Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by Applejinx » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

Vektorweg wrote: post #350

mikybee93 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am, however, prepared to order something through them in hopes of making them instinctually associate this type of behavior with reward.

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

#462

Post by s3nnyy » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #200

flexie wrote: post #57

$15/hour is still not much in the international market where Amazon sells its goods. In large parts of Europe it's less than what a warehouse worker makes. It's still barely enough for an adult to be able to pay his/her half of family expenses in the US. A lot of employees will still need a second job. And it only comes now, 20 years after the company's founding, after it has huge profits (and can deduct expenses lik…

Only Switzerland has a higher minimum wage than 15$ an hour in Europe.

We don't have a minimum wage, the Swiss voted against it in 2014 (1), but yes, most people are paid more than CHF/$20.

(1) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27459178

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

#463

Post by Applejinx » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

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.

Fine with me… and I work for myself and make less than minimum wage.

But some of MY customers may end up more able to pay me. I have repeatedly seen a tight correlation betweeen how well I do, and labor share of the economy. If this is real then it'll benefit me, all the more so if it becomes a trend.

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

#464

Post by philwelch » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

Egidius wrote: post #216

driverdan wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you pay your employees $7.25... ...then you're paying the wage your employees are willing to work for. Basic economics in action. If you're making fun of this you need to take an econ 101 class.

I believe people working in Amazons warehouses ended up in a situation they did not want to end up in the first place. Adam Smith (writer of The Wealth of Nations, you might have heard of it) pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide…

Amazon provides generous education benefits to their hourly employees: https://www.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/career-choice

Which is both a good thing for workers and something that makes sense for Amazon to provide. Amazon, believe it or not, doesn't actually want to hire and deal with workers who perceive themselves as perpetually and inevitably poor. They want to hire hardworking, ambitious people who want to move on to bigger and better things. Positioning themselves as a way up for hardworking, ambitious people who haven't developed marketable skills yet puts them in a position to benefit from the labor of hardworking, ambitious people, who are generally the most valuable people to employ.

The notion of minimum wage jobs as a stopgap that allows people to support themselves just long enough to improve their future earning prospects, as you point out, doesn't make sense--unless those people have the ability to improve their future earning prospects. Amazon is one of the very few employers, then, for whom it does make sense.

Ironically, Sanders and Amazon's other critics would probably much rather that Amazon pay people just enough money to spend their entire lives working in a warehouse for minimum wage than for Amazon to provide this education benefit. That's because someone who spends a year or two working at an Amazon warehouse, takes advantage of the education benefit, and transitions into a higher earning job is not going to believe Sanders' demagoguery.

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

#465

Post by tbarker25 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

xori wrote: post #229

fhood wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't necessarily the case, as shown by countries like Australia with very high minimum wages.

For context the Australian minimum wage is 12.94 USD and has the 12th highest cost of living in the world.

The minimum wage in Australia doesn't work the same way as it does in the US. Australian workers will under an award -- effectively a industry-specific contract negotiated by the respective union. An Amazon worker would likely be on the Storage Services and Wholesale Award.

This starts at $20.72 (14.92 USD) for fulltime, and $25.90 (18.64 USD) for casual work.

There's higher wages based on experience and responsibilities, as well as penalty rates. Public holiday pay starts at $56.98 (41.01 USD).

As someone who has recently moved from Melbourne to Boston; if anything I feel like Australia has a lower cost of living. According to the one source I found, prices including rent in Boston, MA are 36.53% higher than in Melbourne

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/872/storage-ser...

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

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

#466

Post by bufferoverflow » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #239

bufferoverflow wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it will increase unemployment and will increase the inflation. Why stop at $15? Let's make it $50/hr, make everyone "rich".

I know you're joking. But it's not true that rising the minimum wage would immediately be cancelled out by inflation. That would be true only if everybody was earning minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage from 5 to 50 dollars is unlikely to cause a 10x inflation, it more likely would cause a 3x or 5x inflation. The poor would have more and the rich would have less. It would likely reduce the spread of wealth in t…

The rich will not have less, they will have a lot more (in dollars at least), because they are mostly storing wealth in inflation-proof assets. And businesses owners will make more than 10x, because when you increase the wages from $10/hr to $50/hr, the amount of spare (fun) money actually grows much more than 5x.

That will hurt the current middle class the most, those earning close to $50/hr. These are skilled professionals who will get equalized with someone who dropped out of high school. It's actually a good example of why socialism is such a dumb idea.

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

#467

Post by Klathmon » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #454

Klathmon wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"no healthcare" How does that work, exactly? To produce this post I googled up the actual data for the state I live in, civilized area far from the coasts (near Chicago but not too close thankfully). Hopefully this isn't too docs droppy but where I live any single adult making $1011.67 or less per month, or any pregnant woman or any under 18 year homeless kid making $3035.01 or less per month qualifies for the totall…

That's actually another part I should have not included in that rant, because the truth is that healthcare didn't even enter my mind for the most part.

I didn't actually even have any medical coverage at all at that point in my life. There was no reason to. If I got sick or injured to the point that I couldn't work, i'd lose everything anyway, so the worry of some extra medical bills didn't enter my mind, and I didn't exactly have a ton of free time, so I just never bothered to look into medicaid.

I also didn't look into unemployment, so I don't know what my options there were either, since I wasn't really ever unemployed at any point (luckily!)

I'm trying to show what it's like to have to juggle that kind of stuff, while looking for another job as a way to get across what it's like. That kind of stuff is why people don't report workplace issues, it's why unions don't get started, it's why people will do anything to keep the job they have, because the alternative is much much worse in a lot of cases. Not to mention the crushing blow to your morale when you have to use the few hundred dollars you managed to save up over the last few months, it feels like you are taking 2 steps backwards and none forwards, and it really hurts.

And while there are often ways out of each problem individually, the crushing pressure of all of them all building up at once and the feeling that you won't ever get out of it is just so much to handle. And even if there are ways out of it, nobody wants to help you, nobody wants to explain the process. Even at this point in my life, I would have to google what to do to even start the process of getting medicaid. And if I were back then and my phone had just been cut off, I wouldn't know how to even do that. If i'm being completely honest, at the time I thought medicaid was another term for medicare, but different (and in my mind, medicare was for old people, and still didn't cover everything). I knew there was something for poor people, but I had no idea if I would qualify, what i'd have to do to get it, and even what to look up.

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

#468

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:15 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…

And also it will improve the quality cohort of the workforce they can target.

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

#469

Post by lucideer » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

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?

There's no need to move goalposts when your objection is concentration of power, resources and finance. By that standard, one can continue to roundly criticise Amazon for all eternity as long as they remain as relatively dominant: this stance favours distribution of control of resources among small independent stakeholders, and is a perfectly legitimate stance to take.

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

#470

Post by epicureanideal » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

dvdhnt wrote: post #318

Someguywhatever wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the poster you're replying to had that in mind. I think it was more a case of 'you catch more bees with honey' rather than draw the guy's ire unnecessarily, just make a law that does X to help people rather than call it the "F * BEZOS law that also helps people".

Maybe that's true, but parent's point stands. We don't use honey to deal with poor thieves or people who emotionally abuse their spouses. Why should we use honey to deal with a rich thief who emotionally abuses an entire labor force?

Because he was not breaking any laws or doing anything that dozens of other companies are not also doing. If we permit the system to exist as it is, we can't fairly blame someone who plays the game well by the poor rules we've made.