{"id":232,"date":"2013-12-29T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T16:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/68.169.38.31\/?p=232"},"modified":"2014-04-06T17:19:32","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T17:19:32","slug":"glad-were-focusing-on-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gormogons.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/glad-were-focusing-on-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Glad We’re Focusing on the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
GorT sometimes attends protests<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Maybe liberals and democrats are focusing on “living wage” arguments so the following doesn’t get much press:<\/p>\n

A recent CNN poll shows almost 70% of the country believes the economy is generally in poor shape and only 32% rated it good.  Furthermore, there are 4 million Americans who are in what is termed “long term unemployment” and raising the minimum wage or getting companies to pay a “living wage” will not help them.  Of these 4 million, about 80% have a high school education, and almost half have some college level schooling.  Twenty percent had worked in a professional or management position.<\/p>\n

The Retired Spook was busy writing mail to us and sent one sailing over the castle walls at the 8′ level – just about got caught in my elbow actuator:<\/p>\n

\n
As an exercise for the student, let us consider the following problem:<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
The Walton family made X<\/em> billion dollars last year.<\/div>\n
The total number of Walmart employees is Y.<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em> <\/div>\n
X\/Y<\/em> is the amount of money each Walmart employee would have recieved had the Waltons NOT MADE A CENT.  And if we further break that amount down, dividing the result by 2000 (hours worked per year), I\u2019d be willing to bet that the result would be less than $0.25 per hour.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Now, don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019ve had jobs where a 25 cents\/hour raise would have been HUGE (as in the difference between the ten\/dollar ramen noodles, and 12\/dollar version).<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
But with the price of everything going up, especially since we are now required to burn human and livestock food for fuel (I hope Al Gore winds up right next to Ted Kennedy), I really don\u2019t think that ten bucks a week is going to make or break anyone.  If it is, let me know, and I\u2019ll include them in my prayers (and send \u2018em a few bucks).<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Could someone do an updated version of \u201cThe Goose that laid the Gold Egg\u201d <\/em>in terms that liberals could understand?<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
It\u2019s been a bad year.  Next year will probably be worse.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Best wishes,<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Retired Spook<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/div>\n
To plug in a few numbers, Walmart made $17B last year, $13B was distributed to investors and shareholders, leaving $4B of profit.  It is reported that there are 2.2 million employees of Walmart.   That works out to $1,818 per employee provided that Walmart didn’t re-invest any of the $4B (see my previous post regarding Amazon).  In a standard 2080 hour work year, that works out to be $0.87 per hour per employee.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Again, this is all a canard.  Growing jobs, revising our educational system and focusing on how to transform our country’s marketplace (employment, innovations, etc) into something that better addresses these concerns is worthy of focus.  Patching things by redistributing wealth is a weak hack and lame attempt not worthy of our efforts.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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