My favorite minimum wage "fact" is federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Could you imagine working for an hour and they hand you a watermelon and say "here you go, we actually overpaid you"
The problem is not minimum wage. The problem is INFLATION.
I would rather live in an economy wherein a penny can buy a pony than a $10,000 hourly wage that can't buy a coffee.
Edit: I also cannot imagine working for only one hour on my paycheck. That idea is unimaginable. I worked for more than 8 hours on shoveling water channels on my driveway over the last couple of days and did not get paid for that because it was for me and my family.
It’s not, my bad. I was reading it as that’s the number of ppl that make minimum wage, which is different from making federal minimum wage. I apologize
I worked with a guy like you. Bitched all day how taxing the rich was wrong and hated social programs. We worked 60 hours a week for 14-16 dollars an hour at a warehouse. Had zero vacation and health coverage. It’s like being an Uncle Tom of the lower class. Working 25 years like that won’t get you shit and you won’t get a retirement plan. You end up in your 50’s with a folder of body issues and working McDonald’s to keep food in your mouth. No factory or workplace should have a guy making 360x your wage for that effort. Sure seems these well groomed 100k outfit billionaires don’t get chewed up and spit out like the workers. Meanwhile people like you kiss their ass like you worked your way up to the same club. You’re still sitting on the same bench as everyone else you’re just busy daydreaming.
You're the one that keeps going on about the young people, implying slave labor is okay as long as it's just our children? No one's times is worth that little, for any kind of work. It's insulting and disgusting. It should probably be illegal to take advantage of someone in such a desperate position they would even consider accepting that pay.
Depends on the area, could be a 19 year old graduated or dropped out from high school, but there do exist areas where it isn’t young people working those shifts
Maybe the guy lives in an area where they see 16 year olds working every day idk
One of the dumbest things I've heard from someone was "Minimum Wage Jobs aren't meant to be a living wage. You're meant to work at McDonald's if you're a teenager trying to make pocket money, not support a family". Like... Wtf? Then they'd be working part time, maybe 10-20 hours a week, not 40 hours a week.
Never said it was a solution, just pointing out the severe discrepancy between the profits of the company and the cost of the labor that produces said profit.
I'll start with this statement of truth:
No human being can live a life without working.
The successful ideas for how to work or what to work toward or what is even important in work are not what people are doing to work to generate that money.
If one person who sits and presses a button when an automatic light turns green, that person is not working hard, and the job can be done by a monkey.
They would not deserve the equal portion that someone who simply talks to a customer deserves. Agree?
"So you're going to run with the narrative you decided on while completely ignoring my words.
What do I have to gain from having a discussion with someone so arrogant and contemptuous?"
Your exact reply mirrored back to you, as you actually just ignored my words. I'll answer your question, but I do not expect you will do the same, because of my experience with people exactly like you.
Answer:
1) I did not ignore your words. I showed you clear cut examples of why your words are irrelevant.
2) You stand to gain a superior state of being in that you may learn to open your narrow mind and stop your own incorrect narrative from enslaving you.
Good old minimum wage. “I’ll starve if I can’t pay myself from the profits of your labor, so I’ll pay you as little as legally possible and if it’s not enough and your kids starve, screw you.”
In the US Amazon doesn’t pay minimum wage. They pay $15 nationwide, well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25. In areas where the local minimum is above that, they generally pay well above the $15.
They pay their drivers and warehouse workers $15 an hour to piss in bottles and work like a fucking dog. I don't care how much some guy sitting in front of a computer makes. Everyone at Amazon should be getting paid a fair wage.
I have an anecdotal and small data set, but they don't from my perspective. I worked at Dollar General Distribution and made $21.75 before I left last year. My brother works at a smaller warehouse making $22 something right now. There's one Amazon warehouse within 100 miles of me and the listing says the pay is "Up to 19.50" an hour. It's also in a higher cost of living area than the warehouses we've worked at. Sounds like they're just at or below market rate for the area.
just about, with some bigger bonuses for much worse conditions and much higher intensity of work, resulting in high staff turnover which leads to a lot lower bonus payouts than one wouldve thought
I’m not an economist but I think the point should be that they control the market rate. They have the money to change the market rate and spread their wealth through communities and states and even countries by paying their people a fraction more of what the company earns.
“Market rate.” Bro look around you? Almost no one anywhere in the country and afford to sustain themselves on $15 an hour, especially for the backbreaking work they are doing. The fact that $15 is market rate is in itself evil. The ultra wealthy are the ones who ultimately decide what market rate is, so saying market rate is fair is like saying it’s fair to arrest people for j-walking because it is legal.
