A 5% increase in the minimum wage could easily be 20% increase in costs.
This is mathematically nonsense. Even if a business's costs come 100% from employee wages (a mythical business that pays no rent, has no equipment, no licenses, no worker training, etc.), a 5% increase in wages is... a 5% increase in costs.
That is the worst-case scenario. You are correct that small businesses don't have the level of efficiency of Walmart - payroll is probably going to be a higher fraction of total cost. The healthcare and the service industry tends to have the worst fraction, with about 50% of costs being payroll. That includes benefits, but if we ignore that for the moment and assume it's all wages, and wages get increased 5% you're still looking at a worst-case increase in costs of 2.5%.
Seriously, I'd like to see you present a single example where Apple has been benevolent towards the OSS community.
Clang? ALAC? libdispatch? mDNSResponder (Bonjour)? Their CalDAV & CardDAV server? Darwin Streaming Server?
If Wal-Mart raised wages and benefits, that cost would translate directly to higher prices, shifting the burden of the subsidy from the top third to the bottom third, income-wise.
That cost would come out in the wash. You conservatives and libertarians love to claim any rise in the minimum wage will translate to an equivalent rise in prices - as if a 25% wage increase would mean a 25% increase in prices. Anyone with half a brain knows this is bullshit FUD, because wages are only a fraction of a product's price. Raising Walmart employees' wages to $12.50/hr would result in price increases of 1.1% (or $12 per year for the average shopper). I'm pretty damn sure the bottom third would love to trade 1.1% higher pieces for a >1.1% wage increase.
Face it: hatred for Wal-Mart is a tribal identification thing, not a rational economic argument.
What an idiotic statement. Was hatred of Standard Oil irrational? Allowing a monopoly to control a market has the potential to be efficient (at least in the short term) but ultimately consumers lose when choice and competition disappear.
God doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein