• admiralteal
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    11 months ago

    An $11,000 wage increase is ~$5/hr for a full time employee.

    Starting pay at Startbucks is around $15/hr. They’re famously stingy with full-time though, so in reality it is quite a bit more than a 25% increase.

    Honestly, I was expecting to find some glaring error in the logic on this but I don’t really see it.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      The glaring error is this screenshot is listing an income figure that is comparable to the 2022 total revenues in the 2022 fiscal report.

      https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/ebitda

      It looks like Starbucks 2023 EBITDA was $7.3 Billion and the net income was $4.1 Billion.

      The post makes a good point, but uses garbage data. Why do they do this? Although an $11,000 raise would elliminate the actual net earnings figure.

      • admiralteal
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        11 months ago

        There it is. I kept finding investor reports claiming the same 25 bil number as the net profit, but that’s just goofy if their actual bottom-line was under 5.

        And that $11,000 figure is now about 6x too big. Meaning we’re talking about a less than a dollar raise. Not to even mention ebida is STILL more than bottom-line profits.

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          From their press release website, $36 biliion consolidated net revenue reported at a 16% profit margin for fiscal year 2023 leaves $5.76 billion after every expense has been deducted.

            • @yacht_boy
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              211 months ago

              First, that assumes the company makes no profit at all. Not a sustainable way to keep a company in business. If they go out of business, 400,000 people lose their jobs and a whole lot of them lose their health insurance. Starbucks is pretty well known for being generous with their benefits.

              Second, wages are typically only about 2/3 or even less of the total compensation, and don’t account for the employer’s share of payroll taxes.

              So figure that you think Starbucks should make half their current profits and give the other half to their employees. That puts it at $6250 per employee, which would likely translate to about $4000/ year before the employees’ portion of taxes, or about a $2/hour raise. Which would be great for employees making maybe $30k/year, but is not exactly going to vault them into the middle class.

      • @[email protected]
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        2011 months ago

        Why do they do this?

        Incredibly frustrating.

        Should we form an eat the rich union, obviously.

        Is sharing garbage data on social media the way to get there, no! Real data (like on wealth concentration) is offensive enough!

      • @isles
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        11 months ago

        It appears they’ve done ~$670MM of stock buybacks this year as well (after a ton of press coverage last year saying they were stopping stock buybacks), which would have been net income.

    • Track_Shovel
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      1811 months ago

      I did the math, too, and came to the same conclusion.

      I’ll just be over here eating cake, like a good sans-culottes

  • DarkGamer
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    11 months ago

    Yeah, this inflationary period shows that it has to do with profit-seeking and not monetary supply. We made the money printers go BRRRRR for a very long time with almost no inflation, then suddenly COVID and supply chain hiccups gave corporations an excuse to transfer more of society’s wealth to themselves by raising prices and not lowering them again afterwards.

    • FlashMobOfOne
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      3011 months ago

      Can’t expect change when all we elect are wealthy people who care more about their stock portfolios than their constituents.

      • @kemsat
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        811 months ago

        Yup. It’s pure insanity that most of Congress is made up of lawyers & businesspeople.

        • k-rad
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          111 months ago

          Who should it be made of? Fry cooks and fork lift drivers?

          • @[email protected]
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            711 months ago

            It should be made up of everyone. I don’t see any reason fry cooks and fork lift drivers shouldn’t be there, they definitely deserve representation.

            If you’re convinced those people are all too stupid or lazy for the job, then maybe you could at least get on board with engineers, doctors, scientific researchers, artists, farmers, teachers, etc. Anyone who works hard at whatever their chosen profession is should have a shot. But our current system selects for low ethical standards, improv skills, and self-preservation instincts rather than real achievement.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Inflation quadrupled from 2020 to 2021 and then almost doubled again from 2021 to 2022.

      It’s not (just) because they’re greedy that they don’t lower them back down, it’s because they’d go out of business. One 2024 dollar was 83 cents in 2019, that’s way more than the net profit margin for most retail.

