Apple seems to be able to charge a lot for their computers and phones. They use cheap Chinese labor so they make a lot of profit. They could pay workers better if they weren't so greedy.
If Walmart took its entire $22 billion of annual pre-tax income and used all of it to give each one of its 2.1 million employees a raise, this would amount to about $10,000 a year apiece.
In 2004, a year in which Wal-Mart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the retailer's California employees collected $86 million in public assistance, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. Other studies have revealed widespread use of publicly funded health care by Wal-Mart employees in numerous states. In 2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee calculated that each 200-employee Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers an average of more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy-assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that provides food to low-income women with children.
Capitalism puts the greediest bastards in charge of the economy and the society adopts those values.
More enlightened countries have laws to protect workers, pay them more, etc.
What are your values?