Why companies can’t pay more…

I’ve been read­ing a lot of arti­cles lately writ­ten by peo­ple who think the cure to poverty is increas­ing the min­i­mum wage. They com­plain bit­terly that com­pa­nies like Wal­mart and McDon­alds don’t pay a “liv­ing” wage. Now, would you pay some­one $25/hour to say “Wel­come” to your com­pany? Not a chance, heck most com­pa­nies wouldn’t even bother pay­ing min­i­mum wage.

My first argu­ment would be no one is forced to work for these com­pa­nies. If Wal­mart couldn’t find employ­ees, they’d raise their pay, but let’s look at a bit of real­ity when it comes to raises…

Wal­mart employs over 2.1 mil­lion peo­ple, McDon­alds is esti­mated to have 1 mil­lion peo­ple. If the aver­age per­son works 1855 hours in a year, giv­ing just $1 more per hour would cost Wal­mart 3.8955 Bil­lion dol­lars (their entire profit for last year), and McDon­alds 1.855 Bil­lion dol­lars (nearly half the prof­its for 2010).

Now, I know not every­one is employed full time, but peo­ple are ask­ing for a raise of more than $1/hour as well. If com­pa­nies like these failed to make a profit, investors would pull out their money and the com­pa­nies would dis­ap­pear. Wal­mart is the largest pri­vate employer in mul­ti­ple countries…you think unem­ploy­ment is bad now, what will is be like with­out such companies?

I also read another inter­est­ing fact. There are peo­ple com­plain­ing that the Wal­mart fam­ily isn’t giv­ing enough back to the world. Peo­ple are com­plain­ing that the Wal­ton fam­ily is only giv­ing away 2% of it’s net worth. How much of your net worth do you give away each year? Why is there this sense of enti­tle­ment? The Wal­ton fam­ily ensures that the poor have access to low cost goods, they are one of the rea­sons why there are low cost goods hav­ing the bar­gain­ing power to force com­pa­nies to sell at a lower price, but that’s never mentioned.

It always seems eas­ier to give other peo­ple’ money away. Now, I’ve worked with the poor, and I’ve been poor, so I actu­ally have some expe­ri­ence here. There are peo­ple who don’t want to change, or feel they can’t change. There is noth­ing one can do for them. They have to want to change. Soci­ety can’t force it, no mat­ter how good their inten­sions. For those peo­ple who want to change, there are a lot of resources, but there is a lack of knowl­edge on how to change.

I’ve seen the finan­cial edu­ca­tion that is being imple­mented in schools, I’ve seen what’s been taught to peo­ple for years…it’s garbage. Go to work, get a pay­cheque, spend less than you earn…it all sound great, but it just doesn’t seem to work for many people.

If it’s not work­ing, why do we still preach it?

Let’s look to those peo­ple who’ve actu­ally made money, learn what they did. I doubt many work for Wal­mart or McDon­alds, though the odds are that they did in the past (I bet they learned that it wasn’t some­thing they wanted to do for long).

We have to stop liv­ing in a world where we have some­one else fix our prob­lems and become respon­si­ble adults. Take a risk in your life, remove your train­ing wheels and grow up. If you’re not will­ing to change your sit­u­a­tion, then stop com­plain­ing, you have no right.

Les­son: You are not enti­tled to other people’s suc­cess, be glad for what they actu­ally pro­vide for you, they don’ have to.

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