Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

Post by refurb » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #225

czep wrote: post #47

Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place! By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day…

> If you can't pay a basic living wage Stop right there. What about people who don't need a basic living wage, like students who still live with their parents? Why should they be pushed out of the market? I worked in high school, starting when I was 16. It was minimum wage. Without that job I wouldn't have been able to afford a car (necessary where I lived), travel to Greece and Italy, and have my own spending money.…

Post by jpmoyn » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #218

swebs wrote: post #17

>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…

Post by jpmoyn » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #277

wjnc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in this respect: Amazon chooses to link the two discussions themselves. They could have easily made their communication less open to an easy attack by pledging $15 an hour while lobbying silently, or at least communicating that on another moment. They could have noble intentions with both moves. I'd even expect them to have noble intentions since $15 seems an unreasonable large increase from $7.25. Why link to t…

Wait, why is it bad that Amazon is lobbying for this? Would you say it was bad if, say, ACLU was lobbying for a $15 minimum wage? My guess is that from Amazon's point of view, they are winning political points by not just raising their own minimum wage to $15, they are also using their standing in the industry to increase quality of life for non-Amazon minimum wage workers. If they succeed, I am happy to grant them t…

Post by GrumpiNerd » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #275

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High minimum wage doesn't hurt the "rich" it hurts everyone who's making just more than minimum all the way to the upper middle class because their cost of living either increases or their standard of living decreases. The "rich" are rich enough that it's just a drop in the bucket. Edit: I don't mean to say that minimum wage isn't worthwhile, just that framing it in terms of a rich to poor wealth transfer is somewhat…

Well, if that reasoning were true we should just get rid of the minimum wage, surely that will lead to an increase in the standard of living and a decrease in the cost of living. Really, some of the stuff you read on HN is just mind-boggling. In spite of the gig economy trying hard to erase decades of stability for millions of people even the smallest attempt at reductio-ad-absurdum would show that there is an optimi…

Post by zhengwang » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC