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> hundreds of thousands of middle class workers This gigantic exaggeration is the crux of your point, around which all else crumbles. Most of Amazon's workers

> hundreds of thousands of middle class workers This gigantic exaggeration is the crux of your point, around which all else crumbles. Most of Amazon's workers are badly treated and either actually in poverty or less than a month's pay away from it. There are other companies that are well regarded for employing low to no skill workers en masse, like Lidl, which nobody is complaining about. Most people also do not believe it's corporations who are responsible for this living baseline, but the state, so yet another either outright lie or exaggeration around which all of those points crumble. Overall, it's disheartening to see such a flawed comment at the top here in hn.

zajd 6y ago
New to HN? This is par for the course.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> Most of Amazon's workers are badly treated and either actually in poverty or less than a month's pay away from it. The median US based pay at Amazon is $36,640. That is not a poverty level wage except in a few urban centres. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-discloses-median-pay-plans-virtual-shareholder-meeting-due-to-coronavirus-climate-concerns/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-disclose...
- theelous3 6y ago
  You could have basically just bezos and then thousands of workers working for free and the average wage would still look pretty good. Just because the elites are paid insane sums, doesn't mean the majority are making anything reasonable. Edit: I miss read and you have median. Fair enough. 35k usd is still terrible pay though, and I'd rather work somewhere that doesn't have 12 hour shifts for that semi ok pay. Can work elsewhere half as hard for the same money or better. Won't pass out from heat exhaustion, won't he fired for trying to unionize, won't have covid pay taken back, won't be denied safe working conditions in a pandemic, etc.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    He used median, not average. The median is significantly less affected by the highest wages. That's basic math.
    - xdavidliu 6y ago
      just to make your point even stronger, the median is not affected by the highest wages _at all_.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    There is a reason I used "median."
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    That's why parent comment uses the median rather than the mean, it isn't affected by enormous outliers. Unless more than half of Amazon's employees are highly paid developers and executives, that number represents a normal employee.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Not only that, the warehouse workers in the US are part of the same group health insurance policy as their software engineers and executives. It's one of the most generous health insurance plans available in an entry-level job that requires no college education, and the dollar-amount value of the total compensation (even for the median Amazon worker) is way above $36,640.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > It's one of the most generous health insurance plans available in an entry-level job that requires no college education... Or as every other first-world country calls it, "the minimum standard we provide for our citizens." The problem is the bottom line isn't good enough. The truth is every single one of those workers would be better off in practically any other OECD country. Anywhere in Europe, anywhere in Canada, they'd be better off. That's not okay for the greatest country in the world. America can do better.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      Well first of all, this is in response to the idea that "Most of Amazon's workers are badly treated and either actually in poverty or less than a month's pay away from it.", which we KNOW to be untrue. But even with the new goalposts: comparing Amazon workers to the median worker in other OECD nations, it is objectively untrue that Amazon's group health insurance plan is worse than that of public health insurance in other developed countries. America's problem isn't that workers of rich corporations have inadequate healthcare, it's that you have to work for a rich corporation to have adequate healthcare. You have to keep in mind that healthcare isn't 100% free in most of the world, there's still co-insurance, co-pays, etc. With that in mind, I work in insurance, and I can tell you right now that the health insurance plans afforded to software engineers of most of the big tech companies are on average more generous than those of most European countries in terms of total out-of-pocket expenditure. At Amazon, the US warehouse workers are given the same health insurance as their company-mates sitting in the cubicles.
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  I have a mother making more than that in an incredibly cheap and rural town. $36k might not officially meet the united states level for "poverty", but it sure means a stressful financial situation if you didn't buy your house in the 80s or some other cheap housing time
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    The inflation-adjusted price per square foot of a house in the United States (on average) has remained constant since the 1970s. House prices have not changed, on an inflation adjusted $/sqft basis in over 50 years. [1] The reason houses are more expensive on average now is they're twice as big. People's expectations have changed. I mention this because there were no cheap housing periods. [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/ https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...
    - saddlerustle 6y ago
      > People's expectations have changed. Often low-income families would live in smaller houses for less money if they had the choice, but building smaller and more dense housing has since been restricted by planning codes, often with the intent of excluding poor people.
      - mrguyorama 6y ago
        You don't even need intent to squeeze out poor people. Why would a contractor build an 800 sq/ft house to sell to low income people when you can make over 2x the profit on a McMansion?
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        You would theoretically use proportionally less land, so stick three 800 sqft homes on it.
        dionidium 6y ago
- cellar_door 6y ago
  $36,640 is actually more than the median individual income in the US, which is $33,706.

