7 ms·

> It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon war

> It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for their labor practices rather than demonizing the market conditions that have led to Amazon warehouses being a place people are willing to work. That's about as useful a statement as "Thoughts and prayers." To change the labor market you go after the parties you can affect. Amazon is one. There are many others on the demand side. Retaining the workforce would be a much lower % return for the investment.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Or you just raise the minimum wage. We arrived at this point because those with money use it to influence government to their exclusive benefit.
- influx 7y ago
  Amazon is paying above minimum wage already. What do you suggest they should be paid?
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    It sounds like conditions are more of a problem than pay. Maybe there should be less that enforce regular breaks for workers doing monotonous jobs, and maximum hours. Good luck getting a that kind of law passed in America though. Far too socialist.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    A different answer: Pay them when their labor is actually worth.
    - wallawe 7y ago
      how do you determine that if not at what the market sets it at?
      - trentnix 7y ago
        There is no other way. The market ALWAYS sets it, no matter how strong it’s regulated. The real minimum wage is zero.
        dgacmu 7y ago
        But the regulation strongly influences what the market will pay. The trend of allowing companies to have employees sign non-competes for relatively low skilled jobs, for example, depresses wages by impeding competition for labor.
  - lowercased 7y ago
    Not everyone else is. People may put up with the 'above average' amazon because everything else in the area is still paying closer to minimum wage. If min wage was raised, it might make it easier to say 'no' to the amazon warehouse gig.
    - dennisgorelik 7y ago
      Quite the opposite: minimum wage increase will eliminate many low-skilled jobs and will make it harder "to say 'no' to the amazon warehouse gig".
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    This is reminding me of a discussion about Facebook's content enforcement, where I still don't understand the argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594. Pressuring people to miss bathroom breaks is wrong, I'd agree - I'm all for that being legally punishable if it isn't already. But the argument gets to a point where people are simply saying that the job inherently sucks anyway, and the people who are voluntarily doing it in exchange for the money would be better off not even being given the option and being involuntarily unemployed, and if necessary, the company employing them shouldn't even exist if that job must be done. I don't understand it.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      I hate saying this, but it comes from a place of privilege. If you've never not had a job, you think just banning bad jobs will mean everyone has a good job. If you've been unemployed, you know you'd rather have a job and have it reformed through continuous work than be unemployed. The problem, though, is that there are people who have never not had jobs who nonetheless have opinions on what the baseline job should be. Since they've never had to choose between food and a shitty job, they assume that they can solve the problem by just mandating jobs not be shitty.
      - dennisgorelik 7y ago
        People who are better at finding and keeping jobs -- are, typically, against minimum wage increase (because they better understand the consequences of such restriction). Ironically, people who struggle with keeping a job -- are more likely to shoot themselves in the foot by supporting minimum wage increase.
- ZhuanXia 7y ago
  Demand curves have negative slopes. The esoteric reading of minimum wage is it is a accelerationist policy aimed at subsidizing automation.
  - pytester 7y ago
    The realistic reading is that it mainly just transfers money from profits to wages. Demand for minimum waged labor is very, very inelastic.
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      Is it? In countries with higher minimum wages, McDonald's uses kiosks for ordering. I'm guessing, but it feels like 1/3 of fast food staff mans the registers.
      - chasontherobot 7y ago
        Do you have a citation for this? Tokyo has a high minimum wage (and low enough unemployment that most employers have to pay more than minimum wage), but I've yet to see an automated kiosk here. Though in support of your point, when I went to Korea last year there was a large number of automated kiosks, and I know the minimum wage there is fairly high as well. So, Japan's lack of those kiosks may have to do with a preference towards cash/human interaction in the culture.
        vsl 7y ago
        Isn’t Japan famous for manning a lot of jobs, culturally? Around here (Central Europe, Austria, Germany, Italy too IIRC) I don’t see non-kiosk McDonalds anymore, as they went through the kiosk upgrade in the past few years. Noticeably fewer employees.
        cyphar 7y ago
        It takes a long time to develop and plan a rollout of those kinds of automated kiosks for large companies. They've clearly been planning such a rollout for many years. The fact it's coincided with a lot of discussion of minimum wage increases is either a complete coincidence or an example of correlation not implying causation -- mass layoffs usually result in discussions about labour laws. I would argue that the job losses to automation would've happened anyway without any discussion of wage increases -- kiosks are cheaper than even below-living-wage workers.
- sschueller 7y ago
  Sadly companies have found loop holes like forcing people into 1099 positions or just sub-contracting jobs to firms that then pay below minimum wage. So you will find companies that claim they already pay way above minimum wage but it's just PR.
  - dennisgorelik 7y ago
    It is fortunate that companies found these 1099 loopholes. Without these loopholes, low-skilled candidates would have much harder time to find and keep their jobs. It is amazing how many commenters on Hacker News do NOT understand basic economic model of supply and demand.
Mikeb85 7y ago
Supply side economics has been debunked over and over. To change the labour market you reduce the labour supply or increase demand. Demand is already high, so tighten up labour supply. Or, in other words, limit immigration.
- drup86 7y ago
  > limit immigration I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democratic party relies on it to win elections. All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers. Which makes one realize, it's all about winning elections and all of the "*ist" allegations are insincere and fake.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democrat party relies on it to win elections. It's the “Democratic Party” and, no, they don't. > All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers. Limiting immigration doesn't limit labor supply in a globalized market; it effects it's geography, but whether or not labor mobility is restricted capital and goods are largely free to move (and, no, Trump's tariff policies, while breaking with the neoliberal consensus, haven't been well designed to promote the interest of working Americans either. There was once a Democratic Party idea of “free and fair” trade that would have been good had it actually been substantially pursued, but in practice Bill Clinton pursued neoliberal free trade with only vestigial gestures to the kind of common, upward-moving standards they would prevent a race to the bottom.
    - drup86 7y ago
      So effectively you're saying: As far as democrats are concerned, a worker from Bangladesh is just as deserving of a given job as a worker from Florida. At that point, the party doesn't seem to be caring about American workers, but behaving more like a "global party". Thinking further, might as well normalize wages for all low skilled american workers across the 7 billion or so world population. I mean why have borders if they're not affording any labor protections already, right? I'm not surprised the term "globalist" took off in the last election cycle.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Or you just raise the minimum wage. We arrived at this point because those with money use it to influence government to their exclusive benefit.

