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Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

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Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#101

Post by jrs95 »

elicash wrote: post #20
epicureanideal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming 2 kids and 1 income earner, though. It's above minimum wage. If we say that's not enough, we should raise minimum wage. Or we should create a society where it's possible for the people currently working for $26k/yr to have a stable roadmap to much higher earnings. But I don't think Amazon alone is to blame for the problem.

I'm not assuming everyone with that salary qualifies. I think we just have different definitions of "sizable." I think given these numbers it's highly likely to be sizable percentage of salaries, essentially, that we're subsidizing for Amazon because of their refusal to pay living wages. What's sizable? 5%? 10%? 30%? Hard to say, and I don't exactly expect Amazon to come forward with these numbers. Edit: Here's an ar…

Are we subsidizing Amazon, or are we subsidizing irresponsible reproduction? Maybe both?

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#102

Post by danShumway »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #79
danShumway wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a tautology to me. Most people do not define worth based on monetary cost; you are using a very narrow economic definition. If you can't get past that word, then please substitute "value", or "usefulness", or some other equivalent above.

If you ask someone if it was worth it to have a plumber fix a pipe, or a moving company to move their furniture, you would be comparing how much someone is getting paid versus you doing it yourself. An employer paying an employee is a business transaction, there is no other meaning than where the supply curve meets the demand curve, in a business activity, whether it be selling an item or buying labor. Now, it should…

If anything, this implies the opposite of your definition.

If you ask someone if it was worth it to have a plumber fix a pipe, and they say 'no', what they're telling you is whether or not their time is worth more than the price of paying a plumber. If it's possible for someone to believe they are getting more value out of a transaction then they are paying into it, than how can value be defined by what they pay?

If market prices actually determined something's value, then you would never ask if hiring a plumber was 'worth it', because by definition the answer would be yes. After all, by definition the plumber is worth what you pay them.

But you do ask, because most people recognize that when they define 'value', they are referring to something external which the market can provide them. Winning or losing in a transaction only works if you believe the value of what you get can be different than what you pay.

I dislike tautological definitions because they're not useful and they don't provide any new information. The claim that OP was trying to make was "what most people think of as value (for example, 'how much money an employee makes a company') does not correlate to pay." That's an interesting claim because by default people who are operating under principles of fairness might assume otherwise.

To say 'everyone is payed what they're worth by definition because what they're worth is what we pay them' supplies no information to anyone and is not an interesting claim to make. It's technically self-consistent, but brings nothing new to the discussion.

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#103

Post by omegaworks »

vorpalhex wrote: post #51
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please end this charade of pretending a $14 wage is kingly anywhere? I mean even the whole idea of 'banjo-playing areas'? Come on. I find it really gross the way people that have good jobs and have never left urban/suburban environments typecast the rest of the country.

That's about $30k a year. That's comfortable in areas within an hour or two of my town. I made that amount when I was in college, in the DC area, and most certainly survived just fine. Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are And the banjo-playing is mostly a joke, especially in Texas. That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, re…

The expenses that truly impact economic mobility: education, healthcare, childcare are in fact getting more expensive, everywhere.[1]

And if you want good versions of these things, you're more likely to find them in coastal urban cities, where basic cost of living (food and housing) is extremely high.

Remarking that "oh they'll be fine over there" when people are fleeing there for better resources is consigning a segment of our population to a permanent underclass status.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/17/the-s...

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#104

Post by scarface74 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #100
megaman22 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people back home, in rural Maine, who have a two-income household where each makes $15/hour, and they get by alright with a house and a couple of kids. Of course, a decent house in that area runs $80-100k, whereas the same house in the area I live outside of Boston would cost $400k, and you couldn't buy a property with an equivalent amount of land attached at any price in the Bay area.

Yeah but that's my point. They each make $15/hr and they're 'alright.' A few of the other commenters who have chimed in here also match what my experience has been, mainly that $15/hr in rural areas isn't bad but it's not really good either. It allows you to get into the bottom end of the middle class but that's about it. It's certainly not 'kingly' and usually doesn't provide the sort of safety net people need to re…

So should we be subsidizing everyone so they "live like kings"?

