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Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

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Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#91
post #7

Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently introduced legislation to end what he calls “corporate welfare” — and it’s pretty clear who he had in mind, since the bill was titled Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS). Bernie out-marketing AMZN is pretty funny.

Maybe some Republicans should troll Bernie back by proposing THE A rrest T he T radition of A crostics I n the N ames of D efective E rroneous R egulations ACT

In case anyone else has as much trouble squinting to read the italics as I do that spells out:

THE ATTAINDER ACT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attainder

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#93
post #7

Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently introduced legislation to end what he calls “corporate welfare” — and it’s pretty clear who he had in mind, since the bill was titled Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS). Bernie out-marketing AMZN is pretty funny.

As someone who lives in a country which gives its laws sensible titles, I've never understood why Americans have such convoluted names for their legislation. It seems almost ridiculously childish, especially given how serious many of the acts are.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#94
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pay your employees $7.25 you deserve to be made fun off at least. Jeff Bezos recently also said Amazon deserved being scrutinised. I'm not saying this is what triggered them, but sometimes you have to take a strong position in order to be listened to.

> you deserve to be made fun of I don't think anyone deserves to be made fun of, full stop. Grown-up criticism is fine.

Political humor, especially satire, can sometimes cut through the fog of bullshit quite clearly.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#95
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize it's probably not actually Bernie who came up with the name? (It's one of his underlings.)

First, you mean one of his staff. Mad scientists have underlings. Second, you have literally no idea how much input he had into it. He may have come up with the name himself, or he may have directed his staff to come up with something pithy that spells out "Bezos" or he may have sat around with them spitballing ideas until they came up with something good. But in the end, he was the senator who introduced it, and he…

>First, you mean one of his staff. Mad scientists have underlings.

In the real world so do politicians and executives...

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#96

With almost a million employees the decisions by Amazon are impacting a large part of the (150 million) US workforce. The dysfunction in our government is rising at a time that corporations are growing bigger than ever. The obvious result is that companies like Amazon will have an outsized effect on the major issues for our society, like minimum wage and healthcare.

Nothing has actually changed about the scale of corporations. That's just a popular talking point (it's actually always a popular talking point).

US GDP in 2000: $10 trillion

US GDP in 2018: $20 trillion

Largest market caps in 2000: Microsoft & Cisco, about half a trillion dollars. Double that to match the doubled GDP, and you get an Amazon today.

Amazon is not more powerful than these companies at their peaks: GM, Ford, Walmart, Sears, Standard Oil & Exxon, IBM, US Steel, JP Morgan, AT&T, Kodak, etc

The US Government's spending has more than doubled in size in the last 20 years as well. Its power has dramatically increased as well since the mid 1990s (just the capabilities for control that the espionage improvements and law changes have given them, is extraordinary).

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#97
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I've got no sense of humour, but I think that's unprofessional and something like bullying, rather than funny. Legislation should surely not target one individual by name like that?

If you pay your employees $7.25 you deserve to be made fun off at least. Jeff Bezos recently also said Amazon deserved being scrutinised. I'm not saying this is what triggered them, but sometimes you have to take a strong position in order to be listened to.

It hasn't crossed a threshold into being a big deal, but singling out an individual does look like bullying and bullying isn't funny.

Jeff Bezos has to respect the law or face a series of consequences up to imprisonment. We all know he is going to respect the law like we all do. It is mean spirited to write a (potential) law that disrespects him directly. He can't really respond to that.

Sanders should have stuck to calling him names in a speech, or informally calling it the Bezos' Act. That is just discussion and fair game. This type of formal embedding is unpleasant at a deeper level to no-one's benefit. We can do without that in politics, thankyouverymuch.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#98
post #7

Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently introduced legislation to end what he calls “corporate welfare” — and it’s pretty clear who he had in mind, since the bill was titled Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS). Bernie out-marketing AMZN is pretty funny.

Maybe I've got no sense of humour, but I think that's unprofessional and something like bullying, rather than funny. Legislation should surely not target one individual by name like that?

The legislation doesn't target Amazon specifically, just corporations who are leveraging government welfare programs in order to get away with underpaying their employees.

Wal-Mart is the company that would be impacted the most by this legislation.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#99
post #14

While this is a very welcome development it would be more impressive to see them reform their slave like fulfilment center work practises. Employees are forced to walk massive distances, have their every move tracked and are penalised for taking bathroom breaks. I doubt many people in Silicon Valley would consider $15 an hour a fair compensation for the oppressive work conditions.

The walking distances isn't really an issue so long as they are given adequate time to actually walk, provided proper footwear and other tools for the job (carts, for instance, so that they carry less), and given proper breaks of proper length (actually able to sit for 10 minutes, for instance). People get used to this over time.

Every move being tracked and being penalised for bathroom breaks is an issue, however.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#100
post #30

I mean, they get such bad press for the way they treat their workers it only seems fair to laud them for this. Good move. They have more to do though. I've went through a few articles on this but I didn't see any of them mention what Amazon's minimum actual pay was before this, just the federal minimum wage. Anybody know?

> they get such bad press for the way they treat their workers it only seems fair to laud them for this. That's because they treat their workers terrible. They're a huge company with a lot of profit and how people at the bottom of the chain are treated is maddening. They're seen as an example of how not to treat workers (and for good reason). They definitely should not be lauded for this: They did some calculations a…

Amazon's profit is not what I would call "a lot." As recently as 2015 they had some negative quarters. This quarter last year less than 1%. 2018 has been higher but not more than about 4%. Compare the top 20 or so corporations average profitability of about 15%, and Apple's over 20%.

https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin

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