re: Govt Assistance and Minimum Wage

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Which is my point. Every single one of those companies can absolutely afford to increase those entry level raises without damaging the company but don't.

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You know this how?

Most of those firms are operating on single-digit margins, often low single-digit margins, and labor is a huge cost to them. Retail is extremely competitive, and most of those firms have Amazon and Walmart.com breathing down their necks.

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Dollar general 29% profit margin
Dollar Tree 31% profit margin

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Unfortunately for you, you're now mixing industries. Dollar stores, although technically retail stores, tend to operate at higher margins for two reasons.

1. They tend to buy over stock or nearly expired items from "big box" retailers like walmart, costco, sam's, ect. They usually buy these items at below wholesale mark ups.

2. They operate with minimal overhead. IE, small stores, minimal personnel. So this is a really bad example to use. They also, typically, don't pay their employees above minimum wage and are extremely loose on their hiring criteria. They'll pretty much hire anyone off the street. That's their business model and it works for them. They also have MASSIVE turnover in employment.

All that to say this, that was a shitty example to try and defend you position.

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Which is my point. Every single one of those companies can absolutely afford to increase those entry level raises without damaging the company but don't.

I also don't think forcing them to at the expense of small business is the answer, but acting like they aren't milking the system for every dollar is being willfully ignorant.

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As both a shopper at some of those stores and a shareholder of others...they damn well better be milking the system for every dollar. Otherwise I'll shop elsewhere if they increase prices or I'll invest elsewhere if they don't maximize profit.

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Which is my point. Every single one of those companies can absolutely afford to increase those entry level raises without damaging the company but don't.

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Holy frick!!


I can afford to pay more for my groceries. But, I don't need to so I don't do it.

I can afford to pay more for a lot of things I buy. But, I only pay what I NEED to.


I am amazed that people think the correct way to determine what you pay for a good or service is "what you can afford". The system WORKS because each entity is trying to MAXIMIZE what he receives and MINIMIZE what he pays.


JEEBUS!

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You're looking at gross margin, dude, not operating margin.

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You are wasting your time.

I work in the insurance industry and people think our margins are 50%.

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OP is one of the worst posters

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Dude is just terrible

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You're looking at gross margin, dude, not operating margin.


You are wasting your time.

I work in the insurance industry and people think our margins are 50%.

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It's frustrating when people show their ignorance on this stuff. A lot of people have no idea what the numbers mean.

Funnily enough, people who bitch about minimum wage usually don't even bother to actually look up who actually has the largest margins (most years, banking and tech for big firms and accounting, legal, real estate, and other professional services in general) and instead love to focus on retail. Retail is both insanely competitive and requires very little skill to be hired at the entry level, hence the lower wages. Apple doesn't pay their retail sales people very much, either, but you never hear about that.

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I asked a plumber friend about his margins.

My jaw dropped when he told me.

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I don't doubt it. Plumbing is closer to legal, consulting, banking, accounting, and so forth than it is to something like retail in that the value add of the product comes pretty much entirely from human capital.

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He then asked what we shoot for and his jaw dropped. He asked why in the world would anyone be in the insurance industry at those margins. We didn't get into volume but of course, that's the answer.

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I am curious - home/auto/etc insurance or health insurance? I don't know much about the home/auto/etc insurance market, but I know a lot about health insurance, and it is a horrid beast. The failure rate of new firms and ventures in that space is eye-popping.

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honestly don't care how draconic above sounds, but as someone who had nothing and worked my way up to a lot, I am proof that if you want it bad enough, there is a way.

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That is just a convenient excuse to not give a shite in the short-term. But in the long-term you know that you require these people in order to make big profits. Let's not pretend like those don't go hand-in-hand