• general_kitten@sopuli.xyz
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    11 months ago

    would be more interesting to see how much more could those companies pay their employees if their profit was evenly distributed among them

    • WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Would need to make sure to exclude costs like executive “compensation”, stock buy backs, or any other methods used to artificially decrease profits to avoid taxes.

      • singron@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Stock buybacks don’t reduce profit for the company. They are not accounted as an expense that offsets income. Investors pay capital gains tax instead of income tax that they would pay on an equivalent dividend, which is probably what you are thinking of.

        Net revenue, gross profit, operating income, EBITDA, and (net) profit are some well understood measures that take various things into account. E.g. net revenue subtracts the cost of inventory, but it doesn’t subtract wages, so it’s probably a good starting point for a discussion on redistributing earnings among workers.

    • Hillock@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Since most or even all of them are publicly traded companies it isn’t that difficult to find out.

      Walmart had a net income of 14 billion, they have roughly 2.1 million employees, that leaves each employee with an additional 6.6k for this year or roughly an additional 550 a month.

      Doesn’t sound a lot but that can be done without impacting any other business practices. And for some of the employees overseas that might be doubling their salaries.

    • Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      It really depends on how much it costs them to do business. Payroll is only a part of the cost to do business. Companies like Walmart have massive real estate holdings which likely take a significant chunk of their revenue to pay off.