Buy valve pack <| sep |> They always miss the point . Futurology has a hard time understanding that the wages they are paid is included in the milk price . No , it ' s just that the idea that wages are a major source of the cost of a single item is a poor understanding of the situation . Raising all wages $ 1 an hour would hardly raise costs at all . Let ' s do some math with Walmart as an examplestatisticsbigbad . They have 2 . 1 million employees Their revenue for 2012 was $ 444 billion They made 7 . 2 billion transactions a year The average trip to Walmart costed $ 61 . 67 444 7 . 2 If Walmart decided to pay each employee an extra $ 20 , 000 per year , which is an absurd amount , lets see what the impact would be . $ 20 , 000 2 . 1 million employees $ 42 billion in higher costsIf they past this entire cost on to the customers $ 444 billion $ 42 billion $ 486 billion in required revenue for equal profit . The average trip to Walmart now has to cost $ 486 billion 7 . 2 billion transaction $ 67 . 50 So in this exaggerated example where every Walmart employee gets an extra $ 20 , 000 per year , Walmart still only has to charge an extra $ 5 . 83 per transaction . Spread that out over the average number of items sold per customer per trip , and we ' re talking like 20 cent increases in prices . If you used a realistic increase in the minimum wage , we ' re talking about like 5 cent increases in prices . It ' s hardly any change , yet it gives livable wages to millions more people .