Corporate america worried aobut wealth inequality

[NobleSavage]

But in political terms, the fact that the largest companies in the business of selling stuff to Americans are saying publicly that their shoppers earn too little money is a significant development. It represents a shift in the narrative within the traditional base of support for right-wing economic policy, as the CAP authors note. “If the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Chamber [of Commerce], and other proponents of trickle-down economics refuse to believe the overwhelming academic evidence that clearly shows low consumer spending and income growth are holding the economy back, they should listen to corporate America and Wall Street,” the report says.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/10/15/3580001/retail-middle-out-analysis/

I wonder what Walmart's long term business strategy its (soon they'll be for guaranteed income.)

 

[lpetrich]

With titled links,

Companies Warn That Income Inequality Is Hurting Their Business | ThinkProgress noting Retailer Revelations | Center for American Progress

Time and again, America’s leading corporations warn investors that “decreased levels of consumer spending” (Kohl’s), “a renewed decline in consumer-spending levels” (Sears), and “decreased salaries and wages” (Burger King) could have a huge negative impact on their financial performance. The corporate consensus is clear: It is this cycle of stagnation—low wages, leading to weak demand, leading to slow growth, leading back to low wages—that is hurting companies, their consumers, and the U.S. economy at large.

This report finds that:

• Eighty-eight percent of the top 100 U.S. retailers cite weak consumer spending as a risk factor to their stock price.
• Sixty-eight percent of the top 100 U.S. retailers cite falling or flat incomes as risks. Looking just at companies that were publicly held in 2006, the percent listing consumers’ incomes as a risk factor has doubled since that year. A majority of retailers—57 percent—cite rising energy, health care, housing, and other essential costs as risks, showing the middle-class squeeze of rising costs and stagnant incomes.
• Wall Street economists are even more explicit about the risk that low wages pose to the economy, arguing that they drive low demand and high unemployment.
• Retailers could improve their profits by embracing a middle-class-growth-oriented agenda instead of spending their political energy on preventing policies that increase wages. Policies such as a minimum-wage increase could provide the perfect mechanism for coordinating wage growth that could benefit the entire retail sector by fueling more consumer spending.

However,

While it may at first seem obvious that low consumer demand impedes growth, conservative think tanks and other believers in trickle-down economics ignore the evidence. Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, approvingly quotes Arthur Laffer, the father of trickle-down economics, who said, “All economic problems are about removing impediments to supply, not demand.”

So it will be a while before certain well-placed people recognize that consumers don't get their money by picking it off of money trees in their yards.

 

[Samhain]

So...corporate America finally caught up with what progressives and liberals were saying in 2007?

 

[lpetrich]

I wonder what Walmart's long term business strategy its (soon they'll be for guaranteed income.)

So...corporate America finally caught up with what progressives and liberals were saying in 2007?

They still have a way to go, but it's a start. What will be fun to see is how they propose to increase consumer buying power without increasing "labor costs" or "entitlements" or "welfare" or other such things that they grumble about.

 

[Blahface]

The solution is simple. If we want to increase consumer spending among the poor and middle class, we need to give more tax cuts to the rich.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Triple reward points!

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Of course the solution is for other companies to raise wages.

All hail the god shareholder value!

 

[ksen]

Where's dismal?

Anyway, so the corporations are starting to realize stagnant wages are a problem for their future success. That's a start. Now someone needs to make a move but I'm sure each company is not wanting to take the first step since they will not want to lose out to the bad actors that keep their wages the lowest for the longest. That's why government intervention with programs like the minimum wage which forces all companies to up their wages at the same time is needed.

 

[NobleSavage]

I don't want to start a minimum wage debate (If I do I'll start a new thread or read through the old ones), but I'm not convince raising it is such a good idea. I think it will just speed up automation. 95% of the jobs at Walmart could be automated. They are the biggest employer in the US. If that happens (rather, when it happens) we are going to be in a world of shit.

 

[ksen]

No, I didn't want to start a MW debate here either. My point was that absent some sort of outside intervention to get all businesses on board at once the ones that do notice there's a problem will be reluctant to do what needs to be done to help fix the problem on their own because it will put them at a competitive disadvantage to the companies that haven't come to the realization yet that we're suffering from a demand problem and the ones that just don't give a shit.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I don't want to start a minimum wage debate (If I do I'll start a new thread or read through the old ones), but I'm not convince raising it is such a good idea. I think it will just speed up automation. 95% of the jobs at Walmart could be automated. They are the biggest employer in the US. If that happens (rather, when it happens) we are going to be in a world of shit.

And?

Automation is coming and WalMart will automate regardless of the minimum wage.

Everything will automate as the cost to do so falls.

The problem isnt automation, the MW, or even supply vs. demand.

The problem is we live in a rapidly changing world and the old ways of resource management and distribution simply won't work anymore. In the developed world, we don't need as many workers as we once did and we don't really need as many work hours or work days. We have over financialized our economies to the point that speculation in markets controls resource and wealth distribution more so than industrial manufacture and resource availability. And we have redesigned our tax policy in such a way as to not only allow the already wealthy to pull more wealth their way, but to keep more of it in perpetuity.

The way we practice economics needs a major overhaul before we find ourselves enduring a catastrophic collapse from which it make take lifetimes to recover.

 

[NobleSavage]

^^^^agreed.

 

[NobleSavage]

I don't want to start a minimum wage debate (If I do I'll start a new thread or read through the old ones), but I'm not convince raising it is such a good idea. I think it will just speed up automation. 95% of the jobs at Walmart could be automated. They are the biggest employer in the US. If that happens (rather, when it happens) we are going to be in a world of shit.

And?

Automation is coming and WalMart will automate regardless of the minimum wage.

Everything will automate as the cost to do so falls.

The problem isnt automation, the MW, or even supply vs. demand.

The problem is we live in a rapidly changing world and the old ways of resource management and distribution simply won't work anymore. In the developed world, we don't need as many workers as we once did and we don't really need as many work hours or work days. We have over financialized our economies to the point that speculation in markets controls resource and wealth distribution more so than industrial manufacture and resource availability. And we have redesigned our tax policy in such a way as to not only allow the already wealthy to pull more wealth their way, but to keep more of it in perpetuity.

The way we practice economics needs a major overhaul before we find ourselves enduring a catastrophic collapse from which it make take lifetimes to recover.

I'm not sure what the answer is. But putting a bunch of smart people in a room and having them completely overhaul the economy will probably lead to disaster as well.

I don't know if you are much of a software geek, but I really like this presentation. If you ignore the geek talk I think the guy has some good ideas.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

The solution is that whole socialism that they talked about 100 years ago. The light fluffy kind. Not the dystopian diesel punk kind.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

And just like porn and rule 34...
Boom! Dieselpunk socialism appears:

http://s3.media.squarespace.com/pro.../wp-content/uploads/2009/07/stalinator_72.jpg

 

[ksen]

It would be weirder if diesel punk socialism weren't a thing on the internet.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

It would be weirder if diesel punk socialism weren't a thing on the internet.

I just discovered this, and want the movie to be REAL:

PLEASE DEAR GOD LET THIS BE A REAL MOVIE!

 

[dystopian]

I just discovered this, and want the movie to be REAL:

It is.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/

It's not a bad movie, in a camp-over-the-top manner.

 

[coloradoatheist]

On one hand we here about how corporate profits are up astronomical but we also hear about how they are worried? Are the companies making the big profits the ones listed as having problems here?

As far as trickle down, there was more to it then just give the rich more money. The last 20 years the economic policy we've had really has been controlled inflation attempts that have failed instead of Reagan's policies. Hopefully boneyard will jump in on this one.