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One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

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Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#381

Post by kevincox »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #333
muffinman26 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it mid-skilled desk jobs that are becoming worth less and less? You can't automate a lot of tasks firefighters do. You need someone to actually show up in-person, in an area where there might be things that interfere with electronics. Automation in cleaning or cooking is pretty minimal. I don't see computers replacing chefs at any of the restaurants in town. We have roombas, but they aren't even particularly go…

You can't yet, but with robots you will be able to. Once humanoids are good enough nobody will be, or rightfully want to be a firefighter. Even without AGI, teleoperation could be enough. However once AI is good enough that you don't need a human to operate it then there's no reason to hire a human for any step in the process.

Or more importantly you can make each human far more effective with partial automation (AKA tools).

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#382

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #309
michael9423 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. So the issue is simply in how corporations are set up and how the stock market is designed. The entire system is designed to drain as much val…

> At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. You are wrong, but so very close that it's understandable. What can be done with an hour of labour has gone up so very high. That it is true. But what has increased in v…

Infrastructure is not sentient. Remember that and the causes of French Revolution my friend.

With no one to run the tools or tools workers chained to tools what good are the tools? They decay and many cannot be moved effectively.

Thanks to the fact that criminals won the war on drugs - a destitute life on the streets perpetually high on meth or heroin and alcohol appears to remain within reach for the foreseeable future posing an attractive alternative lifestyle for those dispossessed of abusive labor conditions. Funding social welfare programs would rebalance the calculus but that fact is angrily denied by most wealthy people despite the overwhelming consensus amongst researchers and practitioners.

Expect the difficulty to staff these expensive tools with impoverished staff to fuel inflation for the foreseeable future. It is not impossible that ever more creative financial engineering may stave off any of the countless imposing financial crises but the rebalance against capital for labor is long overdue even without a financial crisis to fuel discontent.

I for one hope that the rebalance can occur peaceably but accept the fact that rich and powerful live in reality distortion fields so are more likely to lash out violently than concede a single of their unearned pennies.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#383

Post by undersuit »

malfist wrote: post #156
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct comparison would be of the marginal cost of eligibility testing (both in terms of false positives and false negatives) vs the marginal cost of fraud. There is a much better way to do this, because the way we do it is entirely asinine. On the one hand we say that people who make more money should pay higher marginal tax rates, and set marginal rates on lower income people to low or zero rates. On the oth…

I love the idea of a UBI, but there is a real risk of the UBI being impacted like the minimum wage. When initially passed it's set to a barely reasonable level, and then not adjusted for decades. Not saying it can't be solved, tie it to inflation or CPI, but I doubt that could pass.

Index it to inflation and someone that wants to attack the program just needs to make the Bureau of Labor unable to issue accurate inflation metrics.

I think UBI would need some sort of scaling factor but you can't just hand wave it away to some other corruptible government group.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#384

Post by undersuit »

torginus wrote: post #211
no_wizard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The government subsidizes corporate low wage work But importantly only the lowest of the low wages There is a huge swath of workers that can't get benefits like food stamps or medicaid because they don't qualify via the means testing formula and they can't really afford to live where they live, afford medical insurance etc. Its those folks that have it the worst, IMO. Cost of living keeps you from building any wealt…

> means testing[2] often costs more than the cost of fraud in social benefit programs! This is like saying that since robbery is rare, the cost of permitting robbery is lower than funding the police force, thus we should defund the police. Robbery is rare because the police exists

>Robbery is rare because the police exists

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/17/if-the-crime-rate-goes-d...

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#386

Post by FireBeyond »

gruez wrote: post #161
cardy31 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting reasonable minimum wages would take care of citizens without a patchwork of programs being needed.

If you want the government to "take care of it citizens", what we actually need is a floor on income (eg. welfare/UBI), not a floor on wages (ie. minimum wage). Minimum wage does nothing for people who are unemployed, of which it's inevitably going to exacerbate.

> Minimum wage does nothing for people who are unemployed, of which it's inevitably going to exacerbate.

Yet more "privatize profits, socialize the costs".

Minimum wage has always trailed living wage. Often by a decade plus. It's always in arrears that it is updated (and several of the last updates have been further and further apart).

Businesses have been able to pay people less than liveable wages, and then when there's an attempt at parity, they scream about how unfair it will be to that untouchable and sacrosanct pillar of American society, the Small Business Owner.

Except I don't recall reading anywhere that a business owner was entitled to profitability.

At a certain point, if your business can't afford to keep up with living wage needs, the solution is to close your doors, not advocate for underpaying people.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#387

Post by mewpmewp2 »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #280
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just have the government stop having laws that constrain competition, so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps, and then at lower prices people buy more products and services, increasing the demand for labor and decreasing the cost of living.

I think the US should seek both capitalistic and socialistic policies simultaneously, but this would require a revolution that may [not be possible / very difficult] to achieve from within the US political system because its "operating system" is tainted by lobbyists for the billionaires. i. Restore corporate tax rates to historically high levels ii. Increase capital gains tax significantly iii. Tax speculation-deriv…

Shrink defense spending when Russia and China are gearing up for World domination?

I am from Europe, and in more immediate danger, but I would still hope US will defend any sort of democracy we have vs the threat of dictatorships. I know my country has helped out US with its wars.

Now is the time to increase those budgets, not decrease. Decreasing would actually increase the odds of WW3.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#388

Post by always2slow »

bloppe wrote: post #334
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You're forgetting that there is a finite amount of work needed and so orders-of-magnitude fewer people are required. Also, the average real purchasing power in America has been declining for a very long time and cannot afford goods and services except through taking on debt.

The average real purchasing power in America has been increasing since at least 2010: https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-purchasi...

This is so weird.. my experience doesn't match with this data at all.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#389

Post by skulk »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #196
atleastoptimal wrote: post #129

Here's the thing. This is going to happen to everyone, as in, no person will be valuable enough via the contribution of their labor to survive without subsidies. At the level of automation we've reached in society, low-skilled labor is worth, per hour, a very small amount. As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility. The only way around this is to let those people starve…

Yep. There will be too many people competing for too few jobs, even so-called high demand professional specialities. There are always too many lawyers, and it's not a lawyer joke. We're going to have to reform extreme wealth inequalities and move to UBI and redistribution of wealth, or otherwise there will be a great upheaval and billions will be impoverished and living in favelas in 20 years. Already, there are vast…

> otherwise there will be a great upheaval and billions will be impoverished and living in favelas in 20 years.

Let me just... yep. 1.1 billion living in slums or slum-like conditions today. We're already there.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#390

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #347
mrguyorama wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet those places are entirely unwilling, and sometimes literally economically unable, to increase what they are offering to fill those positions. It's not staffing issues. Companies very clearly are willing to overwork their existing staff rather than hire new. There's a store of our local grocery chain that is placed in an extremely high traffic, high income, extremely high wealth portion of the state. It pulls…

So, your theory is that they could double their payroll because grocery stores are so high-margin that this is no big deal? Or is it that you believe they wouldn't have whiny complainoids even at $40/hour, making it expensive but worth the increased cost? What happens when their competitors need to do the same thing just to stay in business... will everyone somehow magically have the top 5% of the wagie class, and ev…

there's no merit because if there was, someone would be doing it.

The fact of the matter is most real-life business deal with razon-thin margins, particularly retail , and if you want to compete with amazon chinese subsidies, you have to literally run on fumes, all the time.

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