271–280 of 1001 posts
The blog post says "employees". No reporter I've seen has bothered to ask if it applies to contractors.
I think we're seeing an Amazon press release regurgitated as news on a wire service, no independent reporting involved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. Or maybe it will just force employers to pay better wages to those they employ already. $7.50 / hour is what they pay kids here to stock grocery chains.
I think the point is that many people aren’t worth $15/hour. Having a well-stocked grocery store is worth $15/hour if the person doing the job is fast. But slower stockers may lose their jobs altogether. Most companies I’ve worked at have had mailrooms. Very few have had people actually working in them. Which tells me that when the buildings were designed, the mailroom was considered valuable enough to include in the…
Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place! By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day…
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…
So, because the world used to terrible centuries ago, and still is in some undeveloped or wartorn nations, we should be OK with it continuing to be terrible here in one of the richest nations in the world, even though it doesn't have to be?
>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…
Skepticism of concentrated power is the ur-American political belief. We seem to have forgotten that lately.
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I know you're joking. But it's not true that rising the minimum wage would immediately be cancelled out by inflation. That would be true only if everybody was earning minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage from 5 to 50 dollars is unlikely to cause a 10x inflation, it more likely would cause a 3x or 5x inflation. The poor would have more and the rich would have less. It would likely reduce the spread of wealth in t…
High minimum wage doesn't hurt the "rich" it hurts everyone who's making just more than minimum all the way to the upper middle class because their cost of living either increases or their standard of living decreases. The "rich" are rich enough that it's just a drop in the bucket. Edit: I don't mean to say that minimum wage isn't worthwhile, just that framing it in terms of a rich to poor wealth transfer is somewhat…
Really, some of the stuff you read on HN is just mind-boggling.
In spite of the gig economy trying hard to erase decades of stability for millions of people even the smallest attempt at reductio-ad-absurdum would show that there is an optimimum somewhere and that there is absolutely no law of nature that dictates that that optimum lies at $2.75, $7, $15 or anywhere in particular.
Whatever you make the minimum, there will always be people who earn just a bit more and of course it will lead to some inflation but the end result will be a higher standard of living for those for whom the change is the most important.
For all the laughter about the EU from the US when it comes to social security I'd like to point out that Amazon already operates here and has to pay the local minimum wage and that consumers are still buying their products.
Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place! By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day…
> If you can't pay a basic living wage Stop right there. What about people who don't need a basic living wage, like students who still live with their parents? Why should they be pushed out of the market? I worked in high school, starting when I was 16. It was minimum wage. Without that job I wouldn't have been able to afford a car (necessary where I lived), travel to Greece and Italy, and have my own spending money.…
> Why should people like you have the right to tell people like me that we can't willingly work?
This isn't personal, I as a member of this society have a right to make my point that the powerful shouldn't exploit the powerless. Not that I'm calling you a trust fund kid, but this is the same argument you hear from people who are sitting on inherited wealth, and appeal to "natural rights" to keep the evil tax man from taking anything away from what is rightfully theirs. Rightfully theirs, by birth alone, mind you. Think for a minute about the opposite end of the spectrum, people born into abject poverty. They have a right to a dignified life, with a job that pays them enough to survive, rather than having to beg for whatever Johnny Moneybags decides to toss into the street from the window of his Rolls.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Well in this respect: Amazon chooses to link the two discussions themselves. They could have easily made their communication less open to an easy attack by pledging $15 an hour while lobbying silently, or at least communicating that on another moment. They could have noble intentions with both moves. I'd even expect them to have noble intentions since $15 seems an unreasonable large increase from $7.25. Why link to t…
My guess is that from Amazon's point of view, they are winning political points by not just raising their own minimum wage to $15, they are also using their standing in the industry to increase quality of life for non-Amazon minimum wage workers. If they succeed, I am happy to grant them the credit they are due.
If a big corporation doing the right thing results in more profits for them, I don't see that as grounds for criticism. Did we criticize Starbucks when they offered a competitive wage and free college education? Or any of the other companies that chose to pay above the minimum?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all relative. If minimum wage workers get their income doubled, but my income does not double, then they are doing better relative to me than they were before. And I do not expect my salary to double upon passing of such legislation.
Are you saying your salary is based on keeping the working poor? OR are you saying you think corporations and their investors deserve a low wage workforce that the government will take care of with your tax dollars? I find no logical sense other then your mad that people can make money for WORKING. When people make $15 an hour they will need less government assistance. This will take away from corporate's profits, wh…
>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…
$15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgroun…
I don't believe that. People aren't going to dig the ditches and flip the burgers themselves just because it costs them a few $ per hour more now. These people aren't taking part in "charity" jobs that will dissapear if the wages go up, they're still going to stack shelves, they're just going to do it for more $.
Additionally, paying people an actual livable wage I'd suggest makes it more likely they will be reliable. When you're not juggling poverty related health problems with more jobs than it's sensible to have I'd suggest you will perform better at whatever job you do.
> The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgrounds, and more.
I'm not sure I follow you there. It seems that you're saying that there's a band of workers that are unreliable (credit/crimial issues) that are just waiting for wages to go up before they jump into the labor pool, but that the lower paid workers don't have these problems?
> Meaning more reliable candidates will come back in and those who dismissed fast food, warehouse, and retail, jobs as not paying enough will now accept those jobs. You will get some retirees, stay at homes, college kids, and even some recent graduates, coming in.
This seems to contradict what you said in the last paragraph so I might have misunderstood something somewhere. Regardless, I doubt there's a pool of workers who are well enough off that they don't have to currently work who on discovering that the lowest paid jobs in the country now pay a bit more will suddenly want to start work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgroun…
> $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.)