Companies like Walmart often claim they can't afford to raise employee salaries because it would cause them to raise prices, which would hurt customers, decrease sales and then hurt the very employees whose salaries they raised, leading to layoffs and less hours. Ignoring the fact that they could easily absorb any such cost increases by slightly slimming down their billions of dollars of profits, the math just doesn't add up. (Don't forget, Walmart is a major recipient of corporate welfare, raking in billions of dollars each year in food stamps.) 

If you think Walmart workers deserve a living wage, sign the petition. 

In the latest video in the series “The Secret Life of a Food Stamp,” Marketplace reporter Krissy Clark runs the numbers on Walmart paying its workers a living wage. And those numbers show that if Walmart passed on 100% of cost increases from raising employee salaries to a level where no full-time worker was eligible for food stamps, it would raise the cost of a box of macaroni and cheese by one cent. Even across a full cartload of groceries, the average customer's shopping trip wouldn't even go up by a dollar or more. And, since employees who make low wages working at places like Walmart are likely to spend quite a bit of their money at places like Walmart, the big retailer would likely see some gains in profit from increasing their employees' wages and increasing consumer purchasing power.

Kenneth Quinnell