Amazon Raises Minimum Wage to $15 for All US Employees

MrDeaf said:
You shouldn't take your personal success and apply it to other people.
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While it is true that I'm probably an outlier to some extent the reality is that the opportunity is there for all of us. Again, we have almost the sum total of human knowledge available 24/7 from cell phones that even the poorest individuals all seem to have. The statement I responded to was about people having the chance to be able to earn a living that's good enough to support oneself at a bare minimum off a single job. We don't need to do anything to make that a reality because that is the reality already. The opportunity is there for anyone and everyone who wants to seize it.

MrDeaf said:
They may not be as adept at learning new skills or have just the right amount of innate talent or connections to land them a job they enjoy doing.
Education or Training is optional, but some people are just really... bad at learning. Somthing to do with Dunning-Kruger effect or some such.
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This is a good point and I don't deny that there is truth to this. However, it generally seems that most people are good at something. Whether or not they truly learn what that something is or whether or not that talent can earn a good living is another matter. I find that people work best when they have a passion for something and embrace that passion. Not everyone has that but I think the bulk of the population is either smart enough to earn some kind of living where they are self-supporting or they have at least one aptitude that can take them further than that. There is a such thing as low intelligence but I think the bigger problem is a lack of motivation on the part of some people.

MrDeaf said:
Now, having said that, IDK what to do with such people.
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As I've said, the military conducted a 100 year study and found that some 1 in 8 are virtually untrainable. I don't know what to do with those people either. They will probably always be a burden to someone regardless of the social programs and assistance that's available from the government today. My point is that the solution isn't to screw the other 7 super hard just to make that 1 person better off. There has to be a way to make things better for number 8 that doesn't involve buttfucking the other 7 without lube. You can see what's happened with the Affordable Care Act and how helping the poor by paying for their health care coverage has simply raised prices for everyone else. This hits small business owners and the middle class fucking hard. Its much the same thing with other products and services.

MrDeaf said:
I mean, seemingly, humanity is too obsessed with its self image that we have kind of stuck ourselves into this rut that we can't climb out of.
Like, I am pretty sure that we literally poses the technology and manpower to solve almost all of the problems humanity has caused, like poverty, and still have more than enough to colonize the Moon and Mars by now.
However, for many reasons, we're really not progressing, so far as Humanity's potential is concerned.

TLDR, where is our sci-fi utopia and why are we heading into sci-fi dystopia?
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We are progressing, but its odd how its working. We have a large gap between the people who are building electric cars and working on nuclear fusion or exploring the universe through mathematics and science and the mouth breathers that watch Jersey Shore and take selfies of themselves all day long. Socially we are progressing in some areas and going full retard in others. Technologically, we are more advanced than we've ever been and we are advancing at an increasing rate.
 
Dan_D said:
While it is true that I'm probably an outlier to some extent the reality is that the opportunity is there for all of us.
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This is just a meaningless platitude. Its like saying water is wet or fire is hot. Or that anyone can win the lotto.

They're all technically true, in the weasel word lawyerly fashion that has echoes of "heads I win, tails you lose" to it, but so what? What matters is what is actually happening and reality is quite different from what you're trying to present.

Dan_D said:
We don't need to do anything to make that a reality because that is the reality already.
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This pretty much BS. You can tell because even the big companies paying min. wage now expect people to use welfare programs to supplement income in order to survive.

Sure you can always point to a relative handful of people who are somehow eeking out a living doing it but they're the exceptions that prove the rule. And there are less of them than there used to be too due to the effects of inflation + wage theft by way of a lack of Cost of Living adjustments over time.

And you know better than to judge general circumstances by looking only at the outliers while ignoring what the overwhelming majority is going through.

Dan_D said:
but I think the bigger problem is a lack of motivation on the part of some people.
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Not really. Or at least not anymore of a problem than it was for previous generations.

Its now an accepted fact that future generations can expect to be poorer than previous post WWII generations were. And by a significant margin too. A lack of motivation isn't the cause of that.

Dan_D said:
My point is that the solution isn't to screw the other 7 super hard just to make that 1 person better off.
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Except raising min. wage doesn't screw over anyone, not even a little bit. And historically previous post WWII generations got paid the same or more than $15/hr as a min. wage, once you adjust for inflation, for the same jobs.

Dan_D said:
You can see what's happened with the Affordable Care Act and how helping the poor by paying for their health care coverage has simply raised prices for everyone else.
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Uhhh that is false. The PPACA actually did what it was supposed to by dropping the rate of increase in healthcare costs. If you're talking about low cost plans that existed prior to the PPACA going into effect being largely eliminated and replaced with higher cost ones that is because they did effectively nothing at all and were really more of a scam instead of practical insurance. If you're talking about recent increases lately most cost increases have been due to a certain President's appointees actively trying to sabotage the PPACA in a effort to make it look bad.
 
/dev/null said:
There are many disabled people who have severe limitations in what they can do. Some people CAN'T do more. Would you rather have those people working & producing something or just sitting at home?
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I am sorry but if you are disabled then you should be nowhere near hot equipment. flipping burgers requires one to be fairly competent and speedy at what they do... been there done that as previously stated...

mesyn191 said:
Generally speaking wealthy people are those who make ~$120K/yr+ since that puts you in the top ~10% of all earners globally.

Now its also common for those people to not consider themselves wealthy at all but so what?

Its not what they think of themselves that determines them as wealthy but rather their economic freedom and capabilities vs everyone else that matters.


I don't care. I did to you know. You also shouldn't care about that either.

Why?

Because the fast food industry and economy of today is different than what you or I dealt with years ago.

Your personal history and experience is not indicative of what everyone else is going through now. Especially since we have solid information on how things are now for people in general who work those jobs for current min. wages vs current Cost of Living, school debt, etc. How hard is it really to understand this??


Hahahaha WTF??! There was nothing about working in fast food that prepared me at all for any other job. It was a crap tier job that I got because as a teenager that was about all I could get at the time. The only "skill" that I learned there that I still use anywhere is how to bust down boxes really quick and fold them up so they fit in a recycle bin neatly.


You do realize that almost everyone fails at retirement planning right?

Again: most have no or nearly savings and are 1 paycheque away from losing everything.

401K's have been shown to mostly be a scam to get people to give up their defined benefit pensions too BTW.
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really? nothing?

I guess my first job was worthless then, right

1. taught me that showing up to work on time is important
2. taught me now to interact with many other people of various races/beliefs, etc
3. forced me to learn how to manage my money...
4. taught me how to properly interact with my superiors (you know the people that actually manage the place)
yup learned nothing from my first job...nothing at all and it for sure did not assist me in starting my career as it showed employers that I am dependable and a good worker...

you can bet your bottom end that when my first career employer called my previous employers, they got great references
 
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Dan_D said:
People do have a chance at earning a living that will support a basic lifestyle on a single job. It's called; "learn some fucking skills and stop working at Wal-Mart." Anyone can do it. I have no college education and no vocational training. I taught myself some skills and here I am earning a decent living doing work I enjoy with people I actually like. My work days can be busy but I rarely feel like I'm actually working. Earning a living where you can support yourself and potentially a family is a matter of motivation to better yourself. The apathy that many people are displaying today isn't a behavioral trait that should be fostered or rewarded. We sure as shit shouldn't prop that kind of behavior up at the cost of others who are motivated to do more than simply scrape by.

When you raise the minimum wage too high it creates a domino effect that hurts the middle class more than anyone. You aren't robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. You are robbing from the middle class that does most of the county's work. The solution to the problem isn't to drag other people down. You can't prop up the poor by effectively making more of them.
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My son has a mental disability. He has limited vocabulary & MIGHT be able to do a "real job" but maybe not. IF he turns out be able to do only a "basic" job, would you prefer him work and make enough where he doesn't need social services, or would you prefer he take social services?

I have way more confidence in private industry being efficient in giving him a living-wage job than I do the government & social services being efficient at supporting him...
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
I am sorry but if you are disabled then you should be nowhere near hot equipment. flipping burgers requires one to be fairly competent and speedy at what they do... been there done that as previously stated...



really? nothing?

I guess my first job was worthless then, right

1. taught me that showing up to work on time is important
2. taught me now to interact with many other people of various races/beliefs, etc
3. forced me to learn how to manage my money...
4. taught me how to properly interact with my superiors (you know the people that actually manage the place)
yup learned nothing from my first job...nothing at all and it for sure did not assist me in starting my career as it showed employers that I am dependable and a good worker...

you can bet your bottom end that when my first career employer called my previous employers, they got great references
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So replace "flipping burgers" with <some mundane task> that people here don't find "worthy" of a living wage. The exact task doesn't matter. Do you think your money is better spend feeding a social safety net someone disabled might qualify for and having the goverment run it, or having private business pay a living wage?
 
/dev/null said:
So replace "flipping burgers" with <some mundane task> that people here don't find "worthy" of a living wage. The exact task doesn't matter. Do you think your money is better spend feeding a social safety net someone disabled might qualify for and having the goverment run it, or having private business pay a living wage?
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We as a society already have programs in place to help those people

aka SSI and rent assistance, etc so your point is?
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
We as a society already have programs in place to help those people

aka SSI and rent assistance, etc so your point is?
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My point is we'd be better off with LESS PEOPLE on government assistance, and those who are able to work have a living wage. I think you are missing the point entirely. Having people making a substandard wage & still receiving government benefits paid by my/your taxes is less efficient than just paying them a living wage where they don't qualify for assistance and removing government from the equation.
 
/dev/null said:
My point is we'd be better off with LESS PEOPLE on government assistance, and those who are able to work have a living wage. I think you are missing the point entirely. Having people making a substandard wage & still receiving government benefits paid by my/your taxes is less efficient than just paying them a living wage where they don't qualify for assistance and removing government from the equation.
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I agree. Let's remove government from the equation!
Let's get rid of the welfare state.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
really? nothing?
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Pretty much yeah.

Your points are all things that are commonly learned during childhood in school or from your parents.

You don't ever have had to have worked to know any of it and I sure didn't.

And no job I've worked since then has ever cared that I worked at a fast food joint. Not even any of the other crap jobs I did as a teenager cared.

What they cared about were credentials and relevant job experience.

Laowai said:
Let's remove government from the equation. Let's get rid of the welfare state.
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You know there was a point in history, really nearly ALL of pre WWII history, where welfare states didn't exist and the poor were generally treated pretty horribly and generally had much shorter lives as well.

