• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Nearly all of Walmart’s gross profit was used to pay employees, etc

    That’s a mountain sized “etc” covering mainly shareholder dividends and artificial profit minimizing for tax avoidance purposes.

    The publicly reported profit margins are always AFTER those things and as such as informative about reality as having literally no information.

    • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      No, operating income does not take dividend payments into account.

      The fact is that employee payroll/salaries is one of Walmart’s biggest expenses by far, and gross profit does not include it. So you cannot use gross profit to argue that Walmart could afford to give its workers a raise.

      It’s the equivalent of looking only at someone’s salary and then saying they should put more away for retirement. You are ignoring their expenses.