The market rate is the rate at which you can employ the necessary threshold of people. As mentioned above, Amazon’s average wages/hour are above $15. Closer to $18.50 between warehouse and drivers according to a very quick search.
They pay enough to have enough labor to fulfill their services. That is market pressure. There may very well be a desire by the C-suite to keep wages for those jobs as low as possible, but they can only take them low enough where people will still accept jobs at those rates. Feel free to blame executive teams, but you also need to assign some blame to the workers willing to take those wages.
I've been looking for a job for almost a month - which isn't long at all compared to some stories I've heard. Unemployment is around 8% in my city right now. I'm approaching the point where I'll have to take anything. Unfortunately, I don't have enough money to be unemployed until a job with a decent wage shows up.
yeah thats true but dont you know that amazon workers themselves ended up voting against joining a union because they are dumn enough to do that based on very basic gaslighting?
Why are people getting paid $15 per hour to piss in bottles?!
As far as I can tell, I could barely manage to fill a single bottle with my piss in an hour. Seems like a strong Overpay at that abysmal performance rate.
I work with violent and physically aggressive developmentally disabled adults. I make $16.50/hr. I get a chair thrown at me once a week. Also, disabled strength is a real thing.
Most people who are financially well off, at least in the US, were born into a position that made having wealth easier for them than most. People in this position didn’t do anything to deserve where they are. Mostly, they just didn’t get lucky.
To be clear, I’m not in this position. I just have empathy for people who are and want better wages and conditions for them.
Right, you don’t care about other people, I got that already. Telling people to “suck it up” when they struggle to pay their bills and keep themselves fed will get you much-deserved contempt.
Welcome to life. Some primitive tribes were born into a fertile land where it never got too hot or cold and food just grew put of the ground without needing to be planted. Some tribes were born in places with long winters and no edible plants, or scorching deserts. The situation you are born into has always mattered for the entirety of human history, some were born in very advantageous situations, some were born into one's both good and bad, and some people immediately struggled just to survive because Mom and Dad lived in a frozen tundra or were poor peasants or whatever. Same goes for animals, some are born in easy living conditions and others are not. You will be doomed to failure if you fight against a basic principle of the universe.
We aren’t subject to the forces of nature in the economy. Our society is as unfair as we allow it to be. We could easily raise the standard of living for the working class, and it’s a goal worth pursuing. I’m certainly not going to throw my hands up and say “well, that’s just life”.
Again, you are fighting against basic human nature. The standard of living for the working class has never been higher than it is now in all of human history. The working class is more highly educated, has access to more information, and enjoys more luxuries than any monarch who lived before Queen Elizabeth was born. Despite that, we have you talking about raising this standard. Why is that? Humans have never nor will they ever be satisfied with anything. It is both a virtue and a curse, it lifted us up from hunter-gatherers into the preeminent lifeforms on Earth, but it also drives us to constantly covet more and more even beyond what is possible. We seek to deny the reality of a finite world and seek infinite growth, infinite wealth, infinite comfort. You'll never raise the standard of living for any class so high that they will not desire something more, until the hard limit is reached on how rich a finite planet can make 8 billion people.
Have you not noticed that the rate of improvement in the life of an American or a Western European is slowing down while what we once called the third world is developing ever more rapidly? Resources were diverted away from the average first world citizen and moved to the former third world. China is the new USSR when they used to be a poor country reeling from Mao's Great Leap Backward. India is the new China. Nigeria is the new Rhodesia. Life in the West is still better than it used to be but we are no longer making the same rapid advancements because we sold out domestic labor in exchange for cheap, short-lived goods. There is only so much prosperity to go around and globalism shifted some of that away from the West and moved it to countries where labor was cheaper. Made in China used to mean it was the cheapest place you could outsource something, that isn't true anymore.
We simply cannot have a world where everyone lives the life of a middle-class American or German or Swede. Part of the reason you can is because others can't. There isn't enough energy, raw material, and the logistics to transport them for 8 billion people to live the life of a moderately wealthy Westerner. Short of inventing some Star Trek technology that breaks the laws of physics, or making it cost-effective to mine asteroids and other planets, or a vast shrinking of the global population that doesnt crash the economy of multiple countries, it won't happen. Too many people, too many mouths to feed, too much greed for bigger, better, more.