So your utopia already existed and sucked horribly dude.

The people who lived through those times very much hated it and voted for govt. mandated social safety nets for a reason and it sure as heck wasn't because any private party was doing a good job at helping them out.
 
/dev/null said:
My point is we'd be better off with LESS PEOPLE on government assistance, and those who are able to work have a living wage. I think you are missing the point entirely. Having people making a substandard wage & still receiving government benefits paid by my/your taxes is less efficient than just paying them a living wage where they don't qualify for assistance and removing government from the equation.
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I still don’t understand why people can’t see that you can’t raise wages in a vacuum.

You raise minimum wage by double, prices on the vast majority of things people with minimum wages buy everyday will nearly double. Because the companies and workers that produce those things are being paid double as well. That Seattle study’s quote where prices only raised 6% was fraudulent premise. It’s too short a timeframe, and too limited a scope. Only minimum wages increases in that scenario and wages were already high there to begin with. Prices on the raw materials used would have largely not changed because instead of buying immediately local they could have bought at the next city over for the pre minimum wage product prices. Any reasonable study would list the external factors that might affect the results. That wasn’t listed.

Washington state or California wants to test this? Make it statewide and make it law businesses can ONLY buy from local in-state entities that are also equally participating in the test program. See how that works.


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You raise wages you pay more = inflation

Your same $1 dollar bill buys less.

This cuts hard into the value of saved money hard. People who wisely stowed away some of their earnings through life are punished.

I’m sorrry for your son’s situation, truly.
But the reality often is, if he doesn’t have enough mental capacity to get or hold a reasonable job, he will likely need help no matter how much minimum wage is — because he probably won’t be managing his life and financials well.


This is all moot. No way our government raises minimum wage in one leap from $7 to $15. The rank and file leaders in Congress still have enough sense to know that’s unwise. The odd company - like Bernie Sanders cannot raise enough support to make it a reality or implement socialism. Not yet, and hopefully not in my or my kids lifetime.

Minimum wages can be inched up. And that too will cause inflation, but at a National level — inching up is far more appropriate than leaping up.

What an individual company, like Amazon, wants to do is up to them.
 
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Archaea said:
You raise minimum wage by double, prices on the vast majority of things people with minimum wages buy everyday will nearly double.
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This is false.

While wage inflation is a thing its not a 1:1 ratio (since labor is usually not the biggest factor in business) and it also normally has its effects over long periods of time.

Archaea said:
Washington state or California wants to test this?
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You realize that other countries have dramatically raise their min. wages and they haven't gone into a inflation spiral right? And that the standard of living in general is higher there too right?

Furthermore you also realize that historically the min. wage was higher in the US (in real terms, adjust for inflation over time) in the post WWII-1970's-ish era as well?

By not doing CoL's for decades to adjust for inflation (which happened anyways) employers effectively STOLE the money from the workers and a raise to ~$15/hr for min. wage is STILL effectively a CUT from where it was at its peak decades ago.

Archaea said:
No way our government raises minimum wage in one leap from $7 to $15.
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The current admin? No they won't do it. They're too busy trying to give the public's money to the rich. Even at the expense of blowing out the deficit ~$1 Trillion. There is your "wisdom" right there Mr. Fiscal Responsibility.

The following admin possibly might though.

Archaea said:
And that too will cause inflation
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Inflation is a thing even if wages stagnate dude. Its pretty much always there and there haven't been very many periods of time where we've seen that not be true no matter what..

To put the most of the blame on wage increases, or to say that potentially they're the cause of massive inflation, is at this point absurd BS.

Wages have been stagnant in general for decades but inflation has still been going up non-stop during that whole time period. And debt (both govt. and private) did nothing but grow while the rich got richer at the public's expense via bailouts and regulatory capture.
 
Laowai said:
So stop being poor.
It's really not all that hard.
Most permanently poor people in the US are poor due to bad decions they made.Yeah, there are repurcussions to shitty decision making.

I'm tired of seeing people with smartphones, cable TV, high-speed internet, multiple TV's, and a car complain about being poor.
Ditch the unnecessary garbage, get a bike or a bus pass, clip coupons, get secondhand clothes, work hard, improve yourself and do better!

Don't pick my pocket just because you failed at life.
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Easy to say when you still live at home with your folks.
 
mesyn191 said:
You know there was a point in history, really nearly ALL of pre WWII history, where welfare states didn't exist and the poor were generally treated pretty horribly and generally had much shorter lives as well.
So your utopia already existed and sucked horribly dude.
The people who lived through those times very much hated it and voted for govt. mandated social safety nets for a reason and it sure as heck wasn't because any private party was doing a good job at helping them out.
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I never said it would lead to any kind of utopia.
Utopia does not exist, it's a fantasy for fools.

Who voted for what? When was the vote for all the social programs we have now and who is it you believe voted?
And your remark about the people who lived through those times hating it.....is difficult to parse. It makes no sense as it's written.

