4 ms·

Its not clear what you expect people to learn. To me the obvious result will be Amazon must invest in increasing worker productivity to match its wage hike if i

Its not clear what you expect people to learn. To me the obvious result will be Amazon must invest in increasing worker productivity to match its wage hike if it wants to maintain output. Win.

x38iq84n 8y ago
Lean that an artificial increase of the cost of labor causes some of the most vulnerable and lowest income workers be squeezed out of the labor market. Once too expensive, they get replaced by a machine (e.g. taking fast food orders) or the staff is downsized. Either way, those who were supposed to be helped are made worse off.
- tenpies 8y ago
  As my possibly-psychopathic, but well-intended manager once said: "the more you cost, the more we want to replace you". Other gems include: "I love when employees buy houses or have children. It means now they're tied down and are less willing to leave".
- astazangasta 8y ago
  The cost of labor doesn't behave like other things, because people spend their wages. Raising wages can boost aggregate demand, making more work for everyone, including low wage workers displaced by increasing productivity. Artifically increasing wages has the effect of forcing investment in productivity (rather than relying on the low cost of labor). Increasing demand also makes the labor market tighter, which boosts wages and encourages further productivity increases. Boosting wages for the lowest paid workers also has good distributional effects because wages have higher utility, are spent more, etc. Etc.
salawat 8y ago
That's based on the assumption that workers were being fairly compensated for what Amazon was getting in the first place. Hint: If you got a wage increase because of a minimum wage bump, you were probably being cheated in the first place. I don't really understand the mentality in the United States where physical labor to perform complex (unautomatable or impractically automatable) tasks are so severely undercompensated. We pretend that having another human being sacrifice 8 hours of their life, and the costs to show up is worth barely enough where at the end of the month, societal safety nets need to be invoked to stay solvent. It's mystifying. Is there something viscerally unpleasant to imagining someone flipping burgers for a living being able to afford to rent their own apartment, and be able to have enough to invest in bettering their lot? The economy is horribly skewed. Labor is getting repeatedly short changed in an infantile quest for "the biggest growth numbers ever". It's a problem that won't be solved until the labor pool refuses to play ball, forcing businesses to grind to a halt. Taft-Hartley or not, Labor is going to be making many large waves in the coming years methinks. There may be no 'society' anymore, bit there are a hell of a lot of people out there getting played.
- nybble41 8y ago
  > Hint: If you got a wage increase because of a minimum wage bump, you were probably being cheated in the first place. Let's turn that around and see if you still feel the same way: > If you keep buying the same product after a store raises its prices, you were probably cheating them in the first place. Paying less than what you would be willing to pay if there were no other choice is not "cheating". Taken to its logical conclusion, that line of thought leads to the idea that everyone should be paying everything they have for the absolute minimum needed to keep them alive. After all, nothing else is worth anything if you're dead. What would you be willing to give up for a bit of barely-breathable air, marginal water, or half-spoiled food if the alternative was death? Fortunately the world doesn't work like that; the amount you pay factors in your available alternatives and not just how much benefit a good brings you. Labor is no different. You're not being "cheated" simply because an employer is offering you wages similar to what the next 50 qualified people waiting in line would accept to do the same job.
  - salawat 8y ago
    > If you keep buying the same product after a store raises its prices, you were probably cheating them in the first place. So. Good point, but I'm not 100% that that's a valid symmetry to assume. On the one hand, you have an industrial scale process to produce massive amounts of commodity with an efficiency that can't be replicated at smaller scales. This industrial infrastructure was iteratively built during a time when companies were more equitably sharing a chunk of the profits with employees, and has seen minimal innovation since we hit the 80's I bet. All today's giants are built upon those toils, and wrapped in a culture that has shunned any type of openness about compensation structures, granting an information asymmetry advantage to the producer over the worker. >Paying less than what you would be willing to pay if there were no other choice isn't "cheating". I might believe this if unskilled labor were making enough to be able to build up stock portfolios, and be able to maintain a cushion against potential vehicle failure/medical emergency, etc... I don't see that. I see costs skyrocketing in markets flush with "skilled labor", to the point where normal service industries are having their unskilled staff get priced out of local markets. See San Fran and the Silicon Valley restaurant problem for the most recent example I'm aware of. If you pay attention to your local area, you'll likely see the same forces at work. "Cheating" in this sense, is any behavior that skews success probabilities toward any one side of the population over another. I don't expect equality of outcome, but I do expect equality of opportunity. >Taken to its logical conclusion... You make the mistake of attributing to human societies the quality of operating through purely logical mechanisms. Humans have a capacity for logic, but are in no way bound to act purely in logical ways. To preserve the ability to peacefully coexist, it is important to be able to abide by a set of norms that are not only largely logical, but also take into account humanities irrational side. (Juries have final say in the American legal system for instance). In short, if you have a bunch of McMillionaires, surrounded by people who can barely scratch together a living, don't be surprised when your society can't come together enough, or muster the feeling of unity to thrive. Put even shorter: When the wave starts lifting a few instead of all boats, watch out; troubled times are ahead. Good food for thought though. Thanks for the reply.