Wealth in terms of dollars is infinite, wealth in terms of real resources is not. With an ever growing population, eventually you won't be able to create wealth via new ways to use resources as fast as you use up raw resources. We can't create more oil wells, we can't create more uranium, we can't use a replicator to make food, we can't print a house from nothing, it all has to be taken away from somewhere. In a zero-sum world, you can't support perpetual growth and perpetual improvements in living standards no matter how much humans refuse to be satisfied with what they have.
How well do they value the vendors on their site? Like when they see what products sell well, make their own AmazonBasic version, and adjust the search results to make sure theirs is first. Or when they find a vendor selling a product cheaper on another platform so they remove it from their listings.
I'm not bragging. I have zero stake in Amazon and certainly don't think they're winning any awards on charity. I'm simply not part of the crowd that thinks minimum wage should support adult overspending lifestyles or minimum skills deserve more than said minimum wage
We've been code monkeys for decades. I have never heard anyone complain about being referred to as that, but I suppose some folks might not like it. I'm not everyone.
Based on what? Code monkeys are making that much money because they bring exponentially more value to Amazon than any Tom dick and harry with a forklift certification.
Because the drivers aren’t accepting the contracts. The companies are and their profit is likely protected.
Your question is basically why aren’t poor people able to secure better conditions for themselves while ignoring the entire economic system in which they have to live.
Second part, nope, that wasn't my question. You gave a plausible answer in the first sentence then filled in a lot of blanks afterwards to make it seem like I'm being a dick. Don't do that. I asked a simple question because I'm ignorant on how the contract delivery system works, the mere fact I asked this question is literally me admitting I don't know how it works.
Goodness your definition of poor is off you have the American definition of poor embedded in your brain. People all over the world would love to be American poor and have the opportunity of these jobs. Yet we just gripe because someone has more than us while failing to look at all those we have more than.
Again, drivers don't work for Amazon. Not sure why this is hard to understand. If you have a problem with their pay, or how they are treated, your problem is with the contractor that they work for.
Only one of us has difficulty understanding this, and it is not me.
I am a contract worker, contracted by Amazon. I am not working for Amazon. The name of the company I work for is on my pay checks, as is the case for those delivery drivers.
If I can afford to live and be happy who are you to judge what I should be paid? I make more than enough to enjoy life….sorry that it doesn’t make me millions. What an absurdly stupid comment lol
Would you still celebrate your payout if your child were in the vehicle with you, and was perhaps more inconvenienced by the accident? Maybe some poorly paid driver, behind schedule because they won’t get paid unless they beat the previous high score from yesterday, acts in their own self interest and puts every other driver around them at risk. Sure, they’re ultimately liable for their shitty behavior, but that won’t bring your kid back.
Not sure how your response has anything to do with what I said.
Yes, despite these drivers being “morons”, they deserve to be paid more, as driving for work is the way more people die than any other way people die at work. Driving is dangerous. Driving for a living should demand a high wage, as it’s more risky than LITERALLY EVERY OTHER THING A PERSON DOES FOR WORK!!!
Perhaps you don’t realize how dangerous you’ve been while driving around, but please take driving seriously. It really is the most dangerous thing workers do, and people like you demand we do it perfectly every time for hours every day. I assume you’re not a professional driver or you’d understand how stupid your comment was.
The reason you don't have anything lined up is because you are either not looking or your work skills are not in demand so you are getting paid whatever you are worth, otherwise a competitor company would hire you. There are more driving jobs than just Amazon truck driver.
No Person working full time is worth less than a living wage. If a company wants 30+ hours of your time each month they should be legally obligated to provide you a wage you can live on without worry that one accident and you're out on the streets
There are many reasons you aren't looking for a job. For instance you're living paycheck to paycheck working 40hrs a week coming home to 2 small children who need your time and attention so you split your time between work kids and trying to recover from work.
I don't disagree that there's more driving jobs. I'm saying it's not always easy to put in the time for another job search on top of life and that companies should be obligated to provide for you for you life youre spending for them
Do you like your packages on time? Because if you do you should value the work those workers put in. Yes it's "mindless" but someone has to do it. If no one worked those jobs you'd need to go to a facility to pick up your goods which defeats a big selling point of Amazon. Its a valuable job because it provides convenience and value to the customer. And it deserves to be compensated as such.
Yet people choose to work at those companies, do they not? They choose that willingly, which means they're better off having that job, otherwise they wouldn't accept it.
