Victor Hanson for debate moderator

After the poor showing by the CNBC moderators in the Republican debate last night, here is one vote for Victor Hanson as a moderator in upcoming debates. Victor is just the kind of intelligent conservative who would do an excellent job of posing serious and probing questions to both Republican and Democratic candidates.

An idiot's argument in favor of raising the minimum wage: Part 2

Back in 2013 in a post entitled An idiot's argument in favor of raising the minimum wage I wrote:

Stephen Gandel concludes that "the average Wal-Mart employee's take home pay should be $33,315," whereas it now stands at a mere $22,000. According to this argument, then, Wal-Mart should increase the pay of each American Wal-Mart employee by $11,315 per year. Now, as Mr Gandel himself notes, Wal-Mart has 1.4 million American employees. To give an $11,315 a year raise to 1.4 million employees would cost Wal-Mart an additional $15.841 billion per year. According to Yahoo!, Wal-Mart has 3.26 billion shares outstanding. So, the additional wage expense would amount to about $4.86 per share. Wal-Mart's current earnings per share -- again, according to Yahoo! -- are $5.20. So, we are being asked to believe that Wal-Mart could essentially wipe out its entire earnings per share and this would have no impact whatsoever on its share price. This is what passes for economic argument in our society today.

Well, the jury is in. Wal-mart has indeed been increasing minimum wages. These increases have contributed to an earnings shortfall. As a result, the stock has plunged from a high of around $90 a share to today's current quote of around $60 a share.

USA Today reports:

[Brian Yarborough, a consumer analyst at Edward Jones,] questions whether Walmart will be able to meet even the reduced profit target as the company spends billions of dollars on building its Internet technology platform and raising salaries for sales associates. ... [And equity analyst Ken Perkins of Morningstar writes] "The sell-off and market price of Walmart's shares imply that Walmart's recent investments in e-commerce and wages will be unsuccessful in driving profits long-term."

In his article, Mr Gandel wrote:

So how much should Wal-Mart pay its employees? To tackle that tricky question, I crunched a bunch of numbers and concluded this: Wal-Mart’s workers should get a 50% raise. ... The conventional wisdom, of course, is that if Wal-Mart were to hand out raises, its stock would tank. That may not be true. ... Investors are basically giving Wal-Mart’s executives a green light to raise wages. So why not?

I would like to hear what Stephen Gandel has to say about the impact of minimum wage increases on Wal-Mart's stock price now.