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It’s the biggest shopping season on the calendar and retail companies are expecting hundreds of billions of dollars in sales.

Demos has some figures for thought in How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Overall Economy. Here's a summary of the study from Demos:

As Black Friday approached, the honchos at Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, found themselves at a loss to respond to a nationwide rebellion within the ranks of their near-captive workers -- people who work for an average wage of $8.81 per hour, according to The National Memo

Walmart has been on something of a charm offensive where the public is concerned (and an intimidation offensive where its workers are concerned), hoping to blunt the impact of the Black Friday rebellion.

A new study released by the progressive think tank Demos on Monday estimated that if retail workers were given a living wage, hundreds of thousands of Americans would be lifted out of poverty and the wage boost would significantly bolster the economy.

Stories of voter purge attempts and voter bullying across the country.

This strike follows a cluster of other Walmart strikes across the country over things like unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, excessive hours, and low pay. Learn more after the jump. Natasha Lennard reports:

More broadly, the widening inequality reflected in the gap between the pay of Walmart workers and the returns to Walmart investors, including the Walton fammily, haunts the American economy.

Walmart is by far the nation's largest retailer, with 2.2 million employees (the next largest is Target with 365,000), and its low wages have set the tone for a nation where the majority of jobs created in the so-called economic recovery pay less than $13.83 per hour.

Requiring people to show government issued photo identification in order to vote is unnecessary, discriminatory and has the potential to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people.