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

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

#991

Post by PovilasID » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 11:00 AM UTC

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?

If every business in an ecosystem takes that kind of stance it becomes true. As in if the whole ecosystem pays an significantly proportional wage result is an economy that outgrows costs because fact people's work create more and more value is generated. And also it's good showmanship. I bet at the time word of mouth was even more significant sales route. And you have literally a factory full of people. Now tell me if you know a guy working on it will you not ask him? So keeping him happy meant a customer who doubled as promoter. In my mind Ford just cut some marketing branch and rerouted the workload to factory workers and payed for it. It does not mean it BS if it can drive sales. The two don't have to be mutuality exclusive. I wish more people would not forget it

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

#992

Post by didibus » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

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?

Wouldn't that be the definition of sustainability?

With our means of production, couldn't we achieve self sustainability amongst ourselves, or is there always someone slaving away?

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

#993

Post by fipple » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

Smokey28 wrote: post #742

MrStonedOne wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point wasn't that paying employees more leads to sells. Its more of a remark about the overall world. Your employees are somebody's customers, your customers are somebody's employees, You are somebody's customer. If nobody in the world makes enough to be a consumer, nobody consumes, and thus you have no customers.

Exactly this. I've spent the last year or so studying Ford. His whole point was that if people didn't have the money to buy his product or time to use it (he reduced work hours as well) then your business will never survive. He wasn't banking on employee sales, he was looking at employees as a snapshot of a wider market. Great example is fast food as well. If you are offering the "lowest cost" food option, and provid…

LOL! Bezos is doing this to fuck Walmart. They employ much more minimum wage labor than Amazon does.

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

#994

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #980

jrochkind1 wrote: post #962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 20% of the population of the entire country. It was probably much more than 20% in the South, indeed (in some states as high as _65%_ enslaved people at some times!), and less in the North. The North did originally have some enslaved people. The economies were clearly related.

The severing of the economies at the outset of the Civil War, and the total destruction of the southern economy during the war, yet the continued prosperity of the northern economy shows that the northern economy was not dependent on slaves. > The North did originally have some enslaved people. Yes, and the ending of that did not retard the economy or reduce the middle class in any detectable way. The middle class in…

Slavery was integral to the entire U.S. economy, but that economy was changing in the mid-19th century, and indeed it's not totally false that those economic changes were part of what led to the civil war.

// Capitalists in the North profited by investing in banks that handled the exchange of money for people, or in insurance companies that provided insurance for the owners’ investments in enslaved people. So did foreign investors in Southern securities, some of which were issued on mortgaged slaves. The hotbed of American abolitionism — New England — was also the home of America’s cotton textile industry, which grew rich on the backs of the enslaved people forced to pick cotton. The story of America’s domestic slave trade is not just a story about Richmond or New Orleans, but about America. //

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/how-the-sla...

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345467833

https://www.amazon.com/Slaverys-Capitalism-American-Economic...

https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/046504966...

"“In the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War, slavery—as a source of the cotton that fed Rhode Island’s mills, as a source of the wealth that filled New York’s banks, as a source of the markets that inspired Massachusetts manufacturers—proved indispensable to national economic development,” Beckert and Rockman write in the introduction to the book. “… Cotton offered a reason for entrepreneurs and inventors to build manufactories in such places as Lowell, Pawtucket, and Paterson, thereby connecting New England’s Industrial Revolution to the advancing plantation frontier of the Deep South. And financing cotton growing, as well as marketing and transporting the crop, was a source of great wealth for the nation’s merchants and banks.”"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/03/...

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

#995

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #812

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200-500k in the SF bay area is still considered middle class because housing prices have gotten so ridiculously high. The 2 br, 1 bath, 800 sq foot apartment I live in 3 years ago for $900/month would probably be $2,500 in SV. Likewise, the 1850 sq ft, 3 br, 2.5 bath house I live in now that I bought for $338k in 2015 would probably have been over $1,000,000 in SV.

