This is a bit of a minor point, but is Sen. Sanders going to rename the bill from "Stop BEZOS Act" now?
"Stopped BEZOS Act"
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
691–700 of 1001 posts
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#692Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those making $200k-$500k are the new middle class. Are you making that much but only own one house? Are your cars more than 5 years old... Ding... you're in the middle class.
Depends on location. In the Bay area? Sure. I live in suburbs outside Portland, OR. My wife and I together make about $150k/year. We both own cars less than 3 years old. We only own 1 house, but we take a 2-week vacation a 1-week vacation every year.
Sounds like middle class to me
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#693There'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?
Ford's $5/day wage doesn't happen in a vacuum.
The showmanship and publicity causes pressure on other manufacturers to pay that much. Otherwise, anybody working at a competitor will just be thinking to themselves "I'm just working here to get experience so I can have an edge on other applicants at Ford." Competitors that pay less will be dealing with high turnover unless they match Ford's wages.
And it's not just car companies that have to match wages. Other industries will have to keep up. And once everybody is making decent money, you have more customers.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why are you comparing 12 weeks with the entire 2017 revenue? They aren't. They're comparing to revenue per hour. It doesn't matter what period of time you calculate revenue per hour with, you always get the same number.
They're comparing 12 weeks of warehouse work to revenue per hour. Why twelve weeks? It still makes no sense.
Think of it like this, 12 weeks of extra labour cost is offset by 17.7 revenue hours, you could also say 1 weeks extra labour cost is the equivalent of just under 1.5 revenue hours.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#695@dang Looks like a bug [0]. The story has been on top of the page for a while now with over 500+ votes. I believe it got merged with a new story that messed up the vote count. 0: https://imgur.com/kYztZ9T
Not a bug, just a manual kludge I did in order to share some karma with the original submitter. The submission that was at #1 before that is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120667 .
[deleted]
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
So the less fortunate who are forced to rely on these basic jobs should live below poverty, so you can enjoy some extra cash to travel internationally? The reality is, in modern America the percentage of people relying on these jobs as their sole source of income is much larger than the highschoolers looking to make some extra cash. We shouldn't sacrifice the masses to enable the few to maintain an optional job, in m…
Do you have a source for that claim?
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#697Earlier 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?
One possibility: the economy has a surplus of people who are looking for unskilled warehouse jobs, so even if other places had better quality, it was difficult to switch.
I'm guessing for many people an Amazon warehouse job is stable employment near their small town that might not have many opportunities otherwise. Lots of small towns on this list and I can't imagine all of them had a booming economy before Amazon showed up. I'm not saying it's right to abuse your workers but $10/hr goes a long way in some places. It's not the same as working in a coal mine but it has some similar themes: small town, crappy job, relatively good pay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_locations#Fulfi...
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Inflation can come from different factor ;I was not saying that Venezuela had gone down that precise path. Sorry I wasn't more clear.
Anyway, if the cost of work becomes overnight at minimum 1 million USD per month, what do you think would happen ?
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on location. In the Bay area? Sure. I live in suburbs outside Portland, OR. My wife and I together make about $150k/year. We both own cars less than 3 years old. We only own 1 house, but we take a 2-week vacation a 1-week vacation every year.
Sounds like middle class to me
Oh yeah, absolutely. I consider myself the quintessential middle class.
My point was that kidsnow said $200-500k is middle class, but it really depends on location. It often feels that the majority of people on Hacker News are living in a Silicon Valley bubble. They talk as if $1,000,000 for a 1500 sq ft house is normal, as if $150k is decent entry-level wage, and...you get the idea.
$200-500k is middle class for Silicon Valley, but the higher end of that range is definitely upper class where I live.
Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mor…
And if you cheat on your wife, it's not like she's going to divorce you that day and be married the next. Not everyone can just pickup and go to the other fulfillment warehouse next door. Amazon has their warehouses in a lot of small towns and I'm sure many of them were not doing so great before they showed up. People like having a job, they don't like having to shop around in a place where there might not be too many opportunities.