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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

#381

Post by pkulak »

meko wrote: post #302
pkulak wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Then they don't deserve shame either, right?

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

#382

Post by VLM »

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…

The optimum minimizes the amount of government assistance.

Obviously, everyone not being starved or dead from lack of medical care means everyone gets food and medical care. That is not negotiable at this time.

Some methods of payment for those universal services have extremely low transaction cost like the employer hands money to employee who buys the service or product for cash. Some methods have extremely expensive transaction costs with government departments taxing people and another department full of people paying partial or full payment for people's food and medical care, none of those people work for free and they all need HR and benefits and management and auditors, all very expensive. Of course give/force the employers to hand out too much cash and you get inflation that exceeds the cost of government.

For example everyone at Google eats and has medical care and having the well compensated employees pay for it is extremely low transaction cost. However no one at walmart can eat and obtain medical care so the government provides it at enormous transaction expense. Its believed to be better for the entire economy to slightly tax google employees to pay for government services for walmart employees than just have walmart pay their fair share of the expenses of employees.

At some point in the middle there's a optimum that minimizes the total cost of government programs plus the economic damage wrought by inflation. A lot of people put a lot of time and money into figuring out this optimal ratio, which is probably extremely close to where we are today, and many more in the general public say "eh we should just wing it and +1 one side or the other, because like, what could possibly go wrong?".

There ARE problems such that those highly paid government clerks with fabulous benefits compared to the private sector are not likely to suggest losing their welfare program administrator jobs any time soon, so there are rational human self interest reasons why the minwage is always going to be around the lower bound of optimum. If the general public is not always of the opinion that its somewhat on the low side, then the central regulators and planners are messing up. There should always be this low level of turmoil about it being somewhat too low.

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

#383

Post by theandrewbailey »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #369
theandrewbailey wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was thinking more along the lines of a local mom and pop drive thru where people get their daily 6 pack and lottery ticket than a McDonalds.

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

#384

Post by fromanator »

leesec wrote: post #42
School-Cotton wrote: post #15

Earlier 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?

I don't know why you're down voted. People like to shame Amazon/Walmart for their wages and working conditions, but I guarantee they're doing a lot of the exact same things as other companies who are less criticized, Target, Meijer, etc.. Like he said, Amazon has it's issues but the employees were free to quit and work at other similar positions in similar companies.

A year ago Target pledged to increase it's starting hourly wage to $15/hr by 2020. Currently starting pay is $12/hr

Source: https://corporate.target.com/article/2017/09/minimum-hourly-...

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

#385

Post by mindcrime »

solipsism wrote: post #375
mindcrime wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't really deserve praise, practically ever because their motives are ultimately guided by profits. That's not actually true.. it's a caricatured straw-man argument, usually employed by people who want to attack Capitalism in the general sense. Of course companies have to make a profit to survive; but not all companies ruthlessly optimize every single variable to squeeze out the last $0.0000001 of profit,…

Don't know why you're being downvoted. Since the 70s people have been throwing around this "corporations must ruthlessly pursue profit and profit alone" idea as is it's a truism. It's not even close to true, neither as normatively or empirically.

Some people aren't interested in the truth, or facts. They're invested in some constructed narrative that supports an ideology, and they can't stand it when somebody contradicts that narrative.

It's fine, I've got HN karma to burn, and it's not like you can spend Imaginary Internet Points anywhere anyway. :-)

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

#386

Post by java_script »

ttoinou wrote: post #285
czep wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All it matters is people interacting voluntarily My point is that it is most certainly not voluntary. There are people in the world who are not as lucky or intelligent or resourceful as you, me, and most others on HN. Try to empathize and put yourself in the shoes of the disadvantaged, they do not know the world as we do, they cannot shop around for high paying jobs, and if they miss a paycheck, they may very well…

Putting myself in their shoes is exactly why I think they should be allowed to do whatever they think is best for them. What paycheck would they risk loosing if they can't find a job anyway ? Minimum wage exclude and marginalize poor people Asymmetry and inequalities are everywhere. I don't know which perfect egalitarian symmetric insert here another utopic adjective society you live in, but it's not certainly not mi…

> I think they should be allowed to do whatever they think is best for them.

I think they should be allowed to vote and agitate for whatever they think is best for them. And thus.... viola, minimum wage and subsequent increases.

Although I know majorities are a touchy subject with libertarians since there are like six of you total nowadays.

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

#388

Post by WillPostForFood »

nindalf wrote: post #361
WillPostForFood wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, I'm saying it is in their self interest to lobby for it.

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

#389

Post by int_19h »

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…

We should indeed just get rid of the minimum wage, and replace it with universal basic income guarantee.

Minimum wage + unemployment insurance is basically UBI anyway, except very poorly implemented - with ridiculous overhead, and, most crucially, subsidized through what is, essentially, a regressive tax.

Consider: when you raise minimum wage, the employer will try to put as much as they can into the price of the produced goods. They might be forced to eat some of it by shrinking their profit margin, but ultimately most of it will be passed to the consumer.

Now, who consumes goods and services produced by minimum-wage workers? Everyone, of course - but, generally speaking, the less you earn, the more you have to rely on that. So as the prices on such goods and services go up, poor are the ones that see the biggest increases as a proportion of their overall spending (and hence, their overall income). It's the ultimate con - you get one mark to pay for the other, and the best part is that they don't even notice.

UBI wouldn't have this problem, because the tax would be explicit, applied to income, and (ideally) progressive. So you actually redistribute from the top of the ladder all the way down to the bottom. Better yet if you also tax capital gains for this purpose.

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

#390

Post by refurb »

throwaway080383 wrote: post #226
mbesto wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's all relative. If minimum wage workers get their income doubled, but my income does not double, then they are doing better relative to me than they were before. And I do not expect my salary to double upon passing of such legislation.

Of course a minimum wage increase pushes all wages up.

If you were working at Amazon for $15/hr before this change and the other guy was working at $12/hr, but now makes $15/hr, wouldn't you want a raise?

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