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Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

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

#731

Post by shimon »

skrebbel wrote: post #634
Dylan16807 wrote: post #588

Earlier 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.

Just trying to put some reasonable bounds on this estimate. I assumed 12 weeks is "the holiday shopping season" where Amazon has a lot of extra workers who would benefit. And I guessed 250k of them getting $3 raises. You could also guess at the total cost in other ways, many of which would be superior.

The overall goal of these lazy estimates is to understand how significant a cost this is for a company like Amazon. Could activists have hoped for more? Are other companies, for whom the costs would be felt quite differently, likely to offer something similar?

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

#732

Post by radicaldreamer »

slivym wrote: post #723
propman wrote: post #715

Let’s say $11 was the previous avg wage for let’s say 300k employees (250k full and 100k part time avg). $4 increase is $8000 more a year. That’s $2.4B yearly transfer to workers which is honestly really really amazing, props to Bezos. $8000 means 15.3% in payroll taxes so this wage increase will result in $367.2M in additional payroll taxes. 12% federal income tax as well for that $8000 is $288M per year. So amazon…

>Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? Can we do away with this now please. Amazon paying the taxes it can't avoid doesn't act as an excuse for avoiding the taxes that they do avoid. In fact, excusing Amazon's tax avoidance with the income tax it's employees pay is even worse. It's still a problem. We still need to tackle it, and if this pay rise acts to dissuade people from real tax reform and real workers rights then…

Jeff Bezos paying sales tax on his morning coffee is enough for the people looking for an extra dopamine hit by rah rahing Amazon. $15/hour still isn’t enough to live on in many cities and large scale tax evasion by corporations is one of the single most insidious epidemics in our society today.

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

#733

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

ttoinou wrote: post #718
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Minimum wage exclude and marginalize poor people The elimination of minimum wage would marginalize poor people even more . It's easy to think that the demand for labor is nearly infinite but at a super low wage. I mean, I'd gladly pay someone $2/hour to clean my house, and there are probably people desperate enough for money to buy food that they would do it. But minimum wage laws generally forbid it. But consider…

you create a race to the bottom But this is true for everything where you can apply supply and demand, and there's always a balance between the two. you end up with people willing to flip burgers or work a cash register for $2/hour But what happens in your scenario where there is a minimum wage law ? Those people magically make 5 times more ? Do you think you can force business to hire at any rate ? Or does the rate…

> But what happens in your scenario where there is a minimum wage law ? Those people magically make 5 times more ?

....yes? Considering that's what we have right now? You don't need to imagine this scenario. We're in it right now. In Oregon, the minimum wage is $10.75/hour.

> Do you think you can force business to hire at any rate ? [...] What if your increase this rate by 100x, what happens ?

Obviously not. I knew someone would try to make this argument, but I think its absurd.

> Or does the rate needs to follow productivity and current standard of living indexes ?

I'd make it follow a standard of living index. What the standard should be is up for debate, but I think at a minimum, someone working 40 hours a week should be able to live in a studio apartment on their own and buy food without government assistance. Two people working 40 hours a week each should be able to have a 2-bedroom apartment while raising a kid.

> If the scenario where people don't work for 2 USD/hour they have 0 of salary. So the second scenario where they work for 2 USD / hour makes everyone more rich, I would be more inclined to believe the median wage would increase

You're forgetting that the people formerly making minimum wage would either have their wage reduced to the hypothetical $2/hour or end up being replaced by a worker willing to work for $2/hour.

If you lower or remove minimum wage, every minimum wage job will have a reduction in the wage. When an employer pays minimum wage, they're implicitly saying "I'd pay you less, but the government won't let me."

> The most important is that people worked and sustained themselves.

Only by a technical definition of "sustained".

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

#734

Post by AnthonyMouse »

moftz wrote: post #700
chc wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 man…

> People like having a job, they don't like having to shop around in a place where there might not be too many opportunities.

But that's the point, isn't it? They put the warehouse there because it's where the cheap labor is. If you shame them into not paying less than $15/hour then the next warehouse they open might as well be in a place where $15/hour is the prevailing wage, or it was $14.75 with low unemployment and their presence only bumps it up to $15, meanwhile everyone in the small town they originally would have built in goes to the unemployment line.

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

#735

Post by [deleted] »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #732
slivym wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? Can we do away with this now please. Amazon paying the taxes it can't avoid doesn't act as an excuse for avoiding the taxes that they do avoid. In fact, excusing Amazon's tax avoidance with the income tax it's employees pay is even worse. It's still a problem. We still need to tackle it, and if this pay rise acts to dissuade people from real tax reform and real workers rights then…

Jeff Bezos paying sales tax on his morning coffee is enough for the people looking for an extra dopamine hit by rah rahing Amazon. $15/hour still isn’t enough to live on in many cities and large scale tax evasion by corporations is one of the single most insidious epidemics in our society today.

