Bezos doesn't make a move like this without it benefiting him and Amazon,is he expecting robots to now take 90% of his hourly jobs ?
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
211–220 of 1001 posts
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#212Earlier 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.
> If you pay your employees $7.25... ...then you're paying the wage your employees are willing to work for. Basic economics in action. If you're making fun of this you need to take an econ 101 class.
>willing to work for
More like have to work for. People working for minimum wage will work for whatever you pay them, because their choices are that or homelessness/dying of starvation which is no choice at all. Case in point, illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they have more power ? Employees have the power to say no, shop somewhere else, to do a shitty job / not follow orders and let the employer figure it out, quit when they want, leave the employers without the job being done overnight. They also receive something very defined and predictable (money defined in the contract) in exchange for some vague objectives where the employers needs to constantly check if…
> And employers don't need wages and money to "survive in the economy" ? Not if they inherited it. The key idea here is asymmetry of power. When people are desperate enough that they would take a sub-minimum wage job, this doesn't necessarily imply a "voluntary exchange". If you're facing starvation or medical bankruptcy, you are essentially being coerced to take any job you can find.
If you're worried about people being in bad situations, why do you think laws that would prevent them from improving their situation is a good idea ? What do you do with those that are not in this situation, yet still interested in the jobs you judge not good ? How can you make that judgment for others ?
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
That's why any company treats any of their employees well. Google isn't giving their employees all these perks out of the goodness of their heart. They give them to attract the best talent to make the most money. Amazon is doing the same thing.
does google employ or contract-out many lower-paid employees?
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#215Socialism has only been tried in third world hell holes like Russia and succeeded so far beyond expectations it ended up being called the second world. A first world country going socialist would be the equivalent of increasing GDP by between 50 to 500%.
The very definition of second and third world were created and based off of the cold war.
1st world = USA/Western Europe + allies 2nd world = USSR/China + allies 3rd world = Everyone else.
By definition Russia started as a 2nd world country.
Now your point about Russia not being on the level of western Europe pre-1917, is a very good point. They were year behind in industrialising (for a variety of reasons, including not being capitalist and competitive).
However other countries have tried, such as Eastern Germany. Eastern Germany and Western Germany, whilst not identical (with Western being a bit richer) were not "third world hell holes" except straight after WW2. They then diverged as the capitalist west grew and improved, and the east stagnated under a terrible regime.
Other examples could include North and South Korea, Mao-China, and Deng xiaoping- China.
Socialism does not work. It does not work in the real world.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#216Earlier 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.
> If you pay your employees $7.25... ...then you're paying the wage your employees are willing to work for. Basic economics in action. If you're making fun of this you need to take an econ 101 class.
I believe people working in Amazons warehouses ended up in a situation they did not want to end up in the first place.
Adam Smith (writer of The Wealth of Nations, you might have heard of it) pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education to workers.
I think that when you get payed $7.25 an hour you have to work so many hours that there's no way you have spare time to educate yourself to get out of that situation.
Amazon is an example of capitalism gone a tad bit too far. The market is only self correcting to a certain point.
It's great that Amazon (not only Bezos, but all the stakeholders that agreed with this step) is acknowledging that people deserve a decent pay.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you prefer people out of jobs without being able to sustain their self rather than people taking jobs that you judge yourself are bad for them ?
False dichotomy. I prefer to let people run their own lives instead of dictating it to them.
Being able to run its own life and not being able to choose its employer(s) seem contradictory to me
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#218>In addition, the company also pledges its public policy team will lobby for an increase to the federal minimum wage from $7.25 — it doesn’t identify a specific wage that it’s targeting, but instead says, “We believe $7.25 is too low. We would look to Congress to decide the parameters of a new, higher federal minimum wage.” I'm going to take a wild guess and assume it will be $15/hour. That way they'll get to look pr…
Wow, does the top comment always have to be cynical? This is exactly what everyone wanted Amazon to do. Maybe it's time to suck it up and give praise where praise is due?
There are also benefits to paying more salary than your competitors (no hiring shortages, best employees, low turnover, etc), so I'm not going to blindly accept that it's now in Amazon's interest to drag the rest of the industry along with them.
But even if I did, there's absolutely no guarantee that this kind of lobbying would ever work. And if it did, it could be decades from now, $0.50, or both. In the meantime, Amazon has already put their money where their lobby is.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did Amazon actually pay any worse or have worse working conditions than any other unskilled warehouse job? If so, why didn’t the employees change jobs? If not, why is so much criticism directed at Amazon specifically, rather than at capitalism itself?
Did Amazon actually pay any worse or have worse working conditions than any other unskilled warehouse job? I'm not sure, but I think most places are OK with bathroom breaks. I could be wrong, though. If so, why didn't the employees change jobs? See, this is much more difficult. If the Amazon warehouse pays more than other jobs around - even if the pay is still low - it makes it much more difficult to leave the job. Y…
>I'm not sure it is fully capitalism's fault, but more of lack of laws protecting folks from capitalism alongside adequate enforcement of those laws.
So what you're saying is...it's capitalism's fault?
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#220Bezos felt the Burn!
I would still support Bernie's bill. Walmart pays the least of any major retailer. The market power they push onto communities undermines much of the social fabric of America. Small retailers really can't compete with Walmart and a lot of small business owners would feel guilty asking their employees to go on welfare.
Charging Walmart for employees who apply to welfare would likely lead to pay increases and more small business competition.
Walmart struggles to retain people so I honestly doubt they would fire them for going on welfare they would be billed for (regardless if it legal or not).