Because the capital owning class in America commonly has an aversion to labor.
Labor is other humans and all their social hierarchy monkey brain bullshit activates in a way that a machine doesn’t. That’s why you’ll see companies spending equivalent or even slightly more money for a tool to do a job over a human being.
Walmart employs this amount of workers only because it is subsided by food stamps and other government assistance. The minute they were forced to actually pay for the labor they employ would fire a lot of people
You are suggesting that if the government gives you a tax break, your boss would lower your salary? Why does your boss wait for the tax break or handout and doesn't just lower your salary now?
Also what's your counterfactual here? If Walmart fired their employees tomorrow and replaced them with robots, those ex-employees would magically no longer need food stamps nor government assistance? (Or more realistically: Walmart could pivot to the Aldi model of labour and replace many low intensity jobs with fewer higher intensity jobs. For the affected workers, the outcome is the same.)
If those ex-workers don't magically get off government assistance, if Walmart is out of the picture, in what sense is Walmart to blame for their poverty?
Conversely: if Walmart laying off these workers would magically improve their welfare, why do these workers wait for Walmart to lay them off?
> Walmart could pivot to the Aldi model of labour and replace many low intensity jobs with fewer higher intensity jobs.
Yes, this is the expected change.
> For the affected workers, the outcome is the same.
No? There are two classes of affected workers:
1. Workers who have been converted to full-time with benefits. These workers benefit from the change.
2. Workers who lose their jobs. These workers are worse off.
Your argument ignores class 1.
I don't think we'll get anywhere debating the relative merits of the tradeoff of those two groups, but I personally prefer the existence of class 1. At least with that class there are some winners.
There's practically no (1). It's a different class of workers, of people than who Walmart currently employs at low intensity and low pay.
People who prefer a higher intensity, higher paying job than the bottom rung at Walmart can already get that kind of job today. They don't need to wait for Walmart to fire everyone else.
Walmart has some of these jobs already, probably. But Aldi and other companies exist. The whole Jeff Bezo's workout at Amazon Warehouses falls in a similar category too: Amazon pays pretty well for the sector and requires no prior experience, but they expect you to stay on your feed throughout.
> Walmart employs this amount of workers only because it is subsided by food stamps
And then those food stamps are used at Walmart, its a win win for Walmart and Walmart. No other country gives their poor food stamps instead of money, I wonder why?
If it's not costing thousands of dollars, why would I hire a software engineer to build this for me.