      Greed is a constant, they’re not any more greedy now than they were before covid.

  • @fidodo
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    4911 months ago

    B-b-but I was told that paying employees more would cause inflation!

    • @psycho_driver
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      11 months ago

      I’m pretty sure the last couple of years has been mass rich fuck retaliation for pushing some fast food workers wages to $15/hr.

  • @kajdav
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    4011 months ago

    This is garbage data. Learn the difference between revenue, gross profit, and net profit.

  • @Mango
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    3811 months ago

    All together it’s $528.773 billion! That’s $66 for each and every single person on the planet!

    What even the fuck.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Obviously it’s not going to go far if you’re spending it at Culver’s, but for some people out there it’d be a big deal.

        • pachrist
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          311 months ago

          I do wonder how many pounds of cheese curds $66 buys.

          • BlanketsWithSmallpox
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            111 months ago

            Looks like a 1 lb box of curds is currently $10.39 at HyVee or $6.68/15oz at Walmart.

            So it would buy you about 9 pounds of deep fried deliciousness or about 18-27 servings in my house.

  • @Aceticon
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    11 months ago

    It’s even worse: corporate profits are driving price inflation.

    Proper Inflation sees both prices and salaries go up, so isn’t all that bad for most people (unless it goes all the way to hyperinflation) because people aren’t actually losing purchasing power as they do with just price inflation.

    • @[email protected]
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      1111 months ago

      Came here to say this too, so I hope it’s okay if I elaborate.

      Politicians and corporations love to conflate cost of living increases with inflation. Not every price increase is due to inflation. Only price increases that are due to increased customer buying power are inflation. Taxes don’t ‘drive inflation’ they slow it, because they reduce customer buying power. Taxes DO increase cost of living (if they aren’t used to fund services that reduce cost of living).

      Corporations love to point at price increases and just ‘inflation’. Politicians love to say

      we’re getting tough on inflation, our policies limited it to just 5% (or whatever).

      When sure maybe inflation is just 5% but total cost of living has gone up much more, which is the actual problem.

      Inflation typically only hurts people on fixed incomes. Hyper inflation, where inflation is so severe that markets can’t set prices and people lose faith in money altogether, is obviously a problem but it takes a lot more inflation than what we’re seeing.

    • @[email protected]
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      1811 months ago

      I keep asking people to join my radical and extremely poorly regulated militia but everyone thinks it’s a joke for some reason.

      • @AdolfSchmitler
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        211 months ago

        Too many ppl have families and comforts they don’t want to risk losing.

        • @PilferJynx
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          111 months ago

          Yeah if we burn it all down, we burn it ALL down. Human interests have too high of entropy to consolidate on any path of recovery. It looks bleak but hopefully we won’t go completely extinct.

  • @dynamojoe
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    2211 months ago

    To borrow some investor speak: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” However in this case, it absolutely does. The drive to squeeze even one more drop of blood is relentless and in many cases it’s required. Boards must do what’s best for the company or they risk lawsuits from shareholders. They cannot deviate from a maximum-extraction plan (either profits or market share) without very good reasons. Each one of those companies has to do better year over year, or explain to the board/shareholders/media/etc why they did not.

    How they get those profits up can be cutting pay, “restructuring” (layoffs), optimization, price increases, cheaper supply, better methods, etc. Most of this list will be the same next year and the numbers will be higher. Hate the game.

    • @cloud_punk
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      1411 months ago

      It’s perfectly evil system as nobody has to take moral accountability. The board has to make the best decisions for the shareholders and the shareholders don’t run the company, just invest in it. It’s what my mind goes to when oil companies claim that they are doing their part for climate change.

      • @DreamlandLividity
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        11 months ago

        Well, you almost see the issue. Its the government that was supposed to take moral accountability. It was supposed to set minimum wages, environmental standards and other rules under which corpos cude try to increase profits.

