff. And if nobody can buy the stuff you are making, then it doesn't matter what kind of dreamy-eyed job creator you are, you may as well not manufacture anything. Why? Because nobody has money to buy your stuff.

If you make sure working people have money in their pockets, they will spend that money. They will buy stuff. When they are able to buy stuff, it becomes feasible for a firm to produce goods for sale.

That's how "trickle up" economics works.

[The Grand Nudger]

Of course you have a better idea then taxing the hell out of those fucking rich people right? Whom will just move to the other county/state/country seduced with tax favors because they voted for smart people rather then idiots!

You think "those fucking rich people" are going to move to those shitholes we've been hearing about?  I doubt it.  

Yet, people think "trickle down" won't work?

Because it doesn't.  It's not as if we hadn't tried it and watched it fail over and over and over.....

Whereas, it is impossible not to work! Without rich people willing to invest everything for a dream, which includes loving and helping others to succeed, there ain't no jobs! Why would they ever invest without a return?

"If we don't let them rape and pillage we wont have any of their precious, precious moniez!!!  Double plus ungood!" 

Money works harder and employs far more people then the fuckin' govermament!

OFC it does, "Money" is for profit and requires labor to produce it.  Even the most exotic financial instrument has a tenous but often lethal connection to that reality. When the asset the bet is made on becomes toxic - the bet becomes worthless. Unfortunately, lobbyists have engineered it so that the profits from those bets are privatized even though we socialize the losses.

When I developed real estate I didn't imagine how many people I was feeding, putting shoes on there children's feet, paying college tuitions, until I met them and they told me!

More fairy tales, and awfully damned cheeky. Trying to defend extortion by reference to a job you totally had in real estate?  

What? Is there a trickle up theory?

Yeah, it's called labor and productivity.  Unlike trickle down bullshit it actually works.  It's what the trickle down acolytes exploit to make their products, and to sell their products, and to create the funds they then suck up as corporate handouts.  I feel like it shouldn't be a controversial opinion to suggest that the working masses and the country as a whole not get fucked by corporate overlords or the rich engaging in next level welfare queenism.
-and yet here we are.

I'd figure you'd be onboard..we're basically discussing moneychangers are we not? The world could use a few more flipped tables. But if that just doesn't tickle your indignation bone..its fucking unamerican and anti-capitalist. Capital and markets do not move freely when we allow a tiny fraction of individuals to extort the entire system, and the government is certainly not by the people, of the people, or even -for- the people when it sides with those interests over the interests of it's citizens. Im not interested in pinko shit -or- a corrupt oligarchy.

So tell me again why these hookers need to be given more money and concessions to incentivize them..whilst giving money or concessions to the working poor only makes them lazy?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Licensed optician.

As a percentage of Walmart employees, what would you guess the licensed opticians represent?