influx 7y ago
Amazon is paying above minimum wage already. What do you suggest they should be paid?
- IshKebab 7y ago
  It sounds like conditions are more of a problem than pay. Maybe there should be less that enforce regular breaks for workers doing monotonous jobs, and maximum hours. Good luck getting a that kind of law passed in America though. Far too socialist.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  A different answer: Pay them when their labor is actually worth.
  - wallawe 7y ago
    how do you determine that if not at what the market sets it at?
    - trentnix 7y ago
      There is no other way. The market ALWAYS sets it, no matter how strong it’s regulated. The real minimum wage is zero.
      - dgacmu 7y ago
        But the regulation strongly influences what the market will pay. The trend of allowing companies to have employees sign non-competes for relatively low skilled jobs, for example, depresses wages by impeding competition for labor.
- lowercased 7y ago
  Not everyone else is. People may put up with the 'above average' amazon because everything else in the area is still paying closer to minimum wage. If min wage was raised, it might make it easier to say 'no' to the amazon warehouse gig.
  - dennisgorelik 7y ago
    Quite the opposite: minimum wage increase will eliminate many low-skilled jobs and will make it harder "to say 'no' to the amazon warehouse gig".
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  This is reminding me of a discussion about Facebook's content enforcement, where I still don't understand the argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594. Pressuring people to miss bathroom breaks is wrong, I'd agree - I'm all for that being legally punishable if it isn't already. But the argument gets to a point where people are simply saying that the job inherently sucks anyway, and the people who are voluntarily doing it in exchange for the money would be better off not even being given the option and being involuntarily unemployed, and if necessary, the company employing them shouldn't even exist if that job must be done. I don't understand it.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    I hate saying this, but it comes from a place of privilege. If you've never not had a job, you think just banning bad jobs will mean everyone has a good job. If you've been unemployed, you know you'd rather have a job and have it reformed through continuous work than be unemployed. The problem, though, is that there are people who have never not had jobs who nonetheless have opinions on what the baseline job should be. Since they've never had to choose between food and a shitty job, they assume that they can solve the problem by just mandating jobs not be shitty.
    - dennisgorelik 7y ago
      People who are better at finding and keeping jobs -- are, typically, against minimum wage increase (because they better understand the consequences of such restriction). Ironically, people who struggle with keeping a job -- are more likely to shoot themselves in the foot by supporting minimum wage increase.
ZhuanXia 7y ago
Demand curves have negative slopes. The esoteric reading of minimum wage is it is a accelerationist policy aimed at subsidizing automation.
- pytester 7y ago
  The realistic reading is that it mainly just transfers money from profits to wages. Demand for minimum waged labor is very, very inelastic.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    Is it? In countries with higher minimum wages, McDonald's uses kiosks for ordering. I'm guessing, but it feels like 1/3 of fast food staff mans the registers.
    - chasontherobot 7y ago
      Do you have a citation for this? Tokyo has a high minimum wage (and low enough unemployment that most employers have to pay more than minimum wage), but I've yet to see an automated kiosk here. Though in support of your point, when I went to Korea last year there was a large number of automated kiosks, and I know the minimum wage there is fairly high as well. So, Japan's lack of those kiosks may have to do with a preference towards cash/human interaction in the culture.
      - vsl 7y ago
        Isn’t Japan famous for manning a lot of jobs, culturally? Around here (Central Europe, Austria, Germany, Italy too IIRC) I don’t see non-kiosk McDonalds anymore, as they went through the kiosk upgrade in the past few years. Noticeably fewer employees.
        cyphar 7y ago
        It takes a long time to develop and plan a rollout of those kinds of automated kiosks for large companies. They've clearly been planning such a rollout for many years. The fact it's coincided with a lot of discussion of minimum wage increases is either a complete coincidence or an example of correlation not implying causation -- mass layoffs usually result in discussions about labour laws. I would argue that the job losses to automation would've happened anyway without any discussion of wage increases -- kiosks are cheaper than even below-living-wage workers.
sschueller 7y ago
Sadly companies have found loop holes like forcing people into 1099 positions or just sub-contracting jobs to firms that then pay below minimum wage. So you will find companies that claim they already pay way above minimum wage but it's just PR.
- dennisgorelik 7y ago
  It is fortunate that companies found these 1099 loopholes. Without these loopholes, low-skilled candidates would have much harder time to find and keep their jobs. It is amazing how many commenters on Hacker News do NOT understand basic economic model of supply and demand.