There was welfare prior to '32/'33 but it was handled on the local level and called by a different name. The Depression made that untenable and the Federal gov't stepped in. That was OK too, until it began putting a burden on the taxpayers and that began in '33 and exploded in the 60's. Mind you, the 60's was a time of low unemployment and a booming economy, unlike '32. Only in '32 were taxpayers considered. The money provided to States in '32 was in the form of direct loans and loans for public works projects. As soon as '33 rolled in, FDR threw loans out the window and started giving grants instead. I'm conflicted about how I feel about the WPA. I am a complete fan of what it accomplished, I just don't wholeheartedly agree with the grants made to States. It was temporary though, that is another positive. What we saw in the 60's however....is an entirely different kettle of fish. We're spending now over $15,000 per person in poverty.

Go look for yourself. Read the language of ERCA('32) and FERA('33). Then look at what LBJ did in the 60's.

Welfare may increase poverty. Not reduce it.
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/gborjas/publications/journal/RE2016.pdf
Also worth reading.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=ukcpr_papers
And read this if you want to get a grasp on the true cost of social programs in the US. Not only welfare.
https://piie.com/publications/pb/pb15-4.pdf
 
I hate all posts complaining about raising the minimum wage because it will raise the prices of goods. That may be true but so would lowering the wages of doctors, engineers and everyone else in the workforce. It would do wonders for bisinesses if labor was near free. Slavery built the pyramids after all.
 
mesyn191 said:
This is just a meaningless platitude. Its like saying water is wet or fire is hot. Or that anyone can win the lotto.

They're all technically true, in the weasel word lawyerly fashion that has echoes of "heads I win, tails you lose" to it, but so what? What matters is what is actually happening and reality is quite different from what you're trying to present.


This pretty much BS. You can tell because even the big companies paying min. wage now expect people to use welfare programs to supplement income in order to survive.

Sure you can always point to a relative handful of people who are somehow eeking out a living doing it but they're the exceptions that prove the rule. And there are less of them than there used to be too due to the effects of inflation + wage theft by way of a lack of Cost of Living adjustments over time.

And you know better than to judge general circumstances by looking only at the outliers while ignoring what the overwhelming majority is going through.


Not really. Or at least not anymore of a problem than it was for previous generations.

Its now an accepted fact that future generations can expect to be poorer than previous post WWII generations were. And by a significant margin too. A lack of motivation isn't the cause of that.


Except raising min. wage doesn't screw over anyone, not even a little bit. And historically previous post WWII generations got paid the same or more than $15/hr as a min. wage, once you adjust for inflation, for the same jobs.


Uhhh that is false. The PPACA actually did what it was supposed to by dropping the rate of increase in healthcare costs. If you're talking about low cost plans that existed prior to the PPACA going into effect being largely eliminated and replaced with higher cost ones that is because they did effectively nothing at all and were really more of a scam instead of practical insurance. If you're talking about recent increases lately most cost increases have been due to a certain President's appointees actively trying to sabotage the PPACA in a effort to make it look bad.
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Not gonna cover all this but rates most definitely went up under AHCA, and that was happening prior to our current POTUS.
 
mesyn191 said:
Except raising min. wage doesn't screw over anyone, not even a little bit. And historically previous post WWII generations got paid the same or more than $15/hr as a min. wage, once you adjust for inflation, for the same jobs.
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This is a huge lie being told right now. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr will put a lot of mom and pop stores out of business because they cannot afford to even pay some of their employees now the rate that larger chain stores do. This is going on all over the country. My uncle's favorite hardware store closed down because they could not compete with the local Home Depot and they were only paying their workers $10/hr. There are stories like this all over the country, just no one is listening. They are soo keen on being righteous about a livable wage they aren't truly listening to people suffering trying to provide the best they can for their families and their workers.

The problem is complex, if you really want to start finding a solution, then it would have to start with restrictions to large chains. We would have to radically change anti-trust law to curtail the spread of chains all over the place that can cut prices through large scale deals and agreements.

Also as has been mentioned by a newer article out, some workers are now making less because of the min wage increase by Amazon. Amazon ended a lot of the incentives they were provided to help boost wages when they just increased the wages to $15/hr across the board. Most of those incentives were rewards for good work and consistency.
 
next-Jin said:
Not gonna cover all this but rates most definitely went up under AHCA, and that was happening prior to our current POTUS.
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Do you seriously not understand what "dropping the rate of increase" means?! Where is your reading comprehension??

If you cut the rate of growth of healthcare costs from say ~10-12% to say ~6-4% then yes costs still went up the rate they did so was dramatically reduced. Nearly cut in half. That was what the PPACA was supposed to do. There were other things that were important (ie. covering pre-existing conditions, allowing kids to stay on their parents plans until their mid 20's, etc.) but that was the big financial goal it was aiming for.

Laowai said:
I never said it would lead to any kind of utopia.
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You never used the words but you sure try to portray it as one. All while ignoring pretty much nearly all of the history of the world too.

Laowai said:
Who voted for what?
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You know how to google the history of the WPA, Social Security, and various welfare programs.

Or are you going to argue that Congress didn't pass those laws and the Presidents of the time didn't sign them into law?

Laowai said:
.is difficult to parse. It makes no sense as it's written.
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What? No. Hating something is trivial to understand. And its even easier to understand why a poor person who lived through the Great Depression era would hate they poverty they endured, especially since it was caused by wanton speculation and graft, and want to establish social safety nets and welfare programs and voted accordingly.

