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It’s more than enough to pay their warehouse workers substantially better without making any changes to their prices.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
harryh 7y ago
I do not believe that this is true. Again, profit margins for this sort of work are tiny. Adding significant wage costs would almost certainly consume a huge percentage of profits at which point the suppliers of capital will invest their money elsewhere. If you are going to make such a strong claim, you probably need to back it up with data.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Google Amazon profit ($11 billion and change last year), workforce size (650,000ish) and divide. That gives you a lower bound for the worst case where all Amazon employees are warehouse workers.
  - harryh 7y ago
    Amazon earns a lot of money from quite a few things that have nothing to do with warehouse workers. In particular I have read that half their profits come from AWS. I don't think that is enough data to support your claim. A better set of numbers to look at might be Walmarts (more of a pure retail company). They make maybe 10B in profit per year (it varies a little) with 2M workers. That's $5,000 per worker which isn't much wiggle room.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      Money is fungible. Amazon can afford to pay better. The only data you need to know that is what I gave. You’re giving a reason why they might not want to. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that they want to. If they wanted to, they would be doing it already.
      - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        So they are to run at a loss? Why not simply close down the warehouses and liberate these poor people from these terrible jobs?
        mikeash 7y ago
        Who said anything about running at a loss? I’m just stating that they can pay more by taking less of a profit, “the market” doesn’t stop them.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        They only make $5000 per worker per year or so, given that the stock market has consistent returns of about 7% lately it's getting to the point that it would be better to put that money there was opposed to paying workers with it for such small returns.
        mikeash 7y ago
        $11 billion divided by 650,000 workers isn’t $5,000. In any case, the point is that they can pay more. You can quibble over the amount. You can argue about whether or not they should. But they can, in the same way that I can buy an entire truck full of peaches if I decided that would be a good idea.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        We are back at run the warehouses at a loss. The profits from AWS have nothing to do with the guys packing boxes and moving the profits from there to them is running it at a loss.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

I do not believe that this is true. Again, profit margins for this sort of work are tiny. Adding significant wage costs would almost certainly consume a huge percentage of profits at which point the suppliers of capital will invest their money elsewhere. If you are going to make such a strong claim, you probably need to back it up with data.

mikeash 7y ago
Google Amazon profit ($11 billion and change last year), workforce size (650,000ish) and divide. That gives you a lower bound for the worst case where all Amazon employees are warehouse workers.
- harryh 7y ago
  Amazon earns a lot of money from quite a few things that have nothing to do with warehouse workers. In particular I have read that half their profits come from AWS. I don't think that is enough data to support your claim. A better set of numbers to look at might be Walmarts (more of a pure retail company). They make maybe 10B in profit per year (it varies a little) with 2M workers. That's $5,000 per worker which isn't much wiggle room.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    Money is fungible. Amazon can afford to pay better. The only data you need to know that is what I gave. You’re giving a reason why they might not want to. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that they want to. If they wanted to, they would be doing it already.
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      So they are to run at a loss? Why not simply close down the warehouses and liberate these poor people from these terrible jobs?
      - mikeash 7y ago
        Who said anything about running at a loss? I’m just stating that they can pay more by taking less of a profit, “the market” doesn’t stop them.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        They only make $5000 per worker per year or so, given that the stock market has consistent returns of about 7% lately it's getting to the point that it would be better to put that money there was opposed to paying workers with it for such small returns.
        mikeash 7y ago
        $11 billion divided by 650,000 workers isn’t $5,000. In any case, the point is that they can pay more. You can quibble over the amount. You can argue about whether or not they should. But they can, in the same way that I can buy an entire truck full of peaches if I decided that would be a good idea.
        fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
        We are back at run the warehouses at a loss. The profits from AWS have nothing to do with the guys packing boxes and moving the profits from there to them is running it at a loss.