The world’s largest employer, Walmart, which has 2.3 million workers around the world, has poured billions of dollars into conscious capitalism in recent years. A new book explores whether the investment has succeeded in compensating workers enough so that they can even afford their basic needs.

To do the reporting for Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism, author Rick Wartzman was given unprecedented access to Walmart’s inner workings as the company decided to increase its minimum wage in 2015, the first increase of its kind since the company’s inception in 1972. Wartzman, who is head of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society, a part of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, was initially an unlikely candidate for such an opportunity.

“I approached Walmart as someone who’s been a critic of the company for so long,” he said. “I pitched them, but noted that I would need to be able to be 100% honest in my reporting.”

Since 2015, Walmart has invested more than $5 billion to lift its starting hourly wage from $7.65 to $12, a trend long advocated by workers and their advocates. Yet many of the company’s employees still struggle to make ends meet. Which raises the question: Is a win/win scenario even possible in our modern economy?

The topic was explored a part of From Day One’s recent conference in Los Angeles in a fireside chat titled, “The Promise–and Pitfalls–of Walmart’s Socially Conscious Capitalism,” moderated by Margot Roosevelt, a reporter on the California economy and labor for the Los Angeles Times.

‘We’ve Dug a Hole So Deep’

Walmart’s wage increases since 2015, which have brought average pay to $17 an hour, amounted to $5 billion to $6 billion in total, the author said. But in the same timeframe, the company also invested $44 billion in stock buybacks, raising the value of its shares, which enriched investors and Walmart executives. “What does that tell you?” Roosevelt asked Wartzman.

“I think they can do much more, and I think they should do much more, so I don’t want to let them off the hook,” he said. “But this is a company that, given all their pressures, has done some positive things. They’ll never go far enough or fast enough in the eyes of their workers, and that’s true for corporate America in general.” Wartzman said he believes that because of stagnant wages and growing economic inequity, we’ve “dug a hole so deep that the Walmarts of the world can no longer get out.” 

Is a Federal Mandate the Answer?

In the book, the author makes several recommendations on what corporations can do to create greater equity. His biggest recommendation is both a plea to lawmakers and a long shot: a government-mandated $20 minimum wage. “Four out of five Americans live in a county where the minimum living wage needs to be $20 an hour or more,” he said. “For 40% of Americans, that number is $25 an hour.”

The problem for publicly traded Walmart is that when the company has invested in wage increases for frontline workers, Wall Street has responded negatively, wiping billions of dollars from the company’s market value. One announcement resulted in a same-day, 10% drop in its stock price, equal to about $20 billion. “Imagine what Wall Street would do if they lifted it to $20 an hour,” Wartzman said. 

Roosevelt asked if unions could offer compromise, but, as the author noted, Walmart’s attitude toward organized labor hasn’t exactly been welcoming.  The company has a track record of doing whatever it takes to stave off unions, and has racked up labor-law violations along the way. “It highlights the wage crisis in this country, and I don’t use the word “crisis” lightly, Wartzman added.

Wartzman noted that the social dissonance between C-suite leaders and their workers can create a damaging rift, and that companies of all sizes can work proactively to close this gap. “Make sure that the highest levels of the company and the CEO know what’s happening [with employees],” Wartzman said. “There’s a real social dissonance between the C-suite and their workers. There’s an empathy gap, a lived-experience gap.”

As for wages at Walmart, Wartzman says making sense of the paradox is all about the data. “Is Walmart doing conscious capitalism? Yes. But is shareholder primacy dead? As journalists, we look at the numbers.”

For further reading: In a recent virtual conference, From Day One spoke with Walmart’s head of learning and development about the company’s efforts to help its workers pursue career growth.

Nick Wolny is a senior editor at NextAdvisor, in partnership with TIME. He has previously written for Fast Company, Fortune, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Magazine, and OUT Magazine, and was named a “40 under 40” by the Houston Business Journal in 2021.