Just read that Walmart will be paying all employees a minimum of $11/hr starting in Feb. This had already happened in many areas of the country but not all. Is this the start of an effectively higher nationwide minimum wage? At any rate, I think it’s good news for rural landlords. Maybe you will be able to raise rents.

Right after the tax bill passed there were a number of large corporations that gave bonuses. When asked if they were going to increase wages they went silent and I think that will the general trend.

The only one that i know for certain is Wells Fargo even though I don't think it was made public. A friend of mine is a senior manager at Wells and me the day after the bill was passed that their chairman was giving all employees making under $60,000/year a $7/hr increase effective immediately. That is huge unfortunately I just don't think it will be the norm. Although some might consider that increase as combat pay considering the news that keeps coming out about Wells' blatantly unethical treatment of their customers.

An elementary analysis of the US economy shows that (provided that DJT remains in office) jobs will be created resulting in increases in wages. That trend has already begun, as the spectacular increases of last year in stock equities shows. It is no coincidence that Walmart chooses now to take advantage of the anticipated increases in worker competition to raise compensation. They expect to make it all back from increased sales from a market with increased financial liquidity. Landlord will also benefit from the same market.

$11.00 wage increase. Everything else will increase then it will increase to $25/hour min wage every thing else will increase to $45/hour. It's will be a revolving door.

THEN the Walmart blue light specials will start at $150 for a pari of jeans.

The dollar store will no longer be a dollar, most likely the FIFTEEN DOLLAR STORE. 5 & 10 store is no longer in business I rest my case...

Then Roy OF AL Class C rentals will be $5,000 per month.....

In the early 80s Regan days, I lived in Virginia Beach. Minimum wage was $3.85, but NOBODY paid that. We had the second hottest economy in the WORLD due to Regan's military expenditures (second only to Anchorage AK). You could find jobs starting over $4/hour all day long because unemployment was at record lows.

Same is happening now.

When wages go up, so does everything else. Since the tax brackets are fixed, everyone pays more taxes.

Alright so I am scratching my head now.

A few years ago, when minimum wage increases were being debated, the response was that would case all prices to go up and that is bad.

But now the wages are rising naturally by the employer, not by govt mandate, yet prices are still going to go up?

Homer you're able to raise your rent because you know your walmart tenant has more disposable income. That doesn't explain why other retail prices would go up when most people don't work for walmart.

Miss Ally, when I first came here,bought a nice station wagon,wasn't a Subaru,but did have all the same bells and whistles,came in under $1800.00

Generally, all "gain" in wages for the past 40ish years has been simply due to inflation, not gains in entry-level worker productivity. As most of us know the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation in terms of purchasing power. It is a little tough to measure, though, since a smart phone today has more computing power than all of NASA did in the 1980s, and just about everyone has one. One could say the poor today enjoy "luxuries" that the kings of the past would envy (indoor plumbing, HVAC, antibiotics, cars that travel 500 miles in a day, etc). But anyway...

The laws of economics alway apply. The most fundamental of which is, "there is no free lunch." You can rig markets short term, but overall the working class gains little or no purchasing power from raises that are given without cause.

" A few years ago, when minimum wage increases were being debated, the response was that would case all prices to go up and that is bad. "

It isn't really.

What you should be looking at is condition of the economy, and not to be tied to any specific numbers. When the economy is good, there is work for everyone, good workers have a choice about their job and can negotiate better jobs with a higher wage. When the economy is bad, they don't have that power.

When the economy is good and good workers are advancing, business people will raise their price as long as they can sell more at good prices. But good workers can stay ahead of the resulting inflation. If you buy a house, you can pay for it with inflated dollars, worth a lot less that they were worth when you bought the house. Same with cars, even credit card debt. Inflation won't get ahead of wages, or no one will buy from the merchants.

If you work hard, get ahead during the good years, you can put money aside and invest it, and if you are good at investing, your gain will stay far ahead of inflation.

A well-run economy (in USA) can keep wages far beyond inflation. Its called "growth".

"What was the point of the tax cut then? "

Strangely enough, the tax cut was not for your benefit, and you are too self-centered to see it. The tax cut is for the country's economy, from which you will ultimately benefit by the benefits trickling down (Yes, it does work). Companies with trillions of dollars kept abroad (because of high taxes in US) will now repatriate that money (because taxes will be lower) and the increased liquidity of US financial market will be spent, keeping inflation low. Entrepreneurs will work harder because it is more worthwhile if they can keep more of the profit for themselves, and businesses will expand, bringing (you guessed it) jobs.

