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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

#361

Post by nindalf »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #335
IgorPartola wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By lobbying for the $15 minimum wage they are working to make sure that their competitors don’t retain any competitive advantage on wages. So now the brick and mortar shop that is barely in business because of competition with Amazon is going to get hit with a big bump in wage costs. They either will raise prices, or go out of business, both scenarios benefit Amazon.

So you're saying they shouldn't lobby for an increase in the minimum wage, and that large numbers of workers' wages should languish because they work for small businesses?

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

#362

Post by irishcoffee »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #232
zacharytelschow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turning your employees into welfare-dependent wage-slaves I wasn't aware staying with a particular employer was compulsory.

You're out of touch with the job market and reality itself. It's not easy for these people to just "get a new job". They get paid minimum wage and are probably living paycheck to paycheck. If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc.

> If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc.

This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car.

Being both a homeowner and a landlord, I could not pay my mortgage for a year before legal processes kick in, and if my tenants don't pay rent for a month or two there isn't much I can do about it. I most assuredly can't kick them out.

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

#364

Post by irishcoffee »

Klathmon wrote: post #178
zacharytelschow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turning your employees into welfare-dependent wage-slaves I wasn't aware staying with a particular employer was compulsory.

Would you be able to give up your paycheck, knowing that if you don't have another by next week you would literally be homeless? With no savings, no healthcare, no "fallback", no help, nothing. Sit down, and really decide if you would be able to quit your fulltime job that is giving you about $100 a week after taxes, and have to decide how to make that $100 last paycheck last until you find another job? Maybe you'll…

> Would you be able to give up your paycheck, knowing that if you don't have another by next week you would literally be homeless?

Nope. This idea gets bandied about all the time. How is missing a paycheck for 1 week going to result in homelessness?

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

#365

Post by [deleted] »

pkulak wrote: post #286
L_Rahman wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the topic in question is how one of the most powerful companies on Earth chooses to use its power we should strive to always be this cynical. Skepticism of concentrated power is the ur-American political belief. We seem to have forgotten that lately.

If you're willing to shame a company for behavior you don't like, I think you should be prepared to give praise when they do exactly what you just asked for. When you constantly move the goal posts just so that you never have to abandon your righteous anger for even one day, what kind of incentive does that give companies to change their behavior?

[deleted]

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

#366

Post by gowld »

mbesto wrote: post #180
ajross wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'll get to look progressive for adopting this wage early, while mitigating their competitive disadvantage by forcing every other company to raise their wages too eventually. That's deeply cynical. In the process, they're actually paying real people more money. Which is sort of critically important if you care about this issue and not just taking pot shots at Amazon on HN.

> In the process, they're actually paying real people more money Except the OP was talking specifically about the company's plan to lobby. Yes, they're actually paying people more money, but if everyone has that same amount of money then you get wage push inflation. Then everyone loses. This is also why minimum wage discussions always spiral out of control...there really is no good long term solution for setting mini…

That's a radical theory; can you give a more detailed explanation? Mainstream economists and political theorists believe that raising minimum wage reduces wealth inequality which creates economic and political stability, which reduces the risk of things like crime, Great Depression, and violent revolution.

Even if minimum wage growth hits its practical max and creates inflation, (1) that's easy enough to detect and correct, (2) it's not a big deal if all the numbers go up together; the main loss is in reprinted menus.

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

#367

Post by MereInterest »

meko wrote: post #328
MereInterest wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ridiculously cynical way to view it. First, utility does not scale linearly with income. Second, this allows for greater economic efficiency, because fewer people will be caught in bad situations with an insurmountable hurdle to get out. If you want to maintain your relative wealth, feudal times are great. The rest of us would rather increase absolute wealth.

All the previous poster is saying is that a minimum wage increase would not place that much upwards pressure on inflation, which is true.

In that case, I grossly misinterpreted the tone of the comment, and apologize for it.

I (and baldfast) had interpreted throwaway080383's comment as implying that he will be worse off from this legislation, as the increase in minimum wage will result in inflation, leading to no effective change in inflation-adjusted minimum wage, but a strong decrease in his own inflation-adjusted minimum wage. This is the standard conservative viewpoint that I've seen, which is repeated frequently, and is why I reacted so strongly to it.

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

#368

Post by [deleted] »

tyingq wrote: 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.

[deleted]

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

#369

Post by toomuchtodo »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #333
Shivetya wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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…

A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only businesses left are a drive-thru and a Dollar General. They can barely afford a dozen or so people working at minimum wage now, and they can't run a place with half the employees. Their customers can barely afford to shop there and can't take paying more to c…

Dollar General and other national chain drive thru eateries are substantially profitable (profits in the billions of dollars, DG margins are ~%30). The odds of Dollar General, McDonalds, and company and closing up in rural America is so close to zero, for our purposes we can round down to zero.

They might raise prices a bit, and be slightly less profitable to shareholders, but they won't close up shop.

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

#370

Post by codedokode »

ttoinou wrote: post #334
codedokode wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market without minimum salary, it would be difficult for people living alone and having kids (so they have to pay rent and for kindergarten or school), to compete with someone living with parents (and not paying any rent) or with immigrants living 8 people in a room.

And of course, in minimum wage societies money, resource, wealth just fall from the sky and all the people you described have kids, nannies, multiple houses just like that. We should just ban poverty it will solve everything

Resources, houses and other nice things are created by people who work. It is not like everyone stops working after setting minimum wage. Business owners might get little less profit, but somehow I don't feel sorry for them.
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