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Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

cnbc.com

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

#471

Post by askmike »

emodendroket wrote: post #78
askmike wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they get such bad press for the way they treat their workers it only seems fair to laud them for this. That's because they treat their workers terrible. They're a huge company with a lot of profit and how people at the bottom of the chain are treated is maddening. They're seen as an example of how not to treat workers (and for good reason). They definitely should not be lauded for this: They did some calculations a…

> I refuse to believe Bezos woke up this morning with a new moral sense to change the ship around. No, of course not, but it's a victory that the pressure on them was enough they felt they had to make a concession.

True. So the people who have been saying things should be lauded, not Amazon.

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

#472

Post by maerF0x0 »

patagonia wrote: post #338
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.

Wow brilliant analysis. Automate the lower pay jobs away before your competitors can. Push for raise in minimum wage. This is “Walmart kills mom and pop shops” at a whole new level. This is also how I see the robot job apocalypse playing out and why we need political change that can handle both the wealth generation and rapid job churn / requirements for job training that AI and robotics will bring. Either pay more o…

Luddites have always been saying "this time is different" about technology.

And economists have always been saying "no its not".

I understand that robots+AI will eventually be superior to humans (their evolution rate is faster than ours, extrapolating...) . The question is how many life times away is that. Moore's law ended, maybe AI will asymptote too?

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

#473

Post by emodendroket »

chrisseaton wrote: post #344
rando444 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but it would apply to any employer of similar size.

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

#474

Post by philwelch »

arrty88 wrote: post #323

>“We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the announcement. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.” Ha ha. This shouldn't have taken much thinking Jeff. It's a no brainer, no? The more you pay your people, the more they can spend on your stuff.

> The more you pay your people, the more they can spend on your stuff.

This is the economics equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

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

#475

Post by fma »

briandear wrote: post #423
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.

Precisely this. A small shop in Mobile, Alabama being forced to pay the same minimum wage as some company in Santa Clara County is ridiculous. A rented closet in the Bay Area costs more than a house payment in Mobile. Also, the tax burden on $15 in Alabama is far lower than the tax burden on someone in California. Want to give low wage people an actual pay raise? Cut federal payroll taxes since those affect workers e…

Just a clarification, that "small shop" would have to have over $500,000 in sales in order to be required to abide by minimum wage laws.

"For most firms, a threshold of $500,000 in annual dollar volume of business applies to be covered (i.e., the Act does not cover enterprises with less than this amount of business)."

I'd also argue that definition of "small shop" $500k threshold should change between California and Alabama.

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/elg/minwage.htm

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

#476

Post by emodendroket »

bloomer wrote: post #80
gonzo41 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one individual who heads up a company that is around a little over 40% of all sales in the USA....

Where do you pull that 40% of sales from? I think you are referring to online sales, which are ~10% of sales. So a little over 4% of sales

OK, how about "the richest man in history" then?

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

#477

Post by HeroOfAges »

jacquesm wrote: post #252
bufferoverflow wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "living wage". Please be specific, no vague dancing around.

Living wage: a wage sufficiently high that after paying taxes there is still enough left over for small family or individual to live off when all normal expenses are accounted for based on a workweek no longer than 40 hours in total. That works out to $2400 gross per month (so before taxes) which if you can't recoup it from the work input says more about the company you are working for and their inability to capture…

Have you given any thought to how wide the gap between "smart" work and "dumb" work should be? Who should decide such a thing? If someone spent their youth doing drugs and having children out of wedlock do they really deserve to earn a salary within say 10% of someone that spent their youth working to gain the skills and experience necessary to be a doctor or lawyer? Just because the outcomes need to be more equal?

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

#478

Post by jyounker »

briandear wrote: post #423
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.

Precisely this. A small shop in Mobile, Alabama being forced to pay the same minimum wage as some company in Santa Clara County is ridiculous. A rented closet in the Bay Area costs more than a house payment in Mobile. Also, the tax burden on $15 in Alabama is far lower than the tax burden on someone in California. Want to give low wage people an actual pay raise? Cut federal payroll taxes since those affect workers e…

If you lower the federal payroll taxes then won't companies correspondingly lower wages for new employees?

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

#479

Post by wstuartcl »

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?

...

FFS -- it was shaming of amazon's pay rate for their employees that caused the change in behavior in the first place.

I think it is rational to look at what and why actions were taken. Do you believe that the raise of the minimum wage at Amazon was out of good nature? Was it a decision to mitigate brand perception costs against labor costs after a bunch of national stories reported that they were paying so little in markets that their workers were forced to also take government subsidies while they have had their most profitable quarters ever? As far as the push to get the minimum wage raised -- is it not a reasonable view that it is in amazons best interest to further reduce the reoccurring labor costs effectively by ensuring their competitors are also forced to match their labor cost?

The bottom line is if Amazon (or any company for that matter) wants to treat their employees better than the minimum wage -- they were and still are able to do so. Amazon happened to be in a state where because of the publicity pressure (showing their full time employees unable to live on their wage) it was more cost effective to make a change than not.

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