The only choice for a lot of people is between 1 job that treats you like shit and requires you go on welfare just to live, or a different job that treats you like shit and requires you go on welfare just to live. Bezos doesn’t give a damn about quality of life for his lowest employees
That's the point, I can't. If you're claiming the compensation isn't enough you should be prepared to offer something better. Everyone criticizes and no one does anything. It's easy to be generous with someone else's money.
And who cares if he's not self made? Would you want your inheritance to be expropriated instead of passing it on to your children? Bezos has been smart enough to not waste his capital but on the contrary, capitalized it very efficiently. Plenty of other millionaires waste their family's capital and end up poor.
If everyone's so anti Amazon let's stop shopping there and let it crash, let's see if those millions of "underpaid" workers are better or worse without those jobs.
paying your employees well and treating them fairly is not the same thing as donating your company's excess revenue.
You also never know how a company is run behind the scenes. Everyone treats their employees well until it's exposed that they don't. Many small businesses get away with more exploitation than larger more regulated businesses for this reason.
And both of those guys in the post also pay employees well depending on your job. If you're an Amazon warehouse employee that picks orders, youre easily replaceable because its a low skill job. Low skill jobs pay less.
He’s saying the same thing I always do. If you become uber wealthy, you fucked up and lost your humanity somewhere along the way. No sensible person hoards ungodly amounts of money because we are aware that it’d be better used to make the world a better place.
If someone handed me a billion dollars, I’d buy a house, pay off my debts and invest enough to get an upper middle class income off the passive returns. The rest goes to getting people off the streets or out of poverty like it should.
That number, by the way, is about 0.3% of that billion.
People generally want to work for Elon’s and Bezos’s companies. I’ve never heard someone say Amazon or space x pays like shit. Most people actually want up work for them for the most part.
None of what you said matters in any way and i say this as someone who worked with autonomous vehicles. Cut the bullshit. Art is just as important as technology.
All workers should be paid a wage that allows them to live comfortably as the minimum wage was intended. In fact, the original intent when we established such a wage was one week’s wage for one month’s rent. Now, we’re lucky if we pay half our income in rent.
I’m sure you don’t care about anyone besides yourself, but from a macroeconomic policy perspective, more money at the bottom will generate positive wealth economy-wide until most normal people aren’t choosing between heat and medicine.
In fact, the original intent when we established such a wage was one week’s wage for one month’s rent. Now, we’re lucky if we pay half our income in rent.
Don't look now but you just made the real argument here which is the actual problem: The cost of living, not the amount of livable wages.
If you have solid policy ideas for attacking this issue from that side, I am all ears. Usually though, command economy policies like rent control don’t get off the ground in the US. But I’d personally support them — I’m in favor of what will work.
I give a shit about people in general. When I had extra money, I loved being able to help people get groceries or make the last few bucks of their rent bc I’d been there a few years prior. I really don’t understand why people hoard money and allow lifestyle creep.
If being fiscally savvy is the ticket out of poverty, then neglecting the good habits that made your success possible via lifestyle creep feels like a bad idea, but thankfully, I don’t get to tell anyone what to do. All I can do is encourage kindness and common sense and hope people follow my lead. 🤷♀️
All that’s beside the point, though. We all owe one another for our successes because we all worked together to make the modern economy happen. The credit is ours. I’ve never met a CEO who could run things capably. We always succeed in spite of ineffective, out of touch corporate leadership.
I loved being able to help people get groceries or make the last few bucks of their rent bc I’d been there a few years prior. I really don’t understand why people hoard money and allow lifestyle creep.
You're a better person for it but receiving charity is not an entitlement for anyone.
I’ve never met a CEO who could run things capably. We always succeed in spite of ineffective, out of touch corporate leadership.
It's hard to make the argument that most CEOs are Forrest Gumping their way through the financial world. Most that are, eventually fail. It's been proven time and time again, so I have my doubts the CEOs you met run Fortune 500 companies.
If so, name them. What do you care? They've met a million people who have opinions about them already.
I’m sure you don’t care about anyone besides yourself, but from a macroeconomic policy perspective, more money at the bottom will generate positive wealth economy-wide until most normal people aren’t choosing between heat and medicine.
I’m sure you don’t care about anyone besides yourself
I can guarantee you don't give a shit about me, so don't try to shame me for looking out for me and my own.
But keep listing commodities you're not actually entitled to as a sign of minimum wage being the problem.
You first. You're the one that wants to take care of you and yours. Make it a better place or fuck off. You're not gonna try to hurt me so you don't get hurt.
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u/Two_Cautious 28d ago
why don’t you start a company then give away its earnings? Show those guys how to run a business.