Episode 39 - "Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism"

Author Rick Wartzman describes Walmart’s decade-long effort at reforms in response to ubiquitous criticism. Low-wage labor was a chief focus of that criticism and of Walmart’s self-transformation. Partly as a result, the average Walmart worker now earns an hourly wage just above $17 an hour. While this well exceeds the minimum wage, it still means that the average full-time worker earns just under $32,000 a year. Milkman and Wartzman explore what this and other reforms suggest about the systemic failures of capitalism in the 21st century.