        But oil companies figured out they can distract people by pitting them against each other or by making them “protest the companies” and “vote with their wallets”, which never had any chance of doing anything. And then most companies followed suit.

    • @[email protected]
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      1311 months ago

      It is sorted, it’s a list of “gigantic asshole companies” they just all tied for first.

      :P

    • TJA!
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      411 months ago

      And where does Starbucks come from? Why is it not in that list? Or is it part of one of these companies?

  • PatFusty
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    11 months ago

    Revenue does not mean gross profit. Gross profit does not mean net earnings. The numbers this person posted is the money the conpany gets before any operation costs. This means this is how much the product sold regardless of how much it costs to produce, package, ship, r&d, worker cost, etc. This meme has to stop its poisoning your brains

    • Jaytreeman
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      811 months ago

      These numbers are gross profit. A quick search would verify this for yourself.
      You seem to misunderstand what gross profit is because you decided to make a weird word salad.
      Gross profit is the profit a business makes after subtracting all the costs that are related to manufacturing and selling its products or services.
      So the numbers are relevant. It’s not worker wages that are the driving inflation. It’s not government handouts driving inflation. It’s corporate profits that are driving inflation

      • PatFusty
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        11 months ago

        Gross profit is NOT how much money a company makes after all costs. This is the basic misunderstanding. Here is an example

        Kraft Heinz Quarterly Revenue

        2023-09-30 $6,570

        2023-06-30 $6,721

        2023-03-31 $6,489

        2022-12-31$7,381

        TOTAL: 27.161B

        Kraft Heinz Quarterly Gross Profit

        2023-09-30 $2.235B

        2023-06-30 $2.261B

        2023-03-31 $2.113B

        2022-12-31 $2.364B

        Total: $8.973B

        Kraft Heinz Quarterly Net Profit

        2023-09-30 $262M

        2023-06-30 $1,000M

        2023-03-31 $836M

        2022-12-31 $890M

        Total: 2.988B

        https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KHC/kraft-heinz/revenue

        For clarification, I’m not saying I’m against increasing labor pay. I am just saying the numbers used are misleading.

        • @[email protected]
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          1811 months ago

          But only some numbers. Apple’s, for instance, is net profit from what I can see. Heinz isn’t. I haven’t looked into any more of them, but they’re just inconsistent.

          Crappy posts like this bug me so much because it makes “my side” look like we’re full of shit. There are mountains of true and verified facts to support the conclusion that workers should be paid more and corporations are ruthlessly greedy.

          • PatFusty
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            711 months ago

            This exactly. We don’t need to fluff or bullshit numbers just to prove that corporations are fucking over their labor and the customers.

            • @[email protected]
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              211 months ago

              Can mods add a caveat to a post on Lemmy?

              Also:

              @[email protected]

              Please edit your post title to reflect likely inaccuracy/inconsistency of some numbers. e.g.: “[may be misleading; see comments]”

              • @[email protected]
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                311 months ago

                As much as I hate Twitter, the feature where users can add context would be amazing on other platforms. Would love to see it on Lemmy.

        • Jaytreeman
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          -711 months ago

          You’re misinformed.
          Please provide a source for the definition of gross profit.

          • @cashew
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            611 months ago

            Anyone who has done accounting 101 knows that Gross Profit is Revenue less Cost of Goods Sold.

            Perhaps you can pay provide evidence of how fundamental accounting is wrong instead?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      before any operation costs

      paying employees a wealth generating compensation should be an operational cost, my friend.

    • @lledrtx
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      -111 months ago

      What do you mean? It says they are profits right in the picture. Maybe read the thing properly before you condescendingly explain what revenue and profits mean?

      • PatFusty
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        711 months ago

        They used the wrong profits to justify how to give more money to workers

      • @kajdav
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        511 months ago

        The picture is using a mix of revenue and gross profits, as far as I see no net profits. Gross profit is revenue after cost of goods, but without accounting for the cost of running the business. In starbucks’ case it likely means “this is how much we brought in revenue, minus the cost of the coffee, syrups, etc.”. They still have to pay employees, leases, etc. before you actually get to surplus or net profit.