Mikeb85 7y ago

Supply side economics has been debunked over and over. To change the labour market you reduce the labour supply or increase demand. Demand is already high, so tighten up labour supply. Or, in other words, limit immigration.

drup86 7y ago
> limit immigration I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democratic party relies on it to win elections. All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers. Which makes one realize, it's all about winning elections and all of the "*ist" allegations are insincere and fake.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democrat party relies on it to win elections. It's the “Democratic Party” and, no, they don't. > All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers. Limiting immigration doesn't limit labor supply in a globalized market; it effects it's geography, but whether or not labor mobility is restricted capital and goods are largely free to move (and, no, Trump's tariff policies, while breaking with the neoliberal consensus, haven't been well designed to promote the interest of working Americans either. There was once a Democratic Party idea of “free and fair” trade that would have been good had it actually been substantially pursued, but in practice Bill Clinton pursued neoliberal free trade with only vestigial gestures to the kind of common, upward-moving standards they would prevent a race to the bottom.
  - drup86 7y ago
    So effectively you're saying: As far as democrats are concerned, a worker from Bangladesh is just as deserving of a given job as a worker from Florida. At that point, the party doesn't seem to be caring about American workers, but behaving more like a "global party". Thinking further, might as well normalize wages for all low skilled american workers across the 7 billion or so world population. I mean why have borders if they're not affording any labor protections already, right? I'm not surprised the term "globalist" took off in the last election cycle.