$200-500k in the SF bay area is still considered middle class because housing prices have gotten so ridiculously high. No, that means the middle class can't afford to live in SF. This isn't the first time I've heard this, and I don't know why anyone might think this. As a more extreme example, "middle-class in Pebble Beach is $1MM/year or $20MM net worth". No, there is no middle-class in Pebble Beach, only rich peopl…

I know I'm moving the goalposts here, but the houses in Pebble Beach aren't exactly middle-class houses, and not because of the price. A 4-bedroom, 7-bath, 5000 sqft house just isn't a middle-class home.

It's why I try to define "middle-class" by specific behaviors and possessions, not by dollar amounts.

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

#996

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #714

Drybones wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why frugality means you're middle class. I also don't understand how $200k-$500k, a very sizable income, even in the SF bay area, is magically the middle class now

$200-500k in the SF bay area is still considered middle class because housing prices have gotten so ridiculously high. The 2 br, 1 bath, 800 sq foot apartment I live in 3 years ago for $900/month would probably be $2,500 in SV. Likewise, the 1850 sq ft, 3 br, 2.5 bath house I live in now that I bought for $338k in 2015 would probably have been over $1,000,000 in SV.

> $200-500k in the SF bay area is still considered middle class because housing prices have gotten so ridiculously high.

$200k-$500k of probably most often part of the classical capitalist-society middle class (petit bourgeoisie) in most of the country, though in some cases it will be high income proletariat (possibly proletarian intelligentsia), but at that level you are probably either driving a substantial share of your income from labor or forgoing income worth a substantial fraction of your current income by avoiding wage labor, so probably not the classical capitalist society upper class (pure capitalists / haut bourgeoisie.)

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

#997

Post by digitaltrees » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 5:18 AM UTC

fipple wrote: post #993

Smokey28 wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I've spent the last year or so studying Ford. His whole point was that if people didn't have the money to buy his product or time to use it (he reduced work hours as well) then your business will never survive. He wasn't banking on employee sales, he was looking at employees as a snapshot of a wider market. Great example is fast food as well. If you are offering the "lowest cost" food option, and provid…

LOL! Bezos is doing this to fuck Walmart. They employ much more minimum wage labor than Amazon does.

This is it.

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

#998

Post by sumedh » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 8:53 AM UTC

justtopost wrote: post #170

sumedh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions, Lot of those people are illegal immigrants as well. They cant job hop.

They can if legal. I am not interested in supporting crime. You can argue that it is a crime worth comitting for many people, but its still not something we should encourage in employment law of all places.

> They can if legal

I am talking about illegal immigrants who work for shady temp agencies and then are contracted to work for big players.

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

#999

Post by Bombthecat » Fri, Oct 05, 2018, 10:39 AM UTC

Smokey28 wrote: post #742

MrStonedOne wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point wasn't that paying employees more leads to sells. Its more of a remark about the overall world. Your employees are somebody's customers, your customers are somebody's employees, You are somebody's customer. If nobody in the world makes enough to be a consumer, nobody consumes, and thus you have no customers.

Exactly this. I've spent the last year or so studying Ford. His whole point was that if people didn't have the money to buy his product or time to use it (he reduced work hours as well) then your business will never survive. He wasn't banking on employee sales, he was looking at employees as a snapshot of a wider market. Great example is fast food as well. If you are offering the "lowest cost" food option, and provid…

It's a great move. They might even push it to 16.amazon is like :ok, no problem, fire 20% and automate.

Small buisness will go out of business... So amazon is preparing its Monopol. Really smart.

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

#1000

Post by hexane360 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #401

lgeorget wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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.)

How do you keep the economy running as purchase power goes down? Traditionally, I don't think you can. Henry Ford was one of the people to point this out; in the general case, you need to pay your workers enough (and keep prices low enough) that they can afford your products; else who can? (other threads have quoted him as well )

Note that one of the reasons the great depression was so bad was people underestimated the income elasticity of demand. This especially showed up in car manufacturing, where new car sales were almost entirely replaced by the used and repair markets.