None of that is hard to understand.

Laowai said:
There was welfare prior to '32/'33
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Nope. You're thinking of mutual aid societies. Those weren't welfare programs. Those were privately ran institutions or clubs (yes clubs) and were more akin to a sort of unemployment insurance but way crappier and more expensive. Quite a few were little more than scams selling false promises.

They were notorious for failing to do a good job of helping people during the "good times" and when the Great Depression hit virtually all of them fell apart.

Laowai said:
Welfare may increase poverty. Not reduce it.
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Yeah those studies are either garbage (desperate people working harder at crap jobs when welfare programs are eliminated isn't a plus or proof of welfare increasing poverty) or inconclusive ("
a valid assessment of the net effect of welfare on the extent of poverty in the United States will require an improved measure of poverty.").

And the cost of such programs is hardly an issue when the govt. debt balance sheets are getting blown out due to wars, bank bailouts, and give aways to the rich to the tune of trillions of dollars.

NoOther said:
This is a huge lie being told right now.
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No its not. The information is trivial to google. Look here is a chart showing that min. wage should really be around $18/hr by adjusting for inflation + productivity increases. Its even got the source listed on the bottom.

Small Mom n' Pop shops did just fine during that era. Better than they're doing right now in fact.

NoOther said:
My uncle's favorite hardware store closed down because they could not compete with the local Home Depot
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Which doesn't have anything necessarily to do with wages. Home Depot puts stores out of business by out competing them not by under cutting their labor costs.

NoOther said:
We would have to radically change anti-trust law to curtail the spread of chains all over the place that can cut prices through large scale deals and agreements.
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LOL that isn't what anti-trust laws are for. They do not exist to sabotage bigger businesses so that smaller less competitive business can still exist.

NoOther said:
Most of those incentives were rewards for good work and consistency.
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Apparently they rarely paid them out though so its a small loss at absolute worst. Realistically them paying $15/hr as a minimum for those awful warehouse jobs is a big win over all.
 
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mesyn191 said:
You never used the words but you sure try to portray it as one. All while ignoring pretty much nearly all of the history of the world too.


You know how to google the history of the WPA, Social Security, and various welfare programs.
Or are you going to argue that Congress didn't pass those laws and the Presidents of the time didn't sign them into law?
What? No. Hating something is trivial to understand. And its even easier to understand why a poor person who lived through the Great Depression era would hate they poverty they endured, especially since it was caused by wanton speculation and graft, and want to establish social safety nets and welfare programs and voted accordingly.
None of that is hard to understand.
Nope. You're thinking of mutual aid societies. Those weren't welfare programs. Those were privately ran institutions or clubs (yes clubs) and were more akin to a sort of unemployment insurance but way crappier and more expensive. Quite a few were little more than scams selling false promises.
They were notorious for failing to do a good job of helping people during the "good times" and when the Great Depression hit virtually all of them fell apart.
Yeah those studies are either garbage (desperate people working harder at crap jobs when welfare programs are eliminated isn't a plus or proof of welfare increasing poverty) or inconclusive ("
a valid assessment of the net effect of welfare on the extent of poverty in the United States will require an improved measure of poverty.").

And the cost of such programs is hardly an issue when the govt. debt balance sheets are getting blown out due to wars, bank bailouts, and give aways to the rich to the tune of trillions of dollars.
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>Yes, Congress passed them, not the 'people' as you initially stated. It's unwise to confuse the two.
>Was unclear what you meant. Now you clarified it. That's deeply profound, man. People didn't like living through the Depression. Deep.
>No. I was thinking more along the lines of private charities funded with local money.
>What? Sure it is. If somebody CAN earn more and get off welfare but instead chooses to remain on welfare and earn less....is evidence welfare disincentivizes work and self-sufficiency. Those in that study were capable of supporting themselves, they just weren't willing to because they did not have to until the taxpayer funded gravy train stopped.

Is your final point that the US has a lot of debt so what's a few trillion more? Cool.

Look, we're WAY off topic here. Neither one of us is going to change our mind. Feel free to have the last word if you want, but I'm outta here.
 
mesyn191 said:
No its not. The information is trivial to google. Look here is a chart showing that min. wage should really be around $18/hr by adjusting for inflation + productivity increases. Its even got the source listed on the bottom.

Small Mom n' Pop shops did just fine during that era. Better than they're doing right now in fact.
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First, you don't want to believe anyone else's random charts, why should anyone trust yours? Plus that is not accounting for a large number of factors, one of them being that business today is completely different than back then. Manufaccturing and large scale deals involving mass shipments have had a huge impact on how we buy, sell, and deliver products. Just look at Amazon. Things are not the same and trying to use inflation as a base is ridiculous. Saying Mom n Pop shops did fine then, so they should now is just devoid of any reason. Back then people didn't have the choices they do now. Hell just 20 years ago we didn't have half the choices we have now. If you think that Mom n Pop stores can compete just fine now, then you obviously have done about zero research into the matter. Not only are mom n pop stores suffering, large scale brick n mortar stores are suffering too.


