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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

#391

Post by SEJeff »

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…

One of the biggest Amazon distribution warehouses in the country happens to be in Lexington, KY. I’m sure this $15 / hour wage increase is going to go over very well there. I’m from Lexington, KY originally but live in Chicago now (since there aren’t local jobs for Linux Software Engineers)

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

#392

Post by ttoinou »

codedokode wrote: post #370
ttoinou wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You example was rather extreme so le met take an extreme example : put the minimum wage at 1 million USD / month. What happens ?

  but somehow I don't feel sorry for them
Of course you don't. But do you for people who weren't able to work because of the minimum wage law and its enforcement ?

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

#393

Post by shimon »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #267

I make more as a waiter with absolutely 0 experience. Being a waiter is better, more stable pay than many office and warehouse jobs. Something is severely wrong when food service is more profitable than manufacturing and distribution and tertiary-degree stuff.

What's the wrong here?

Waiting tables is a hard job, and not everyone can do it well. It's physically and mentally taxing, and to make money at it you have to be charming which is harder to train than, say, packing boxes in a warehouse.

Good-paying waiter jobs tend to be in high-cost cities, so you'll spend more money on housing, transit, and food than a worker in a suburban warehouse. Waiters are also harder to substitute for - due to the small scale and personal nature of restaurant service, it's unlikely a restaurant could drastically improve waiter productivity without impacting the customer experience.

Also, to your point in comparing the hourly rate: warehouse and office jobs offer a different type of financial value to workers - relatively predictable schedules. If you're a student, working a few evenings a week and raking in tips is great. If you're trying to support a family, getting consistent full time hours may be more appealing than a higher hourly wage with lower/less consistent hours.

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

#394

Post by WillPostForFood »

jdmichal wrote: post #352
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.

That's a nice story, but it's just that. Alternatively, all the minimum wage workers will have more expendable income. Some of that may be spent at those brick-and-mortar shops, and will offset the additional costs. Remember that the velocity of money makes it a non-zero-sum game. EDIT: Ends up that Wikipedia covers this nicely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta... "The interconnection of p…

Or they spend their extra money at Amazon because prices are lower. Or you are right and it helps brick and mortar in the handful of cities with Amazon warehouses, but hurts everywhere else.

Worst case for Amazon is they maintain status quo by forcing competitors cost up. Best case for Amazon is that they drive some of their competition out of business, or take some of that business because super giant Amazon is better able to absorb the increased wage cost than smaller businesses.

It is very much like their state sales tax collection strategy. Oppose it for as long as possible, accept it, then lobby for everyone else to have to do it.

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

#395

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

liveoneggs wrote: post #214
i_cant_speel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. All of their warehouse workers are employees of Integrity Staffing, not Amazon. Presumably Amazon is directing Integrity to bump up its wage.

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

#396

Post by golergka »

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…

I'm confused, because it seems to me that your tone implies that it's something bad or unethical on their part.

If I'm mistaken - I'm sorry that I've misunderstand you. But I do think that I'm not alone in this, and that a clarification for tone-defa people like me would be welcome.

If I'm not mistaken, and you indeed imply this, can you elaborate further on why do you think so?

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

#397

Post by VLM »

lgeorget wrote: post #244
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…

> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. On the other hand, isn't it illogical in a free market economy that wages do not increase at a rate at least equal to the inflation? How do you keep the economy running if people have less and less purchase power as time goes by? (These are genuine questions, I'm not an economist at all.)

I got mine vs an infinitely sustainable long term stable system, is not really an economic problem its a cross cultural human problem for as far back as we have records (or archeology, it seems).

So, no, the economy not being on a survivable path is not really all that unusual of a situation for humanity in general. You'd be amazed what extracting and burning or otherwise disposing of an impossible to replace resource can do to boost a declining economy. "cheap oil" or "cheap fertilizer" masks a lot of problems... for awhile...

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

#398

Post by throwaway080383 »

MereInterest wrote: post #367
meko wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Damn, yes I could see how my original comment would naturally be interpreted that way.

To be clear, what I meant to get across was that the wage increase was not going to be a no-op due to inflation or whatever; it will make those people's lives measurably better in the short-to-medium term because not everyone's wages will be doubled at the same time.

Yeah, technically, I will be slightly worse off in the short term because Amazon will cost a little more or my dollar will go slightly less far, but I'm perfectly fine with that if it means tens of thousands of families can now feed their kids or go to the hospital. In the long run, my hope is that those kids will be more productive/innovative, which is good for everyone.

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

#399

Post by java_script »

ptbello wrote: post #191

Call me cynical, but it could also be that AMZN will be automating all those lower paid jobs - as in: soon they won't even need 7.25$/H employees because they'll have machines. In this scenario, 15$/H would just be their current price point for the following tier of bottom of the chain not-yet-automated tasks.

Call me cynical, but they did this shortly after sending out anti-unionization propaganda videos to managers of Whole Foods. If it really is a reaction to union agitation, then it's not Amazon corporate that we should be praising for this increase.

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

#400

Post by ttoinou »

joh6nn wrote: post #341
ttoinou wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 low…

  provably false
False because you take a "real world" example and twist it to fit your beliefs ?

A good amount of the cost of what is produced comes from work. Hence the cost of inputs is also dependent on the cost of work (does the company you refer to contracts with suppliers ?)

If you force work to be paid 1 million USD / month, what happens ?

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