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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

#481

Post by rpedela »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #460
rpedela wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern world was built by corporations. Access to clean water, cheap and healthy food, energy, infrastructure. Yes taxes fund a lot of it but it is corporations that largely do the work at least in the US. Being for-profit is a good thing on the whole because that enables the corporation to continue solving problems for more people. Obviously there is a dark side too. The pursuit of profit left uncheck leads to h…

> Access to clean water, cheap and healthy food, energy, infrastructure. Clean water access? Paid for my government. Cheap and healthy food? Government subsidies. Energy? Government funds majority of research. Infrastructure was mostly inlaid by Government implemented New Deal/other job creation programs. Corporations had little to no involvement in 'doing the work' here. Access to cheap/healthy food was before corpo…

As I said, taxes, aka government subsidies, paid for or continues to pay for a lot of my examples. The railroads were all built by corporations. ExxonMobil is a corporation, Comcast is a corporation, even your local utility for water, etc is likely a corporation. Corporations do much of the work, the government just pays for it with taxes.

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

#482

Post by IshKebab »

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.

It may be true that paying workers better hurts them less than other less automated businesses, which gives them a competitive advantage (assuming they succeed in raising the federal minimum wage).

However, this does affect 350,000 employees today, and that is a lot of employees.

Also the fact that they have automated many of their lower paid jobs away is really irrelevant - they did that anyway even when their wage was lower. They could have kept automating jobs away and paid them very low wages. The fact that they aren't is definitely a good thing.

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

#483

Post by dv_dt »

onemoresoop wrote: post #452
dv_dt wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should praise this move by Amazon, but also realize they're probably the world leader in warehouse robotics. If they raise wages, and push for wage increases now, there is a short term effect of reduced profits for Amazon, but it also puts pressure on raising costs for competitors while Amazon is on a path to being much better insulated from those costs. It also gives them better community relations basis…

Perhaps they raised minimum wages with the future goal to lay off staff that can be "robotized". After that the remaining workers would certainly have a higher load of dealing with the robots and would most likely not be willing to work for less than $15/h. This can also can earn amazon a good guy reputation so that their future move can be justified. I hope i'm wrong but my instinct tells me that Amazon will not loo…

Future staff that can be robotized would be laid off no matter what their pay. Or maybe I should say within a wide band of salaries as I doubt that 10-12 vs 15/hr makes much of a difference on that balance. But I don't think all workers would be eliminated within a warehouse, and I can't estimate if the remaining jobs will be higher load or lower load physically.

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

#484

Post by ttoinou »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #458
ttoinou wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no definition of "minimum", "basic living", "safe conditions", "fair hours" etc. Fair hours used to be 10 hours a day 6 days / week. Living used to be able to survive a famine. Safe conditions used to be hunting for animals. All it matters is people interacting voluntarily, that's the only argument against minimum wage. But it is disingenuous to suggest that just because there are people who would take such…

The voluntary interaction argument falls apart in the presence of a labor monopsony.

It's not a full monopsony, there's often choice. And increasing minimum wage increases their monopsony power because it favors big companies that can afford it (here, Amazon).

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

#485

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

> This is exactly what everyone wanted Amazon to do

You really need to get out of your bubble.

A lot of us who understand economics genuinely think minimum wages hurt the poor, and think this can bring a lot of unemployment.

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

#486

Post by SolaceQuantum »

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…

Medicaid is often limited in its scope and there have been times when I'm on it, it wouldn't cover diagnostic testing for more serious disorders. Also, there was the knowledge that trying to take advantage of medicaid requires experience and time and education, none of which is often afforded to the poor.

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

#487

Post by johnqpub »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #395
liveoneggs wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is simply 100% false. What do you think the 500,000 employees of Amazon are doing if not working in a warehouse? They're not programming.

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

#488

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#490

Post by chrisseaton »

emodendroket wrote: post #473
chrisseaton wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can imagine being skeptical of that and feeling targeted if someone came up with a bill named after you though, right?
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