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

441–450 of 1001 posts

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

#441

Post by leetcrew »

graedus wrote: post #312
leetcrew wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if that person is the richest man in the world, a US senator singling out a private citizen in formal legislation is still "punching down". you really shouldn't cheer for that.

I'm absolutely astonished at this definition of "punching down"!

afaik, it is commonly used to refer to situations where someone makes a joke at the expense of someone less powerful than they are.

do you disagree with my understanding of the definition, or are you implying that jeff bezos is more powerful than a US senator who made a decent run for the presidency and is acting in his official capacity as such?

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

#442

Post by zouhair »

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…

If anything that is not enough cynicism. There is still the matter of work conditions.

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

#443

Post by philwelch »

maaark wrote: post #125
roenxi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't crossed a threshold into being a big deal, but singling out an individual does look like bullying and bullying isn't funny. Jeff Bezos has to respect the law or face a series of consequences up to imprisonment. We all know he is going to respect the law like we all do. It is mean spirited to write a (potential) law that disrespects him directly. He can't really respond to that. Sanders should have stuck to…

When the individual is worth more than many nation states, I have no problem with singling them out.

Most of those poor nation states are that way because they have adopted Sanders' cynical attitude about business and capitalism.

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

#444

Post by gentaro »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #333
Shivetya wrote: post #87

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…

A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only businesses left are a drive-thru and a Dollar General. They can barely afford a dozen or so people working at minimum wage now, and they can't run a place with half the employees. Their customers can barely afford to shop there and can't take paying more to c…

Why not take this a step further and understand that their customer base will have more money to spend in those stores with a higher minimum wage?

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

#445

Post by conanbatt »

azernik wrote: post #357
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…

Which is how the system should work. Raising wages puts you at a cost disadvantage against competitors, but if all employers take collective action they only have to pay more for wages (rather than lose market share). That's why the early American robber barons lobbied for government regulation of child labor at times - they wanted to be able to abandon it without giving opponents an advantage.

But if it lowers unemployment because people that are worth less than 15U$S/hour cant get a job, you just created a poverty machine.

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

#446

Post by csours »

gizmo385 wrote: post #414
irishcoffee wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc. This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car. Being both a homeowner and a landlord, I could not pay my mortgage for a year before legal processes kick in, and if my tenants d…

> Being both a homeowner I'd wager that the vast majority of these people are not homeowners. I'm personally not a homeowner and if I missed a rent payment, my apartment complex could start eviction proceedings against me. Now I've personally got more than enough in savings to be able to move jobs if I so desired, but when a large percentage of this country has little to nothing in savings, they don't have the same l…

I got an eviction notice on my door once for being late with rent. I had the money, I think in that case my auto-pay had expired, so it wasn't transferred. My first notice that I was late was the eviction notice.

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

#447

Post by irishcoffee »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #380
irishcoffee wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If these people just "move jobs", they're out a paycheck for weeks and may lose their car, their home, not be able to eat, etc. This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car. Being both a homeowner and a landlord, I could not pay my mortgage for a year before legal processes kick in, and if my tenants d…

>This gets floated around a lot. At least in the US I can't imagine a scenario where not paying bills for 1 or 2 months results in homelessness and a repo'd car. >Being both a homeowner and a landlord You're in a totally different economic situation, and probably have little to no economic struggles at all. I'll call this out of touch as well.

So my current economic situation dictates my past economic situation? You're comfortable making that assumption?

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

#448

Post by jquip »

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…

Perhaps, if you'd look at it this way: Almost every article posted here speaks for the topic at hand. Many comments provide reasonable counterviews and create a sense of insight and nuance. This creates a sense of a somewhat balanced viewpoint about the topic. It's not that scoffers or only cynics here are upvoted. Sadly, cynicism often does seem to be the main emotion doing the rounds.

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

#449

Post by jmngomes »

nova22033 wrote: post #310
jmngomes wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "better workers" is usually defined by most companies as "smallest possible salary".

Isn't that how consumers behave? A "good deal" is usually finding the product at the lowest cost possible..which is usually made possible by paying people the "smallest possible salary" the market can bear. Consumers like you and I are responsible for this.

Well, it seems like you are conflating two very different issues, but anyway, that's not how I behave, personally. I buy more expensive products less often, provided that those are produced in a humane way (e.g. no sweat shops or animal cruelty involved).

A "better product", in my view, is radically different from a "cheaper/cheapest product". The same goes for professionals.

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

#450

Post by conanbatt »

wlll wrote: post #291
dantheman wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disastrous for low skilled workers. It removes the bottom rung of the economic ladder -- if you have no skills or little skills, the best way to develop skills is to be employed. If you don't provide more than 15$ per hour of value then you won't be able to get a job. This also helps create a moat around amazon - if they can get the costs of everyone to go up, when they unleash better picking/warehouse automa…

I don't think that's how employment pools work. Sure, there's an element of "this job is only worth $7.5/hour, so if we have to pay someone $15/hour we won't do it", but I'd suggest that those jobs are actually not that common. I'd instead suggest that most jobs need doing, and they will just cost more. Ditches still need digging, burgers still need flipping, and it will just cost a bit more now.

Lots of interesting things happen when you play with price. Sometimes its higher-paying workers that benefit the most: if you can handle data management manually at 7.5U$S you hire cheap labor. If it costs 15U$S you hire an engineer to make a permanent and scalable solution.

I am not enamored by the concept of minimum wage, and to this day its a fight among economists.

Post reply on HN