        According to this, their net profit for 2023 was ~$4 billion. Giving the same argument with that number is a little less profound.

  • @Dim0N
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    1711 months ago

    Ah yes, the famous Walmart, having 2 times the profits of Apple but costing 5 times less in stock.

    The picture totally makes sense, no questions asked.

    • @[email protected]
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      1511 months ago

      Stock price is not inherently tied to profit. That is why p/e ratio exists. Also different industries can have different p/e ratios. Not even this holds though. Tesla’s p/e is OOM more than Toyota, but Toyota has higher profits and sells more cars.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      The OP data is wrong, which you probably already know. Apple’s net income (AKA Profit) for 2023 was ~$96B while Walmart’s was ~$11B. Walmart is the largest corporation by revenue but retail is a low margin, high overhead business. Their operating costs are much higher than Apple’s.

      Also, as another commenter mentioned, share price is not linked that closely to profitability. There are other factors that influence the share price. Hell, share price isn’t even tied that closely to it’s actual value. See “Book Value” vs. “Market Value”.

  • @Blackmist
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    1511 months ago

    Surely Starbucks have more employees than that? Are they all franchised or something?

    • @FlightyPenguin
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      711 months ago

      If it’s 400,000 employees, that means at least one in every thousand Americans works for the company.

      • @Blackmist
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        2011 months ago

        There is a world outside the USA.

        • kase
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          11 months ago

          As an American, I knew Starbucks was international, but it’s to a greater extent than I’d realized.

          World-famous coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, accounted for 35,711 stores worldwide in 2022. There were more international stores than those located in the company’s home nation of the United States. These figures amounted to 19,838 and 15,873, respectively.

          Source

          Just sharing this here in case anyone else is interested lol.

        • @FlightyPenguin
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          110 months ago

          I also didn’t realize there were so many Starbucks shops outside the US (it was founded in the US, and I thought it was majority domestic). I get the “world outside America” annoyance, but it’s an American fast food chain, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone who has only lived in North America to assume it’s still that way. Dunkin Donuts has about 9500 stores in the US and 3000 abroad (despite opening a store in Japan one year before Starbucks opened its first in Seattle, Washington), for comparison. And Dunkin coffee tastes MUCH better than Starbucks, so I don’t understand the international appeal (or national appeal, for that matter, but I am only one man with an opinion).

          I did the actual math without assumptions this time, and about one in 2000 Americans work for Starbucks, which is still astonishing, and well within the same order of magnitude.

    • @jettrscga
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      11 months ago

      Convincing people they need to buy basically the exact same shit yearly.

      And fighting a lot of lawsuits involving their planned obsolescence and monopoly so they can keep it that way.

      • @fastandcurious
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        1211 months ago

        I find it kinda ironic that apple users upgrade every year, cause iPhones can last forever, that’s the very reason I use it, my cousins 11 pro is still going very strong, and I plan to use mine atleast until I break it or Apple ends support

        • MelodiousFunk
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          1111 months ago

          cause iPhones can last forever, that’s the very reason I use it

          Not quite forever, but I went from a 6s to a 14. Had to change the battery a couple of times but other than gradually getting slower it was fine (until OS support was dropped).

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          I’m on my third SE version, which is the SE2, so I still have an SE3 to go. I’m set for at least 6 years.

          Briefly went from my last SE (the first 8-body SE) to a 13 because I got a deal. Hated it, sold it on ebay two months later, bought an SE2. Thrilled with my decision.

    • k-rad
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      411 months ago

      Making mountains of ewaste

  • @Ackerthegod
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    811 months ago

    These numbers are gross profit I believe. You can have $100B in gross profits and $100B in costs, netting $0. Better to show EBITDA and make your point that way.