On Oct 4, 2018, boxjumper wrote:
I applaud Amazon for their plan to raise the min wage to $15. If you do a poor job, you'll get fired.
$15 is barely a living wage. It will help people get off public assistance and SNAP.

On Oct 4, 2018, R.S. wrote:

Quote:

On Oct 4, 2018, boxjumper wrote:
I applaud Amazon for their plan to raise the min wage to $15. If you do a poor job, you'll get fired.
$15 is barely a living wage. It will help people get off public assistance and SNAP.

Speaking of Jeff Bezos, just saw on the news that his current net worth is estimated at $161.1 Billion dollars. I don't think he'll have a problem paying his workers $15 an hour. To put things in perspective, it takes about 11 days to count 1 million dollars (at the rate of 1 dollar every second). To count a billion dollars takes approximately 32 years! To count his fortune of 161 billion would take roughly five thousand years!

Also, assuming a simple interest rate of 1 percent, his money can just sit there in a basic savings account and earn him about 23 million per week. Of course, I would imagine his actual earnings are significantly higher than that.

PS - actually, his net worth is now $161.1 billion plus $57 dollars. Because I just ordered $57 worth of stuff from Amazon.

Ron

On Oct 4, 2018, Dannydoyle wrote:
What does any of that have to do with the value of a worker?

On Oct 4, 2018, Dannydoyle wrote:
I know all about numbers and what they mean. I also know you threw out "he'll have no trouble paying his workers $15 an hour" in the same diatribe. I thought it was connected.

On Oct 4, 2018, boxjumper wrote:
I applaud Amazon for their plan to raise the min wage to $15. If you do a poor job, you'll get fired.
$15 is barely a living wage. It will help people get off public assistance and SNAP.

On Oct 7, 2018, rockwall wrote:
Yeah, I have no doubt Jeff will be able to afford it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.c......less/amp

"The reason is that in addition to raising wages, Amazon is also slashing some performance bonuses and its restricted stock unit program. In total, workers say losing the benefits may amount to thousands of dollars in lost pay annually. "

Amazon disputes that any employees will make less as a result of the RSU program and incentive bonuses being cut. “The significant increase in hourly cash wages more than compensates for the phase out of incentive pay and RSUs,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. “We can confirm that all hourly Operations and Customer Service employees will see an increase in their total compensation as a result of this announcement. In addition, because it’s no longer incentive-based, the compensation will be more immediate and predictable.”

The employee who spoke with WIRED maintains they will lose at least $1,400 per year as a result of the benefits being cut, despite factoring in a $1 raise in hourly pay. When WIRED provided Amazon with the employee’s calculations, the company did not dispute their accuracy.

In one sense, Amazon has good reason to cut the benefits it previously offered and instead provide employees with more cash. One of the soon-to-expire bonuses, for example, was given based on whether an employee’s entire warehouse met its productivity goals—a factor no single worker can control. RSUs also aren’t vested for two years; many warehouse employees don’t work at the company long enough to claim them, causing millions to be forfeited each year.

On Oct 7, 2018, Dannydoyle wrote:

Why is it the responsibility of any company ti provide a "living wage"? Where in any of our founding documents is that written?

And what exactly constitutes a "living wage" anyhow? What standard of living exactly? Oh and in what region of the country are you talking about?

The idea that a business MUST pay a "living wage" is not quite so clear as it seems at first.

when you base the salary on only the "need" of the worker with no thought of their value to the company...

On Oct 7, 2018, landmark wrote:

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when you base the salary on only the "need" of the worker with no thought of their value to the company...

Not for Danny particularly, but things to think about in this discussion:

How do you think that a worker's value should be quantified? When someone says "not worth $X dollars an hour," what is that based on? Why and what is the baseline used for comparison, whatever it is?

And are you saying that a worker's wage is only based on some merit index and is independent of the labor market?

Labor power under our system is a commodity just like any other--it's price is in fact determined by supply, demand, and the power or powerlessness of labor to negotiate their price. When the labor supply shrinks or expands, and wages go up or down in response to that, nothing inherently about the value of the work itself has changed, yet compensation changes.