zajd 6y ago

New to HN? This is par for the course.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> Most of Amazon's workers are badly treated and either actually in poverty or less than a month's pay away from it. The median US based pay at Amazon is $36,640. That is not a poverty level wage except in a few urban centres. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-discloses-median-pay-plans-virtual-shareholder-meeting-due-to-coronavirus-climate-concerns/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-disclose...

theelous3 6y ago
You could have basically just bezos and then thousands of workers working for free and the average wage would still look pretty good. Just because the elites are paid insane sums, doesn't mean the majority are making anything reasonable. Edit: I miss read and you have median. Fair enough. 35k usd is still terrible pay though, and I'd rather work somewhere that doesn't have 12 hour shifts for that semi ok pay. Can work elsewhere half as hard for the same money or better. Won't pass out from heat exhaustion, won't he fired for trying to unionize, won't have covid pay taken back, won't be denied safe working conditions in a pandemic, etc.
- tathougies 6y ago
  He used median, not average. The median is significantly less affected by the highest wages. That's basic math.
  - xdavidliu 6y ago
    just to make your point even stronger, the median is not affected by the highest wages _at all_.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  There is a reason I used "median."
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  That's why parent comment uses the median rather than the mean, it isn't affected by enormous outliers. Unless more than half of Amazon's employees are highly paid developers and executives, that number represents a normal employee.
bhupy 6y ago
Not only that, the warehouse workers in the US are part of the same group health insurance policy as their software engineers and executives. It's one of the most generous health insurance plans available in an entry-level job that requires no college education, and the dollar-amount value of the total compensation (even for the median Amazon worker) is way above $36,640.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > It's one of the most generous health insurance plans available in an entry-level job that requires no college education... Or as every other first-world country calls it, "the minimum standard we provide for our citizens." The problem is the bottom line isn't good enough. The truth is every single one of those workers would be better off in practically any other OECD country. Anywhere in Europe, anywhere in Canada, they'd be better off. That's not okay for the greatest country in the world. America can do better.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    Well first of all, this is in response to the idea that "Most of Amazon's workers are badly treated and either actually in poverty or less than a month's pay away from it.", which we KNOW to be untrue. But even with the new goalposts: comparing Amazon workers to the median worker in other OECD nations, it is objectively untrue that Amazon's group health insurance plan is worse than that of public health insurance in other developed countries. America's problem isn't that workers of rich corporations have inadequate healthcare, it's that you have to work for a rich corporation to have adequate healthcare. You have to keep in mind that healthcare isn't 100% free in most of the world, there's still co-insurance, co-pays, etc. With that in mind, I work in insurance, and I can tell you right now that the health insurance plans afforded to software engineers of most of the big tech companies are on average more generous than those of most European countries in terms of total out-of-pocket expenditure. At Amazon, the US warehouse workers are given the same health insurance as their company-mates sitting in the cubicles.
mrguyorama 6y ago
I have a mother making more than that in an incredibly cheap and rural town. $36k might not officially meet the united states level for "poverty", but it sure means a stressful financial situation if you didn't buy your house in the 80s or some other cheap housing time
- arcticbull 6y ago
  The inflation-adjusted price per square foot of a house in the United States (on average) has remained constant since the 1970s. House prices have not changed, on an inflation adjusted $/sqft basis in over 50 years. [1] The reason houses are more expensive on average now is they're twice as big. People's expectations have changed. I mention this because there were no cheap housing periods. [1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/ https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...
  - saddlerustle 6y ago
    > People's expectations have changed. Often low-income families would live in smaller houses for less money if they had the choice, but building smaller and more dense housing has since been restricted by planning codes, often with the intent of excluding poor people.
    - mrguyorama 6y ago
      You don't even need intent to squeeze out poor people. Why would a contractor build an 800 sq/ft house to sell to low income people when you can make over 2x the profit on a McMansion?
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        You would theoretically use proportionally less land, so stick three 800 sqft homes on it.
      - dionidium 6y ago
cellar_door 6y ago
$36,640 is actually more than the median individual income in the US, which is $33,706.