mesyn191 said:
Which doesn't have anything necessarily to do with wages. Home Depot puts stores out of business by out competing them not by under cutting their labor costs.
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This seriously shows you have no idea what you are talking about. If Home Depot can undercut a business, how can that business hope to compete, especially when they have to try to compete for wages too? Home Depot can offer $1/hr more, extra benefits and still undersell the Mom n Pop store. Your statement here is directly contradicting your statement above. I am glad you are giving me more supporting evidence..

mesyn191 said:
LOL that isn't what anti-trust laws are for. They do not exist to sabotage bigger businesses so that smaller less competitive business can still exist.
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Thus the reason why I said you would have to drastically change them. If you do not, then you will end up with many de facto monopolies of large corporations owning and running everything. If you start forcing minimum wage, only the large corporations can eat up that cost and still compete effectively.

mesyn191 said:
Apparently they rarely paid them out though so its a small loss at absolute worst. Realistically them paying $15/hr as a minimum for those awful warehouse jobs is a big win over all.
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Not according to all the workers that are frustrated now that they are losing them...and called out Amazon on this.
 
Laowai said:
So stop being poor.
It's really not all that hard.
Most permanently poor people in the US are poor due to bad decions they made.Yeah, there are repurcussions to shitty decision making.

I'm tired of seeing people with smartphones, cable TV, high-speed internet, multiple TV's, and a car complain about being poor.
Ditch the unnecessary garbage, get a bike or a bus pass, clip coupons, get secondhand clothes, work hard, improve yourself and do better!

Don't pick my pocket just because you failed at life.
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You're right I shouldn't have decided to develop an autoimmune disorder. That was silly of me wasn't it?
 
mesyn191 said:
This is just a meaningless platitude. Its like saying water is wet or fire is hot. Or that anyone can win the lotto.

They're all technically true, in the weasel word lawyerly fashion that has echoes of "heads I win, tails you lose" to it, but so what? What matters is what is actually happening and reality is quite different from what you're trying to present.
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My statement was that the opportunity to learn skills and not work at entry level, dead end jobs is there for all of us. You even agreed with that as its technically true. I didn't say one way or another if the vast majority of people were doing that or not. Its obvious that the vast majority aren't doing things like that on their own. Or at the very least, anyone who wants to be a Wal-Mart greeter for lyfe isn't.

mesyn191 said:
This pretty much BS. You can tell because even the big companies paying min. wage now expect people to use welfare programs to supplement income in order to survive.
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My point was that jobs exist which one can earn a living that enables them to support themselves on a single job. I never said that this could be done on minimum wage, There are many jobs out there which don't require a whole lot to get into that pay beyond minimum wage. Minimum wage jobs were never intended to be a life long career to support families on. No one's thought process should be; "I make minimum wage bagging groceries for 35 hours a week. I'm going to have 5 kids now."

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mesyn191 said:
Sure you can always point to a relative handful of people who are somehow eeking out a living doing it but they're the exceptions that prove the rule. And there are less of them than there used to be too due to the effects of inflation + wage theft by way of a lack of Cost of Living adjustments over time.
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Again, see above.

mesyn191 said:
And you know better than to judge general circumstances by looking only at the outliers while ignoring what the overwhelming majority is going through.
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Again, all I said was that it was possible to earn a living in which you can support yourself on a single job. It doesn't require a lot of skill either. Again, I'm not talking about entry level, minimum wage jobs YOU SHOULDN'T BE STAYING IN FOR YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE. Jesus Christ...........how hard is this to grasp?

mesyn191 said:
Not really. Or at least not anymore of a problem than it was for previous generations.
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Perhaps, but anyone who thinks they should be able to stay in some dead end, entry level, minimum wage job isn't motivated as I see it. Those jobs are transitional. It should be students and very young adults working in those jobs as stepping stones to better things. This is how everyone seemed to view jobs like that until a few years ago.

mesyn191 said:
Its now an accepted fact that future generations can expect to be poorer than previous post WWII generations were. And by a significant margin too. A lack of motivation isn't the cause of that.
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Look, 20 years ago no one was saying that they need to be able to support a family of four while working as a door greeter at Wally World. Now, people sit here and say: "Everyone should be able to earn a living with any full time job." That's bullshit.

mesyn191 said:
Except raising min. wage doesn't screw over anyone, not even a little bit. And historically previous post WWII generations got paid the same or more than $15/hr as a min. wage, once you adjust for inflation, for the same jobs.
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Yes it does. Its already been explained by several people WHY this is the case and who gets screwed over the most. As someone above said, you can't look at our country in WWII and say they made more (accounting for inflation) so we should too. Salaries are one of the biggest costs that any company shoulders. I don't doubt that some corporations could spread the wealth a bit from the top to help mitigate this problem, but that wouldn't come close to resolving it. When salaries are the biggest cost and you double the wages of minimum wage jobs, companies will raise the prices of goods and services to compensate for this.

mesyn191 said:
Uhhh that is false. The PPACA actually did what it was supposed to by dropping the rate of increase in healthcare costs. If you're talking about low cost plans that existed prior to the PPACA going into effect being largely eliminated and replaced with higher cost ones that is because they did effectively nothing at all and were really more of a scam instead of practical insurance. If you're talking about recent increases lately most cost increases have been due to a certain President's appointees actively trying to sabotage the PPACA in a effort to make it look bad.
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The proof is in the fucking pudding. My insurance costs went from below $200 a month (Pre-ACA) to $500 damn near overnight. I don't know anyone who didn't suffer cost increases. Small business owners that I know were hit the hardest. Smaller businesses often had no choice but to make workers part time or let them go altogether because they couldn't absorb the insurance cost increases. Co-workers at many places I've worked all reported insane cost increases that were even worse if they had kids. I'll take the word of people I know that work in the healthcare industry who said the ACA overall, has not been a good thing. They know far more about it than I do but when you can't find anyone who wasn't buttfucked by rising insurance costs, its hard to say the "Affordable Heath Care Act" did its job. Go check the insurance thread Kyle posted in. He's had costs skyrocket out of control since that bullshit was passed.

