Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341

Post by joh6nn »

ttoinou wrote: post #149
kork__ wrote: post #90

Because I don't want to starve.

Are you really going to starve ? Why aren't the products you need to buy to not starve cheaper ? Maybe because of this kind of laws

Kraft-Heinz had $26.2B in sales in 2017, of which $9B was profit. They had 39K employees. If we naively assume that all 39K are minimum wage employees working full time all year, that comes out to a payroll cost of $1.2B. that's approximately 5% of their total revenues, meaning if it had to be paid for exclusively through new sales, the price increase per item sold would likely be 5%. In reality, it would be much lower than that because Kraft-Heinz is already paying a large portion of that $1.2B in its existing payroll costs and not all of its 39K employees are minimum wage workers. So the argument that food is expensive because of employee wages is provably false.

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

#342

Post by superflyguy »

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…

"Wow, does the top comment always have to be cynical?"

The top comment is the most popular one.

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

#343

Post by komali2 »

mikybee93 wrote: post #320
meko wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't really deserve praise, practically ever because their motives are ultimately guided by profits. They only act in the interest of revenue. Sometimes those interests align with the employees, but let's not pretend this isn't self preservation on amazon's behalf.

That's silly. You could also say that humans don't really deserve praise since our motives are ultimately guided by our self interest. We only do things to make ourselves feel good, or make ourselves look better. I think that companies have many paths towards self preservation, and that choosing the paths that lead to a better world deserve praise regardless of motive.

I disagree there, because all throughout history are examples of genuine heroes who stood to benefit not at all from their actions. Vince Coleman[0] comes to mind.

Humans can be motivated by many things, profit and looking good included. I'm vaguely aware of a philosophical branch that postulates that all actions are selfish, but that ain't science and so I disagree. People will sacrifice their pyramid of needs towards s greater good, I've never heard of a company utterly scuttling profits over the greater good though.

On that note, in this case Amazon obviously is shedding profit for a greater good here, especially if they actually lobby, so in this case I believe they (particularly the people that made this decision) deserve praise.

(0)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Coleman_%28train_dispatc...?

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

#344

Post by chrisseaton »

rando444 wrote: post #98
chrisseaton wrote: post #55

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?

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.

> The legislation doesn't target Amazon specifically

It is literally named after the founder of Amazon.

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

#345

Post by phil248 »

bhupy wrote: post #84
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, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. Why not let the employees decide if the job is worth taking? If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions, you have a job to offer.

If you, as a company, can't exchange full time work for an amount of money that keeps an individual out of poverty, you're forcing the rest of society to cover the difference.

That's not a deal any government, or any taxpayers, should want to be a part of. I don't want my taxes subsidizing profitable corporations because they can find people willing to work for sub-poverty wages who fill in the gaps using the welfare state.

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

#347

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

specialp wrote: post #245

Median amazon warehouse employee pay is 24k a year. Amazon has around 300k warehouse employees. Jeff Bezos's wealth alone is equivalent to all 300k of them working 22 years at their current rate.

Why are warehouse workers entitled to anywhere near the share the creator and owner makes?

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

#348

Post by frockington »

turtlecloud wrote: post #296
ttoinou wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that they should be paid one million dollars each month, because why not, and creating inflation is always good for the economy

You poor soul. You actually think paying workers more creates inflation You obviously haven’t heard of bankers, the federal reserve, and quantitative easing.

No need to be condescending on a legitimate point. Inflation is influenced by a lot of factors and is a legitimate concern

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

#349

Post by hindsightRegret »

Shivetya wrote: post #87
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…

$15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgroun…

I don't see what's bad about that? You are bringing in reliable candidates into the workforce that previously did not participate. Some probably sucked off of unemployment. So, the net result is a higher-skilled workforce that gets paid a livable wage.

Arguing that those in their current min wage jobs that are under-performing will become unemployed due to higher bar and more candidates coming in - all the better. The design of our economy should not be to minimize unemployment (which by the way is, as you touched on, flawed due to not accounting for disinterested/discouraged workers). It should be to draw out as many competent workers as possible and ensure that only the truly needy (mentally disabled, psychologically unstable, etc) apply for disability. The unemployed should have an incentive for trying to better their skills in order to get off of unemployment. If the incentive is a $7.25/hr shithole Amazon warehouse position, then that does not provide a viable motivator.

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

#350

Post by Vektorweg »

mikybee93 wrote: post #320
meko wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't really deserve praise, practically ever because their motives are ultimately guided by profits. They only act in the interest of revenue. Sometimes those interests align with the employees, but let's not pretend this isn't self preservation on amazon's behalf.

That's silly. You could also say that humans don't really deserve praise since our motives are ultimately guided by our self interest. We only do things to make ourselves feel good, or make ourselves look better. I think that companies have many paths towards self preservation, and that choosing the paths that lead to a better world deserve praise regardless of motive.

It depends to what degree a person or company acted positively on its/their own. Amazon would have never done it, if it wasn't for the immense pressure. So, it is not worth much praise.
Post reply on HN