My son is making about $30K a year ($2000 a month) and I helped him do his budget so I know what his expenses are:

Rent - $600

Car note - $300

Car Insurance - $250

Utilities - $350

That leaves him about $500 a month for "everything else".

Yes that puts him on the edge and thanks to the ACA he's still covered under our insurance until he turns 26 and if he needs a car repair we help him.

Two conclusions:

I think we should have universal health care as a nation.

If we had better mass transit, people wouldn't need cars and it would make finding a job easier.

According to the gross up calculator at psycheckcity.com he would need to make around $16.50/hour or $34000 a year to have enough cushion for things that happen. Strangely enough, that was also the salary I needed 20 years ago before I could make it on my own without asking my parents for help. I made that my first year out of college as a computer operator.

This is in metro Atlanta not podunk nowhere USA.

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#105

Post by sharemywin »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #81
pitaj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is the definition of price . Worth / value is subjective.

In the context of an employer paying an employee, worth/cost/price/value are all interchangeable. What did it cost to have that pipe fixed? Was it worth it to use contractor A versus contractor B (implied is was the price for A better than price for B given output)?

I feel you could value something more than what you pay for it. It's a >= if you pay for it. It's < if you don't.

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#107

Post by SE4L »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #61
vorpalhex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about $30k a year. That's comfortable in areas within an hour or two of my town. I made that amount when I was in college, in the DC area, and most certainly survived just fine. Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are And the banjo-playing is mostly a joke, especially in Texas. That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, re…

>when I was in college Show me one person in this country with two kids who makes $14/hr and doesn't feel like they're struggling. College is easy, I survived on >Had I lived more rural in an area where entry level homes are It would've gone a bit further but certainly not 'much.' >That being said, as an avid hiker, I spend a significant chunk of my time in places best labeled as "Nowhere, really". Somehow I think ev…

People who make 100k per year feel like they are struggling. Their feelings about their finances place the company under no obligation to pay them more.

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#108

Post by krapp »

unpopular42 wrote: post #35
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure it was about the amount paid not that not everybody is paid the same.

So what exactly is wrong with this amount? And what amount would be the correct amount?

> And what amount would be the correct amount?

Full time employees, at any position, should at least be paid a living wage commensurate to the local standard of living.

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#109

Post by SE4L »

krapp wrote: post #93
scarface74 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon already owns Kiva. If you make the minimum wage high enough, it just gives them more incentive to automate.

It's impossible to give Amazon more incentive to automate, since they already intend to automate everything as soon as it's feasible. Raising minimum wage or even wages in general for warehouse workers wouldn't accelerate that schedule, since the obstacles to automation are primarily technical. Kivas are nice and all, but they can't pick and they definitely can't stow. They could probably move pallets, but couldn't p…

But it's a business decision to pay expensive engineering time to automate what can be done by people for much cheaper. If the people become too expensive, the business decision becomes easier.

There are places in India where they pay 100 men pennies to dig a trench. Sure, they could buy a machine so 1 person could do the work of 100, but if the machine costs 100k and the guy who is trained to operate it makes 10 an hour, the payoff time is too long to justify. If the guys digging the trench demand 5 an hour, the barrier to the investment goes down significantly.

This is why, if a 15 dollar minimum wage is passed nation wide, you will never order from a person at McDonald's again... and any niche restaurant that does use people will cost significantly more. A large business like McDonalds benefits from this because they can absorb the cost. A small business can't, so big corporation's have less competition and can make even larger profits because they have less downward pressure on their prices.

Re: Amazon worker’s median pay in 2017: $28,446

#110

Post by rinchik »

SE4L wrote: post #106
sputniq wrote: post #3

So much for equality. I guess jeff bezos just thinks it normal

Equality of what? Should one of the people who works in their warehouse in North Carolina make equal pay with a software engineer who lives in Seattle?

Yep. That's the ultimate goal of the far left. Pure utopian Communism. Sad part is that they don't even realize it.

The equality of outcome controlled by the Government -- to even think about this concept is scary. This shit will def end with totalitarianism.

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