5 ms·

They don't care. The only reason they have an interest/stake at $15 min wage is so they can crush anyone who might challenge them. Essentially solidify their po

They don't care. The only reason they have an interest/stake at $15 min wage is so they can crush anyone who might challenge them. Essentially solidify their position. A rival might not be able to afford that so they let everyone go, or Amazon gobbles them up for dinner. There's always an ulterior motive when lobbying is involved.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'm not really sure how to engage with this. Surely you're not saying that it's bad to pay $15, or that Amazon ought to cut everyone's wages to make room for their competitors.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It's bad to require competitors to pay $15. This is the thing that regularly gets lost in the minimum wage debates. Some jobs suck more than others. Amazon warehouse jobs suck kind of a lot. You spend all day standing up and doing manual labor. Because that's what it takes to make unskilled work produce $15/hour in value. You pass a law requiring competitors to do the same and the ones who were paying $10/hour but workers had more down time, will have to make them more like Amazon jobs. In other words, will have to make them suck more. There are a lot of people for whom that is not a good trade off. For a 20 year old who can physically do the Amazon job, it might be a good choice in order to make more money. For a 60 year old who can't physically do the Amazon job, taking away the less demanding job they can do is really screwing them over.
  - dcow 6y ago
    Amazon aside, I see the $15 argument more about making minimum wage, a concept we’re already engaged at a policy level, reflect reality. IMO if we’re going to have minimum wage in the US then we need to make it work for its intended purpose of requiring companies to pay people a living wage for their labor. If that were the goal we’d adjust minimum wage for inflation and cost of living since its inception and then require it to adjust every year as the value of the dollar does. In its current form it is more of an excuse for companies pay below a living wage.
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      pay people a living wage for their labor I truly don’t understand why so many think that someone doing less than what it takes to live (alone, independently) should be paid a living wage. Food, housing, energy, care, ... all take productivity; if someone can’t produce enough to cover their own needs, they need be recognized as a dependent and treated as such. It’s not your obligation to pay me a living wage just because you need floors swept or burgers flipped.
      - astrange 6y ago
        You don't really need that service performed that badly if you can't pay that much for it either. Offering crappy jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper to just pay them unemployment. Makes traffic better too since they're not commuting.
        ctdonath 6y ago
        What of those unable to produce more than some value less than minimum wage? Not everyone is capable of $15/hr productivity, why would you deny them work? nobody is expecting them to achieve independence (say, bc Down’s Syndrome) but they can still produce some value and have a right to earn what they can. There are tasks I’d hire people to do, but it’s not worth enough to pay housing/food/care/heat/etc for.
        astrange 6y ago
        Those people are already exempted. Group homes for people who can't live independently do have work placement programs, although I don't know how you prevent them from displacing "real" workers - presumably it's not that much of a problem. Besides that, just paying people to do nothing works fine because they can do non-economic work (childcare/caretaking) or speculative things (write a book, go back to school) and US policy is heading back in this direction. We stopped with Reagan because voters tend to turn against welfare policies when you point out that black people are getting them.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I'm not really sure how to engage with this. Surely you're not saying that it's bad to pay $15, or that Amazon ought to cut everyone's wages to make room for their competitors.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
It's bad to require competitors to pay $15. This is the thing that regularly gets lost in the minimum wage debates. Some jobs suck more than others. Amazon warehouse jobs suck kind of a lot. You spend all day standing up and doing manual labor. Because that's what it takes to make unskilled work produce $15/hour in value. You pass a law requiring competitors to do the same and the ones who were paying $10/hour but workers had more down time, will have to make them more like Amazon jobs. In other words, will have to make them suck more. There are a lot of people for whom that is not a good trade off. For a 20 year old who can physically do the Amazon job, it might be a good choice in order to make more money. For a 60 year old who can't physically do the Amazon job, taking away the less demanding job they can do is really screwing them over.
- dcow 6y ago
  Amazon aside, I see the $15 argument more about making minimum wage, a concept we’re already engaged at a policy level, reflect reality. IMO if we’re going to have minimum wage in the US then we need to make it work for its intended purpose of requiring companies to pay people a living wage for their labor. If that were the goal we’d adjust minimum wage for inflation and cost of living since its inception and then require it to adjust every year as the value of the dollar does. In its current form it is more of an excuse for companies pay below a living wage.
  - ctdonath 6y ago
    pay people a living wage for their labor I truly don’t understand why so many think that someone doing less than what it takes to live (alone, independently) should be paid a living wage. Food, housing, energy, care, ... all take productivity; if someone can’t produce enough to cover their own needs, they need be recognized as a dependent and treated as such. It’s not your obligation to pay me a living wage just because you need floors swept or burgers flipped.
    - astrange 6y ago
      You don't really need that service performed that badly if you can't pay that much for it either. Offering crappy jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper to just pay them unemployment. Makes traffic better too since they're not commuting.
      - ctdonath 6y ago
        What of those unable to produce more than some value less than minimum wage? Not everyone is capable of $15/hr productivity, why would you deny them work? nobody is expecting them to achieve independence (say, bc Down’s Syndrome) but they can still produce some value and have a right to earn what they can. There are tasks I’d hire people to do, but it’s not worth enough to pay housing/food/care/heat/etc for.
        astrange 6y ago
        Those people are already exempted. Group homes for people who can't live independently do have work placement programs, although I don't know how you prevent them from displacing "real" workers - presumably it's not that much of a problem. Besides that, just paying people to do nothing works fine because they can do non-economic work (childcare/caretaking) or speculative things (write a book, go back to school) and US policy is heading back in this direction. We stopped with Reagan because voters tend to turn against welfare policies when you point out that black people are getting them.