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

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

#971

Post by badpun » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #756

jzymbaluk wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Amazon's starting pay varies by location — $10 an hour at a warehouse in Austin, Texas, for example, and $13.50 an hour in Robbinsville, New Jersey. For 2017, the median Amazon employee earned just under $28,500, according to company filings. From the CNBC article: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/amazon-raises-minimum-wage-t...

For information in the UK (Milton Keynes) for a Fulfilment Associate its. • £8.20 per hour (days) to £10.16 per hour (nights). Rising to £10.50 per hour (days) to £12.46 per hour (nights) from November 1st 2018. • Overtime rates between £12.30 per hour and £16.40 per hour. Rising to £15.75 per hour to £21.00 per hour from November 1st 2018.

If anyone's interested, in Poland it's the equivalent of $4.50-$5/h, depending on the location.

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

#972

Post by badpun » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #239

bufferoverflow wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it will increase unemployment and will increase the inflation. Why stop at $15? Let's make it $50/hr, make everyone "rich".

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…

> 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.

I' guessing it would rather create massive unemployment, and subsequently be cancelled. Think about it - middle-class people are ok with paying $4 for their Starbucks coffee, but if they were to pay say $10 (because the baristas salaries just tripled), probably a lot of them would cut back on them. Maybe even Starbucks would disappear altogether. Multiply that effect across all industries hiring minimum-wage workers. It would be a train wreck.

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

#973

Post by JPGalt » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

askmike wrote: post #30

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?

> they get such bad press for the way they treat their workers it only seems fair to laud them for this. That's because they treat their workers terrible. They're a huge company with a lot of profit and how people at the bottom of the chain are treated is maddening. They're seen as an example of how not to treat workers (and for good reason). They definitely should not be lauded for this: They did some calculations a…

I have friends that work there. This was not a gift, the took benefits from the workers to pay for this raise. In fact they pulled all of the bonuses from the lower level employees as well as their share of stock in the company. This is a dog and pony show, nothing more.

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

#974

Post by tcbawo » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #938

tomcam wrote: post #935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly think that there's something deeply damaged at the heart of the American psyche. Why is it the #1 destination country for immigrants?

Not because of the American psyche, because the US is better at marketing an idealized (and false) version of its culture to the world than other countries. Nevertheless, the US is a country that considers guns an inalienable right, but not healthcare, education or a living wage. Most of the rest of the world would consider that a pathologically insane set of priorities.

A sizable portion of US culture idolizes self-reliance and independence. So, prioritizing gun ownership is consistent with that. The other side of this ethos is looking down on those who must be given services rather than "earn" them. Similarly, a sizable segment of the population pays taxes or paid taxes during their working lives and is angry when people receive benefits that they had to pay for. This anger is exacerbated by the preponderance of earnings cliffs, systemic fraud, and lack of oversight.

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

#975

Post by longerthoughts » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

Looks like this isn't great for all of their employees due to removal of existing perks: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-employees-say-will-mak...

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

#976

Post by iguy » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

c0nducktr wrote: post #892

WalterBright wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford's move was because he had difficulty attracting and retaining workers for boring assembly line work.

Correct. > At the time, workers could count on about $2.25 per day, for which they worked nine-hour shifts. It was pretty good money in those days, but the toll was too much for many to bear. Ford's turnover rate was very high. In 1913, Ford hired more than 52,000 men to keep a workforce of only 14,000. New workers required a costly break-in period, making matters worse for the company. Also, some men simply walked a…

Came here to say this.

His factory needed a stable workforce, more so than most at the time -- because one screw-up could stop the line. And he was willing to pay for this. Hire the most stable, least-drunk, workers around.

Of course he wasn't above some good PR, either. (And this was also the era when you could get a patent on a perpetual motion machine, right?) He'd be thrilled to see his PR quoted uncritically a century later.

This shift to more stable employment wasn't all gravy, by the way. In a factory town where the average guy keeps a job for a few months at a time, a recession means that it takes him a bit longer to find the next job... everyone's looking at the same time. But in a factory town where the average guy keeps his job for decades, layoffs are much more serious. Which is part of why the "great" depression gets this adjective in out memory, and others don't.

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

#977

Post by notfromhere » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #838

blazespin wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy is a sort of perpetual motion machine / ponzi scheme. It's based on some common hallucination that the things we buy matter, and it's all backed up by money we loan each other. The moment we stop investing, borrowing and loaning, it will all come tumbling down. This is sort of what caused the panic of 2008 and why the governments had to step in with QE.

Without population growth, big parts of many national economies become unsustainable. They're like MLM, Ponzi Schemes, or other pyramid schemes in this way.

That's not true. Population growth and economic growth are related, but can happen without the other.

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

#978

Post by ecolonsmak » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #721

smilbandit wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and thus grew the middle class. The middle class is something we truly need to focus on growing again.

> and thus grew the middle class. The middle class is something we truly need to focus on growing again. But that's the problem with things like this. We keep focusing on the top and the bottom but not the middle. So we pass laws purporting to tax the rich (but really anyone with a full time job) and then the rich hire accountants and only the middle class pays. Then we clamor for a higher minimum wage, but the middl…

income in excess of $5million/yr taxed at 91%.

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

#979

Post by iguy » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

robbiep wrote: post #799

skybrian wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but I doubt this had much effect outside Detroit. Anyone know the history? This would be like claiming that high salaries in Silicon Valley are somehow going to fix inequality nationwide. There is some spillover but it only goes so far.

The history of the ford plant and the $5 a day wage was a seminal moment in the growth of the Industrial Age and the middle class, in general, worldwide (or at least in the western world). There are hundreds of sources, you should be able to find some good ones without too much trouble

Here's a good commentary:

http://archive.is/QX6kB == https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor...

Ford was paying above-par wages to have a more-stable workforce, because his production line was more sensitive to bad/absent workers than the typical factory of his time.

It also came with a fair dose of patronage, like inspections of workers houses to make sure they weren't drinking, and were teaching their kids english.

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

#980

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #962

WalterBright wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 20% was in the slave economy of the south. The north did not have slaves, and the middle class was in the north.

It's 20% of the population of the entire country. It was probably much more than 20% in the South, indeed (in some states as high as _65%_ enslaved people at some times!), and less in the North. The North did originally have some enslaved people. The economies were clearly related.

The severing of the economies at the outset of the Civil War, and the total destruction of the southern economy during the war, yet the continued prosperity of the northern economy shows that the northern economy was not dependent on slaves.

> The North did originally have some enslaved people.

Yes, and the ending of that did not retard the economy or reduce the middle class in any detectable way. The middle class increased throughout the 19th century.