The ACA is socialized health care that's implemented very badly. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
/dev/null said:
My point is we'd be better off with LESS PEOPLE on government assistance, and those who are able to work have a living wage. I think you are missing the point entirely. Having people making a substandard wage & still receiving government benefits paid by my/your taxes is less efficient than just paying them a living wage where they don't qualify for assistance and removing government from the equation.
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fine,

then deny it to the people who are able to work. and quit rewarding women for being baby factories...

next....


Now back to the topic at hand.. amazon was already paying most of their workers near or at $15 an hour.... but before this went down they got 16% holiday season bonus plus some limited stock option... the 16% is gone and the stock options are changed

so the guy maying $14 got a 6.6...% raise but lost 16% holiday premium pay...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage-raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse

mesyn191 said:
Pretty much yeah.

Your points are all things that are commonly learned during childhood in school or from your parents.

You don't ever have had to have worked to know any of it and I sure didn't.

And no job I've worked since then has ever cared that I worked at a fast food joint. Not even any of the other crap jobs I did as a teenager cared.

What they cared about were credentials and relevant job experience.


You know there was a point in history, really nearly ALL of pre WWII history, where welfare states didn't exist and the poor were generally treated pretty horribly and generally had much shorter lives as well.

So your utopia already existed and sucked horribly dude.

The people who lived through those times very much hated it and voted for govt. mandated social safety nets for a reason and it sure as heck wasn't because any private party was doing a good job at helping them out.
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uh if you think you knew everything when you were 14-16 years old (average age in the us when you can legally enter into the work force) you are without a doubt delusional....
 
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Dan_D said:
The proof is in the fucking pudding. My insurance costs went from below $200 a month (Pre-ACA) to $500 damn near overnight. I don't know anyone who didn't suffer cost increases. Small business owners that I know were hit the hardest. Smaller businesses often had no choice but to make workers part time or let them go altogether because they couldn't absorb the insurance cost increases. Co-workers at many places I've worked all reported insane cost increases that were even worse if they had kids. I'll take the word of people I know that work in the healthcare industry who said the ACA overall, has not been a good thing. They know far more about it than I do but when you can't find anyone who wasn't buttfucked by rising insurance costs, its hard to say the "Affordable Heath Care Act" did its job. Go check the insurance thread Kyle posted in. He's had costs skyrocket out of control since that bullshit was passed.

The ACA is socialized health care that's implemented very badly. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Very true. My insurance went from ~$350 a month for my "employee + spouse" plan to over $500 a month after "ACA" and my deductible doubled. Now that I've got the family plan it's over $700 a month and my deductible is $5500. Anyone who thinks it "slowed the rate" of increase is either smoking crack or never purchased insurance prior to the ACA.
 
capt_cope said:
Very true. My insurance went from ~$350 a month for my "employee + spouse" plan to over $500 a month after "ACA" and my deductible doubled. Now that I've got the family plan it's over $700 a month and my deductible is $5500. Anyone who thinks it "slowed the rate" of increase is either smoking crack or never purchased insurance prior to the ACA.
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Not sure you clearly are with a company that is raping you. I pay 230 for my family with $1500 out of pocket combined. Might be worth it to look outside of your employer because clearly that $700 a month is outrageous price thorugh an employer. Time to go get your own insurance. Now I am not sure how big your family is but $700 seems like insane amount for insurance through employer. I pay like 250 a month for my wife, me and my son and I have life insurance for both me and my wife in that amount. So looks like its your employer.

Sometimes states are culprits too that don't want to allow competition. Plus the credits that they pulled from ACA didn't help either it is bound to hit home to some. I am all for fixing shit but you can't just kill something and hope it find its way and some how gets better. ACA has its shortcomings, but it blows my mind how incompetent our government is when it comes to healthcare. Medical industry is a cash cow, when I go to other countries is like WTF cheap to do the same shit that we do here lol. Blames goes with government, politicians, drug companies and medical system.

Its a system that is designed to make you bankrupt if you don't have insurance. That is the biggest problem with healthcare. Shit you brake a leg and you don't have insurance here comes a bill that shocks the hell out of you.

My wife had a kidney stone, If I didn't have insurance. It would have costed has 15k there in emergency room and what not. Insane.

My uncle's open heart surgery was 3000 dollars overseas where he lived about 5-6 years ago, lets make it 10k now, lol! I was like if you didn't have insurance in America it would be like 150k.

