| Mr Khan said: That only works in Williston because nobody wants to live there, but certain businesses need people there in order to conduct business (mainly for gas extraction), so they have to hike rates for EVERYTHING because there are so few people there that they need to compete for the few who are, and draw in people who are not. This is a very isolated case. Likely similar to a fat check you could get as a British teacher if you volunteered to go teach for a few years in the Falklands. The islanders need professionals too, but who really wants to live there? Thus the model doesn't apply in cases where there is a surplus of labor, and you can't get a deficit of labor without either kicking the bottom out of minimum wages, or providing a Negative Income Tax such that jobs that are both underpaid and shitty would have to pay more or no one would bother. |
I think that position falls flat on its face when you consider that if nobody wants to live in that city, how in the world is Walmart generating enough revenue to be able to pay $17+/hr to various position. Not just technical jobs, like in automotive, or strenuous ones in the unloading bay. But the freakin cashier. If (figuratively) nobody is living/wanting to live in that city, who's shopping there to fund people's paychecks?
After a quick search, I found that Williston is actually a drilling and oil city. Jobs that are just hard manual labor but are extremely lucrative (ROUGHNEKKIN'!!!). No need to work at Walmart when you can go out and be a roughneck for $25-30/hr straight outta high school with limited skills. "Nobody wants to live there" but even if that were the case, for the people that do live there, they make enough money doing to support themselves, a family, and then some, leaving low-wage Walmart jobs in the dust. So, to attract more employees, Walmart increases its wages. I think what SamuelRSmith said makes perfect sense. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work on a rig, so there's a lower barrier for entry into the field. Everybody and their mother is gonna want that, with the kinda pay that comes with it, instead working for cheap at Walmart, so that Walmart was forced to act.
