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

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

#591

Post by fixermark » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #71

i_cant_speel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why any company treats any of their employees well. Google isn't giving their employees all these perks out of the goodness of their heart. They give them to attract the best talent to make the most money. Amazon is doing the same thing.

that's the whole point of the job market. The dysfunction displayed by Amazon is evidence of a supply/demand imbalance in the job market for warehousing roles, because if people have an option to move to another company that does not treat them badly they generally will do. As it stands I'm guessing the ratio of Amazon applicants to positions is way too high meaning they can afford a high turnover rate and focus sole…

As Amazon is in the retail shipping business, essentially, their market is also seasonal and accustom to hiring and firing. It's seen as a bit more of a stain on a software company's reputation to have high turnover in software engineers; much less so in warehouse workers, where the whole infrastructure is designed to staff up for the December holiday rush and then let most of those people go.

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

#592

Post by bhupy » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

phil248 wrote: post #345

bhupy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't pay a basic living wage, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. Why not let the employees decide if the job is worth taking? If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions, you have a job to offer.

If you, as a company, can't exchange full time work for an amount of money that keeps an individual out of poverty, you're forcing the rest of society to cover the difference. That's not a deal any government, or any taxpayers, should want to be a part of. I don't want my taxes subsidizing profitable corporations because they can find people willing to work for sub-poverty wages who fill in the gaps using the welfare…

But isn't using welfare to fill in the gaps the most efficient solution?

A well functioning market drives down the cost of goods and services to the minimum possible price, provided there's adequate competition. Commoditization is a good thing. The fact that bread and milk only cost a few dollars is net-good for society. Commoditization of labor should, thus, also be similarly good for society.

At the end of the day, we as a society (rightly) demand a minimum standard of living for everyone, and we collectively pay for that one way or the other. Either we pay taxes to fund a welfare state, or we pay inflated prices for goods and services to maintain wage floors. I'd argue that paying taxes for welfare is more progressive, as the burden falls on richer people. Paying inflated prices for goods and services is regressive as it's a burden that falls equally on the rich and the poor.

As long as we make sure that markets are competitive via regulation and that everything is commoditized, this sounds like a welfare problem and not a wage problem.

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

#593

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

sigzero wrote: post #580

czep wrote: post #47

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, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. That is so incredibly incorrect.

[deleted]

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

#594

Post by AlmostAsian » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

nebulous1 wrote: post #4

I mean, they get such bad press for the way they treat their workers it only seems fair to laud them for this. Good move. They have more to do though. I've went through a few articles on this but I didn't see any of them mention what Amazon's minimum actual pay was before this, just the federal minimum wage. Anybody know?

It’s about $6.

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

#595

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

_khau wrote: post #359

swebs wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None that I know of at least. If you can think of any, feel free to list them.

My point being that Capitalism has only been a thing for less 300 years, and what we have now isn't even capitalism. It's a warped perversion of it thanks to the inflated influence of ideologues like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and the politicians that bought into their narrow-minded dogma hook, line and sinker. The worst damage they and their ilk did was to convince the entire political spectrum from the ce…

If your criticism of capitalism is that it's not pure and not perfect, it's a non-sequitur since there are no pure and perfect ideologies, not in economics and not in government.

I'm reminded of that comic with the cats on trial. Capitalism sucks in many ways, but it sucks a hell of a lot less than the alternatives we've tried. Same with democracy.

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

#596

Post by hannasanarion » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #298

CydeWeys wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following this argument. 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?

The argument is 1) there is no common definition of what is acceptable, globally it depends on our current living standard hence ultimately the society's level of development 2) on an individual level some would not make the same choices as you so it is ridiculous for you to make judgments on behalf of others 3) if we had implemented those kind of laws earlier, either everybody was forbidden of improving its conditio…

>if we had implemented those kind of laws earlier, either everybody was forbidden of improving its conditions and freely shop for employers, there would have been enormous inflation (see Venezuela),

99% sure Venezuela's inflation problems come more from the fact that the president-dictator takes monetary policy advice from a ghost-parrot, and not as much from implementing occupational safety standards that have been normal in North America and Europe for a century.

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

#597

Post by civilian » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #289

bhupy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't pay a basic living wage, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. Why not let the employees decide if the job is worth taking? If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions, you have a job to offer.

This will lead to worsening conditions. For example, a person who lives with parents and doesn't pay any rent can work for significantly lower salary than the one who lives alone. For him even $1/hour is better than getting $0 sitting at home. Or immigrants who live 8 people in a room will be happy to work for a lower pay. The number of available jobs is limited. So people with higher demands, especially people with…

The number of available jobs is _not_ limited, it's a supply and demand curve!

An employer doesn't just have X jobs to fill a business. They have some number of tasks to do, and there's always more they could be doing. If they have the option of hiring some people at $5/hr and some at $10/hr, the boss can figure out how to get at least $5/hr in value out of the cheaper people he hires.

I think the person living with parents is a bad example too. $1/hr is nothing, and it'd probably just be better for that person to not have a job at all. Sometimes doing nothing is better than having a job that crappy.

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

#598

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #429

jrm5100 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If so, why didn’t the employees change jobs? Monosopy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony ...why the downvotes?

Because it doesn't make any sense. Amazon doesn't dominate the jobs market.

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

#599

Post by bhupy » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #289

bhupy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't pay a basic living wage, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. Why not let the employees decide if the job is worth taking? If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions, you have a job to offer.

This will lead to worsening conditions. For example, a person who lives with parents and doesn't pay any rent can work for significantly lower salary than the one who lives alone. For him even $1/hour is better than getting $0 sitting at home. Or immigrants who live 8 people in a room will be happy to work for a lower pay. The number of available jobs is limited. So people with higher demands, especially people with…

This sounds like a welfare problem and not a wage problem. If the market drives down the cost of labor, that's good for everyone. If there exists people whose skillsets aren't sufficient to maintain some minimum standard of living, we ought to give them welfare, either in the form of direct money or "free" goods/services.

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

#600

Post by chc » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #42

School-Cotton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Amazon actually pay any worse or have worse working conditions than any other unskilled warehouse job? If so, why didn’t the employees change jobs? If not, why is so much criticism directed at Amazon specifically, rather than at capitalism itself?

I don't know why you're down voted. People like to shame Amazon/Walmart for their wages and working conditions, but I guarantee they're doing a lot of the exact same things as other companies who are less criticized, Target, Meijer, etc.. Like he said, Amazon has it's issues but the employees were free to quit and work at other similar positions in similar companies.

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 more attention.