WATCH: If Walmart Paid Its Employees A Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up?
Props to Slate for their latest video, which asks "If Walmart Paid Its Employees A Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up?" and which knows that even infographics are more fun when they're animated.
Some highlights:
- 15% of Walmart employees in Ohio use food stamps.
- The US distributed $76 billion in food stamps last year.
- Walmart takes in 18% of all of those food stamp dollars (which comes out to about $13 billion a year).
- Using the data from Ohio (a little unfairly) as representative of the country, Walmart employees are taking in $300 million a year in food stamps (and they're most likely spending that money on food at Walmart).
- To get all their employees off food stamps, Walmart would have to raise their wages by almost $5.
- That would cost the company $4.8 billion dollars.
- That would mean about a 1.4% raise in its prices.
- And that would mean, to quote the video, a $0.68 box of macaroni and cheese would then cost $0.69.
