Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

831–840 of 1001 posts

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

#831

Post by throwaway2048 »

ctvo wrote: post #793
chc wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I cheat on my wife, can I point to somebody else who's also cheating on their wife and that exempts me from criticism? Does somebody have to be doing a completely unique bad thing in order for people to be able to criticize them? People criticize Amazon and Walmart more than other companies because Amazon and Walmart are bigger than those other companies. That seems like an entirely fair reason for them to get mor…

If as a society we agree that companies have a moral responsibility / obligation to pay their employees a wage that provided X, Y, Z your analogy would make a lot more sense. In America at least, we do not have agreement.

Says you.

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

#832

Post by genericone »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #790
genericone wrote: post #327

I suppose there has been some 'breakthrough' in their warehouse automation stack? I suppose in the rest of the USA a doubling of wages will definitely get them through an awkward longshoreman period, "well I'm being paid more unexpectedly, I suppose I can't complain about the robots". Once the robots are well established in operations, they can start to cut labor back some more.

I think there's a much more simple, and clever, explanation. We're looking in the wrong direction. Bloomberg recently ran a story [1] that Amazon is planning on opening up to 3,000 more cashierless 'grab and go' stores by 2021. They are clearly planning on trying to take over physical retail, and this is quite a nasty attack on current players such as WalMart or convenient store type locations. These companies will n…

Good point, I think its a definitely a multi-pronged approach, their labor right now is limited to factory workers and whole-foods right now. My view of whole-foods is that they may already be paying at or above $15/hr wages, so that leaves factory workers, who are being used mostly for sorting goods from large bins into smaller bins.

Amazon fulfillment centers are right now using warehouse robots to retrieve large bins from really really tall 'shelves' because that is a solved problem for Amazon. The sorting into the smaller bins is left to humans because they are faster and more accurate at the moment for awkwardly shaped items.

What is the state of computer-vision, part-identification, and compliant-actuator pick-place robots inside Amazon? Have they released any whitepapers or research papers on robotics of note recently, acquired any interesting automation companies recently?

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

#833

Post by blazespin »

skybrian wrote: post #663
rubidium wrote: post #491

There's been similar moves in the past. Most famous of which is Ford's $5 / day. http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per... Ford's quote from the time is relevant today: “The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers.…

Yeah, I don't take that explanation at face value because it's describing a perpetual motion machine. Sales to your own employees are only going to be a trivial amount of revenue for any reasonable business. And I'm sure he knew that. But interpreted charitably, it's showmanship. This is a way to show leadership, get a lot of publicity, and hire better workers, so what's not to like?

The economy is a sort of perpetual motion machine / ponzi scheme. It's based on some common hallucination that the things we buy matter, and it's all backed up by money we loan each other.

The moment we stop investing, borrowing and loaning, it will all come tumbling down. This is sort of what caused the panic of 2008 and why the governments had to step in with QE.

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

#834

Post by tcbawo »

igravious wrote: post #826
skybrian wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't take that explanation at face value because it's describing a perpetual motion machine. Sales to your own employees are only going to be a trivial amount of revenue for any reasonable business. And I'm sure he knew that. But interpreted charitably, it's showmanship. This is a way to show leadership, get a lot of publicity, and hire better workers, so what's not to like?

No, yours is the uncharitable explanation. In reality it shows that Ford understood that all of us are in this together (“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same”) – and we take it that Ford was not only referring to his own employees but to all employees. So if you want the public to be able to by your goods then we ought to recognise that the public must be able to afford those good…

As they say, America is a country of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

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

#835

Post by [deleted] »

skybrian wrote: post #663
rubidium wrote: post #491

There's been similar moves in the past. Most famous of which is Ford's $5 / day. http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per... Ford's quote from the time is relevant today: “The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers.…

Yeah, I don't take that explanation at face value because it's describing a perpetual motion machine. Sales to your own employees are only going to be a trivial amount of revenue for any reasonable business. And I'm sure he knew that. But interpreted charitably, it's showmanship. This is a way to show leadership, get a lot of publicity, and hire better workers, so what's not to like?

[deleted]

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

#837

Post by blazespin »

danieltillett wrote: post #836

Well the smart money sees massive inflation ahead. Combine a enormous deficit, a very tight labour market, rising tarrifs, and now large pay rises for workers, and we are in for a time of high inflation.

Nah, amazon is planning on investing in robots.

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

#838

Post by wallace_f »

blazespin wrote: post #833
skybrian wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't take that explanation at face value because it's describing a perpetual motion machine. Sales to your own employees are only going to be a trivial amount of revenue for any reasonable business. And I'm sure he knew that. But interpreted charitably, it's showmanship. This is a way to show leadership, get a lot of publicity, and hire better workers, so what's not to like?

The economy is a sort of perpetual motion machine / ponzi scheme. It's based on some common hallucination that the things we buy matter, and it's all backed up by money we loan each other. The moment we stop investing, borrowing and loaning, it will all come tumbling down. This is sort of what caused the panic of 2008 and why the governments had to step in with QE.

Without population growth, big parts of many national economies become unsustainable. They're like MLM, Ponzi Schemes, or other pyramid schemes in this way.

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

#839

Post by tcbawo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #721
smilbandit wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and thus grew the middle class. The middle class is something we truly need to focus on growing again.

> and thus grew the middle class. The middle class is something we truly need to focus on growing again. But that's the problem with things like this. We keep focusing on the top and the bottom but not the middle. So we pass laws purporting to tax the rich (but really anyone with a full time job) and then the rich hire accountants and only the middle class pays. Then we clamor for a higher minimum wage, but the middl…

I wouldn't expect prices to rise significantly as automation kicks in. We will see a lot of competition and wage stagnation for those middle class jobs as efficiency eats away the margins they live on. Hopefully we find a solution before the pitchforks come out.

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

#840

Post by nimbius »

This was a tactical move, i suspect. Restless employees at Wal-Mart type stores can generally get on with another nickel on their paycheck and an angry-dome presentation on how unions will destroy the world. Not so here.

When your employees are filing for food stamps and urinating in plastic bottles, things are only a few war-boys away from Mad Max. No amount of safety meeting shilling is going to convince these people...many of whom source Amazon as the only major employer in the region...that a union is bad. Amazon likely raised wages to prevent the larger thread: mass unionization across its warehouses that could spread to managers, programmers, SRE teams, etc..

Post reply on HN