[deleted]

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

#736

Post by pm90 »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #732
slivym wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? Can we do away with this now please. Amazon paying the taxes it can't avoid doesn't act as an excuse for avoiding the taxes that they do avoid. In fact, excusing Amazon's tax avoidance with the income tax it's employees pay is even worse. It's still a problem. We still need to tackle it, and if this pay rise acts to dissuade people from real tax reform and real workers rights then…

Jeff Bezos paying sales tax on his morning coffee is enough for the people looking for an extra dopamine hit by rah rahing Amazon. $15/hour still isn’t enough to live on in many cities and large scale tax evasion by corporations is one of the single most insidious epidemics in our society today.

I agree that corporations are evading taxes on a massive scale, but can we also applaud them for taking steps in the right direction when they do?

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

#737

Post by specialp »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #631
hannasanarion wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is "economical" equivalent to "good"? The whole reason children work in coal mines is that others can't fit down the holes, it's simple economics. The reason black slaves work the fields is because white folks don't want to do the work for the going rate, it's simple economics. Economic forces are not guaranteed to produce a just society.

Did I say economical meant good? No, I said it's up to the government to change the requirements if it's decided that a certain pay is required to survive, and market forces won't lead to that amount. Your other two examples are quite the jump though, and not really worth commenting on.

I agree with this. Think about if we had no regulation or social support. Jeff Bezos is sitting there with 100s of thousands of times the wealth of his workers near starving. He would not be able to have that much wealth as there would be a revolt and he would be in danger. The fact that we subsidize the poor and keep order as a society is helping him to be able to live as an outrageously rich person in relative safety. So the inequity has to be brought down to a level where we don't have to subsidize the people making him outrageously wealthy while they have enough to get by.

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

#738

Post by apozem »

lhorie wrote: post #712
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 25% PR - 25% free advertising for their openings (i.e., Amazon pays well) - 25% necessity (we're at full-employment) -- and 25% ROI (they've figured less turnover and better quality employees are worth the investment) On the other hand, their stock is currently down by ~$30/share (~1.5%) following the announcement.

So, time to buy?

You joke but probably yes. Amazon can afford to raise wages because it's still slowly strangling old-world retail and absorbing the business they used to do. The raises don't change that.

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

#739

Post by philsnow »

B-Con wrote: post #730
propman wrote: post #687

Amazon says no more RSUs in exchange for $15 min wage, can anyone say how much the RSUs were for those employees? I’m curious as to what the difference is?

Where did you see that? I doubt hourly warehouse workers are getting RSUs to begin with, that tends to be for salaried positions only.

from https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/amazon-raises... :

> Is anything changing with Amazon’s RSU program? > Yes, we’ve heard from our hourly fulfillment and customer service employees that they prefer the predictability and immediacy of cash to RSUs. We will be phasing out the RSU grant program for stock which would vest in 2020 and 2021 for this group of employees, replacing it with a direct stock purchase plan before the end of 2019. The net effect of this change and the new higher cash compensation is significantly more total compensation for employees, without any vesting requirements, and with more predictability.

note,

> significantly more total compensation for employees

but is that at current AMZN prices or projected prices?

Take a look at the chart for AMZN zoomed way out. All I see with this is they want to hold back those high-growth RSUs and they're paying out in cash to distract people from looking into whether this is actually a good deal, long-term.

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

#740

Post by pathseeker »

slivym wrote: post #723
propman wrote: post #715

Let’s say $11 was the previous avg wage for let’s say 300k employees (250k full and 100k part time avg). $4 increase is $8000 more a year. That’s $2.4B yearly transfer to workers which is honestly really really amazing, props to Bezos. $8000 means 15.3% in payroll taxes so this wage increase will result in $367.2M in additional payroll taxes. 12% federal income tax as well for that $8000 is $288M per year. So amazon…

>Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? Can we do away with this now please. Amazon paying the taxes it can't avoid doesn't act as an excuse for avoiding the taxes that they do avoid. In fact, excusing Amazon's tax avoidance with the income tax it's employees pay is even worse. It's still a problem. We still need to tackle it, and if this pay rise acts to dissuade people from real tax reform and real workers rights then…

>Can we do away with this now please. Amazon paying the taxes it can't avoid doesn't act as an excuse for avoiding the taxes that they do avoid.

Can we do away with the notion that companies shouldn't pay the amount of taxes required by the law? What should Bezos tell the accountants? Pay 15% above whatever the required amount is? 20%?

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