Its not clear what you expect people to learn. To me the obvious result will be Amazon must invest in increasing worker productivity to match its wage hike if it wants to maintain output. Win.

x38iq84n 8y ago

Lean that an artificial increase of the cost of labor causes some of the most vulnerable and lowest income workers be squeezed out of the labor market. Once too expensive, they get replaced by a machine (e.g. taking fast food orders) or the staff is downsized. Either way, those who were supposed to be helped are made worse off.

tenpies 8y ago
As my possibly-psychopathic, but well-intended manager once said: "the more you cost, the more we want to replace you". Other gems include: "I love when employees buy houses or have children. It means now they're tied down and are less willing to leave".
astazangasta 8y ago
The cost of labor doesn't behave like other things, because people spend their wages. Raising wages can boost aggregate demand, making more work for everyone, including low wage workers displaced by increasing productivity. Artifically increasing wages has the effect of forcing investment in productivity (rather than relying on the low cost of labor). Increasing demand also makes the labor market tighter, which boosts wages and encourages further productivity increases. Boosting wages for the lowest paid workers also has good distributional effects because wages have higher utility, are spent more, etc. Etc.

salawat 8y ago

That's based on the assumption that workers were being fairly compensated for what Amazon was getting in the first place. Hint: If you got a wage increase because of a minimum wage bump, you were probably being cheated in the first place. I don't really understand the mentality in the United States where physical labor to perform complex (unautomatable or impractically automatable) tasks are so severely undercompensated. We pretend that having another human being sacrifice 8 hours of their life, and the costs to show up is worth barely enough where at the end of the month, societal safety nets need to be invoked to stay solvent. It's mystifying. Is there something viscerally unpleasant to imagining someone flipping burgers for a living being able to afford to rent their own apartment, and be able to have enough to invest in bettering their lot? The economy is horribly skewed. Labor is getting repeatedly short changed in an infantile quest for "the biggest growth numbers ever". It's a problem that won't be solved until the labor pool refuses to play ball, forcing businesses to grind to a halt. Taft-Hartley or not, Labor is going to be making many large waves in the coming years methinks. There may be no 'society' anymore, bit there are a hell of a lot of people out there getting played.

nybble41 8y ago
> Hint: If you got a wage increase because of a minimum wage bump, you were probably being cheated in the first place. Let's turn that around and see if you still feel the same way: > If you keep buying the same product after a store raises its prices, you were probably cheating them in the first place. Paying less than what you would be willing to pay if there were no other choice is not "cheating". Taken to its logical conclusion, that line of thought leads to the idea that everyone should be paying everything they have for the absolute minimum needed to keep them alive. After all, nothing else is worth anything if you're dead. What would you be willing to give up for a bit of barely-breathable air, marginal water, or half-spoiled food if the alternative was death? Fortunately the world doesn't work like that; the amount you pay factors in your available alternatives and not just how much benefit a good brings you. Labor is no different. You're not being "cheated" simply because an employer is offering you wages similar to what the next 50 qualified people waiting in line would accept to do the same job.
- salawat 8y ago
  > If you keep buying the same product after a store raises its prices, you were probably cheating them in the first place. So. Good point, but I'm not 100% that that's a valid symmetry to assume. On the one hand, you have an industrial scale process to produce massive amounts of commodity with an efficiency that can't be replicated at smaller scales. This industrial infrastructure was iteratively built during a time when companies were more equitably sharing a chunk of the profits with employees, and has seen minimal innovation since we hit the 80's I bet. All today's giants are built upon those toils, and wrapped in a culture that has shunned any type of openness about compensation structures, granting an information asymmetry advantage to the producer over the worker. >Paying less than what you would be willing to pay if there were no other choice isn't "cheating". I might believe this if unskilled labor were making enough to be able to build up stock portfolios, and be able to maintain a cushion against potential vehicle failure/medical emergency, etc... I don't see that. I see costs skyrocketing in markets flush with "skilled labor", to the point where normal service industries are having their unskilled staff get priced out of local markets. See San Fran and the Silicon Valley restaurant problem for the most recent example I'm aware of. If you pay attention to your local area, you'll likely see the same forces at work. "Cheating" in this sense, is any behavior that skews success probabilities toward any one side of the population over another. I don't expect equality of outcome, but I do expect equality of opportunity. >Taken to its logical conclusion... You make the mistake of attributing to human societies the quality of operating through purely logical mechanisms. Humans have a capacity for logic, but are in no way bound to act purely in logical ways. To preserve the ability to peacefully coexist, it is important to be able to abide by a set of norms that are not only largely logical, but also take into account humanities irrational side. (Juries have final say in the American legal system for instance). In short, if you have a bunch of McMillionaires, surrounded by people who can barely scratch together a living, don't be surprised when your society can't come together enough, or muster the feeling of unity to thrive. Put even shorter: When the wave starts lifting a few instead of all boats, watch out; troubled times are ahead. Good food for thought though. Thanks for the reply.