Moshe, I don't work at Walmart, so I didn't expect any benefit. The other posters said inflation would occur due to the higher wages.

David, you won't get any benefit because you work or don't work at Walmart.

You will get benefit because there will be more jobs, more opportunities, opportunity to change jobs and sell your labor, more tenants, etc. You will benefit from a more active economy.

And, entrepreneurs WILL work harder. Its not more hours that they will work, its working harder to look for opportunities, increased enthusiasm for investing, starting business opportunities, making profit and enjoying it, all because you get to keep more of what the hard work brings you. High taxes depress enthusiasm, in addition to making those that pay high taxes not competitive.

Overburdening Government Regulations and Excessive Business Taxes will hurt business expansion: buying a new business, expanding an existing business, hiring new employees, updating old machinery. Removal of burdensome regulations created by the previous admin and reducing taxes will be a benefit for companies to expand business.

Compare two business models Sears/Kmart and Walmart. How many Sears have closed over the last several years. There has been an expansion of Walmarts especially the smaller neighborhood Walmarts. Over the past 5 years I have noticed a change in Sears the products they carry. PLUS the brick and mortar stores are having to change due to online orders. How many people ordered Xmas gifts online and never stepped foot into a Brick and Mortar store.

Burger King in the area has closed a store. However Chick-Fil-a and Panera Bread have expanded.

In part making changes to the business model is important Sears may no be around in a few years.

Have you noticed McDonalds many of the older style buildings have been torn down and a new redesigned restaurants are built.

The same with the Landlording Biz have you made improvements to your business plan. Improved your screen methods? Spruced up your rental units? Sold a problem unit 1031 exchange and purchased in a better location? Improved your lease keeping up on the changes in your States Landlord Tenant law. 2018 may be your year to add more units OR it may be your year to unload all your units, either sell the units or transfer ownership to your children. That's if they are old enough to manage the units.

Screen well, give repair work orders immediate attention and zero tolerance from your tenants!!!

2018 Will Be Your Best Year Yet

nhsailmaker, when uber started, the drivers were making bank. But now that supply and demand have stabilized, they are lucky to be making minimum wage after costs.

" hard to expand rental biz when prices for houses have gone up by 50% but rents have not budged "

Interestingly enough, this morning's news reports how treasury bonds (good measure of inflation) has risen above 2% for the first time in a long time. Bloomberg attributes it to fast rising housing costs.

If prices for houses have gone up (yes, they have), then you should be getting higher prices for rents. If that part of your investments are not working out, then maybe you need to work harder at your investment strategy.

If you simply work for a wage and go in at the same time every day, and go home at the same time every day, then you will not be identified as a hard worker.

If you are an entrepreneur, then the opportunity to make more money and to keep more of it will encourage you to be more active, take more risks, brainstorm for new strategies, and make extra efforts to earn a profit. And, of course, how effective you are with your time is relative.

I know Walmart is the medias favorite whipping boy, but I don't get why they get so much flak. They employee a lot of people and it seems if your in management they are no better or worse to work for than any other company.

"If prices for houses have gone up (yes, they have), then you should be getting higher prices for rents." Rents have gone up MAYBE, MAYBE 10%. Thats far away from 50%. Moreover, it would make sense that in an improving economy, more people are buying houses instead of renting, thus pushing up house prices but leaving rents stable.

David: My point was that rents SHOULD HAVE gone up commensurate with the value of the rental property. If they haven't, then there is something wrong with the situation as an investment.

Is there an excess of housing available in your investment area, compared to the renter pool? Are wages depressed, like too many workers looking for jobs compared to number of available jobs? All of these are factors that need to be considered when contemplating an investment. Did you know this when you planned your housing investments? Did you plan for normal economic cycles? Seeing now what kind of return your investment capital is bringing, is it still a good investment? Is it worth to consider changing your investment strategy? Is it hard work?

Moshe, the housing prices simply recovered to pre-recession levels, so no, there's no reason why rentals should also go up.

This is good news.......but then how does this make Walmart compete with Amazon?

S i d, that was an awesome post!!

Interesting about "purchasing power... a little tough to measure, ... since a smart phone today has more computing power than all of NASA did in the 1980s" Mind boggling!

And: "there is no free lunch." and "raise the minimum to a 'living wage' will always be an exercise in futility." Like would you hire anyone for $15 when their output was only worth $10?

I think it's so true, what you said that: "The only long-term way to become wealthier is to bring more value to market."

To synthetise the last two posts

It doesn’t matter if someone’s work is only “worth” $10/hr to you, their pay is determined by the market.

Don/PA, young Americans don't WANT the jobs that the illegals do. Landscaping, farm labor, some construction etc.

I had a friend with a landscaping company. It doesn't matter what she paid - no one wants the job because it is HARD HOT physical labor.

The best roofer on the beach: the company employs almost all illegals. It has to - can't find the skills among the locals.

We import workers here from Russia, the Ukraine to work in retail stores - because the locals don't show up for work and/or can't pass the drug test.

David, I agree in a market economy, wages are determined by the market. I was talking about the minimum wage, which is not determined by the market, but by a government mandate.

WMH, there is no such thing as "dont want the jobs" or "no one wants the job" or "can't find the skills" or "don't show up for work" or "can't pass the drug test."

If the landscaper, farm, roofing, HD, etc, paid $1MM a year then they'd have highly qualified individuals out around the block. The problem is NOT insufficient labor, it is that these companies do not want to pay the MARKET wage.

During a large snowstrom last month, I happened to check on the price of an uber to the airport. Surge pricing kicked in and the price was something like 4x regular price, because no one wanted to drive in the snowstrom. Just like how no one wants to do "HARD HOT physical labor" at the pay they are offering

The $11/hr being discussed here is NOT a govt mandate. Walmart decided on its own, based off the tax law, to institute their new pay.

David, I believe you need to also look at cause and effect.

The landscaper won't pay (funny...Landscaper..nothing more than grass cutter and mulch tosser...Inflated titles go hand in hand with this subject).

The Landscaper won't pay $20 an hour because the wealthy home owners have allowed out-of-status people in to do the work. While this scenario exists, the US born guy can't do the job because he wants to support a family and not live in a group home. Many families sharing one single family.

I also believe this is a direct result of local government mandate. If you jump in and raise the min wage, you have taken the lead over other companies for the purpose of marketing yourself as a good guy. When in fact you can limit hours and cut other benefits.

What I'm pointing out is not whether you are right or wrong in what you post, but rather that a more full scenario needs to be included. Another way to say it is other problems would need to be resolved before the natural supply and demand would work again.

David, I'm a little late getting back to your question.

To some extent, any change is tax law "rigs" the economy. Want more people to buy more expensive primary residences? Make the interest fully tax deductible (present state). Want to dampen that down a bit? Make the interest only partially deductive below a certain threshold (future state). Granted, interest is fully deductible up to some amazingly high amount like $1,000,000 I think (don't quote me on the number, I don't recall), and of course someone buying that much house isn't thinking about how they will afford getting their next pot of potato soup on the stove...but it does have a secondary effect. If I can buy an asset today knowing I will save $5,000 in taxes this year by deducting that amount from my gross income, then I can probably use that money elsewhere, which makes me happy, which makes me okay with "splurging" a little more on a nicer house.

It's not a perfectly balanced and predictable system where you can say $X in tax cuts will product $Y in behaviors. Wouldn't it be nice if we had such a flawless analytical tool so whenever the economy slows down or heats up too much we could just tweak these variables here and get a guaranteed outcome in 6-12 months? That's what centrally planned economies have tried--and failed--to achieve on mass scale over the centuries.

But even though we don't have a perfect tool for predicting the magnitude of tax changes on behaviors, we can see--in hindsight--how effective certain "incentives" end up causing Z% of the population to do things differently. One of the easier to recall examples of this recently was the "cash for clunkers" program. Lots of new cars got sold in a time when, given the economics of the time, it is unlikely manufacturers would have sold that many. Did it cause enough of an impact to outweigh other economic factors? Eh, that's harder to tell. I'll let the PhD in Economic students sort that out. They're still trying to definitively aswer the question about did Roosevelt's New Deal end the Great Depression or did WW2 (or both)? But the fact is more new cars were sold, and more old cars were scrapped. Folks who did that got a sweet tax break as a reward for doing what the Govt wanted them to do, and they had some extra cash to go buy other stuff after wards (or spend on car payments).