They have inflated the cost so much that you are forced to have insurance. Healthcare should be like afforadable where if something happens you know you can go to the doctor and pay what you need to. Not be scared to go bankrupt. lol

ACA or whatever they want to come up with next is going to be half assed until they address the real problem, its the inflated cost of services! I had a hernia surgery, I had insurance but my bill was 30k billed to insurance for 1 hour surgery. Guess what they charged most for? 18k for surgery tools! Really? lol!
 
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There was a study done, in my relatively small city of ~130,000 people which took into account cost for housing, food, transportation, etc and the living wage was found to be $16.23 CDN/hr. This was just to meet the most basic of needs and if you made less you were considered living under the poverty line.

Our moronic provincial PC government, now headed by the brother of the deceased infamous crack smoking Mayor or Toronto, just cancelled the increase in minimum wage from 14 to 15 CDN/hr and is threatening to do away with the gains already implemented. But hey ... he did bring in buck a beer (which only 3 breweries in the most populated province in Canada got on board with, and 2 of those have now stopped) and he did revert our updated public education sex-Ed curriculum to the 1999 version. /rant

15$ an hour really isn’t asking a whole lot.
 
NKD said:
Not sure you clearly are with a company that is raping you. I pay 230 for my family with $1500 out of pocket combined. Might be worth it to look outside of your employer because clearly that $700 a month is outrageous price thorugh an employer. Time to go get your own insurance. Now I am not sure how big your family is but $700 seems like insane amount for insurance through employer. I pay like 250 a month for my wife, me and my son and I have life insurance for both me and my wife in that amount. So looks like its your employer.

Sometimes states are culprits too that don't want to allow competition. Plus the credits that they pulled from ACA didn't help either it is bound to hit home to some. I am all for fixing shit but you can't just kill something and hope it find its way and some how gets better. ACA has its shortcomings, but it blows my mind how incompetent our government is when it comes to healthcare. Medical industry is a cash cow, when I go to other countries is like WTF cheap to do the same shit that we do here lol. Blames goes with government, politicians, drug companies and medical system.

Its a system that is designed to make you bankrupt if you don't have insurance. That is the biggest problem with healthcare. Shit you brake a leg and you don't have insurance here comes a bill that shocks the hell out of you.

My wife had a kidney stone, If I didn't have insurance. It would have costed has 15k there in emergency room and what not. Insane.

My uncle's open heart surgery was 3000 dollars overseas where he lived about 5-6 years ago, lets make it 10k now, lol! I was like if you didn't have insurance in America it would be like 150k.

They have inflated the cost so much that you are forced to have insurance. Healthcare should be like afforadable where if something happens you know you can go to the doctor and pay what you need to. Not be scared to go bankrupt. lol

ACA or whatever they want to come up with next is going to be half assed until they address the real problem, its the inflated cost of services! I had a hernia surgery, I had insurance but my bill was 30k billed to insurance for 1 hour surgery. Guess what they charged most for? 18k for surgery tools! Really? lol!
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You've got a sweet deal with that insurance plan - I did actually look into getting insurance elsewhere, cheapest plan with a $12,500 deductible was over $1,200 a month and that had a 20% copay on EVERYTHING even medication after the deductible was met. Just matching the deductible and coverage I have now (can't find any plans that have the same out of pocket max) would cost me $1,700 a month.
 
capt_cope said:
You've got a sweet deal with that insurance plan - I did actually look into getting insurance elsewhere, cheapest plan with a $12,500 deductible was over $1,200 a month and that had a 20% copay on EVERYTHING even medication after the deductible was met. Just matching the deductible and coverage I have now (can't find any plans that have the same out of pocket max) would cost me $1,700 a month.
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Dang thats crazy. Are you in a state with no competition? Health insurance is a mess in general. I mean politician make it sound like its a hand out if its affordable. Its a joke you shouldn't have to pay so much for healthcare. I just hate it not having insurance is like being a chance away from being bankrupt. Just shouldn't be that way. Just make that shit affordable so it doesn't cost someone an arm and a leg. In your case that is a wallet rape. Its crazy in countries I have been to, people just walk in get cancer treatments lol. Its like hey its going to cost you 2000 dollar equivalent for your treatment.

On top I don't mind free either the way the government taxes my ass lol! I could do so much better with that social security money they take every paycheck. I could invest that in so many ways for my retirement lol.
 
NoOther said:
This is a huge lie being told right now. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr will put a lot of mom and pop stores out of business because they cannot afford to even pay some of their employees now the rate that larger chain stores do.
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Just bear in mind that in countries outside of the USA it's generally not a problem, businesses from small to large pay similar minimum wages and don't go bust. Try not to drink the capitalism cool aid. ;)
 
NKD said:
Dang thats crazy. Are you in a state with no competition? Health insurance is a mess in general. I mean politician make it sound like its a hand out if its affordable. Its a joke you shouldn't have to pay so much for healthcare. I just hate it not having insurance is like being a chance away from being bankrupt. Just shouldn't be that way. Just make that shit affordable so it doesn't cost someone an arm and a leg. In your case that is a wallet rape. Its crazy in countries I have been to, people just walk in get cancer treatments lol. Its like hey its going to cost you 2000 dollar equivalent for your treatment.

On top I don't mind free either the way the government taxes my ass lol! I could do so much better with that social security money they take every paycheck. I could invest that in so many ways for my retirement lol.
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The cost in the health care industry itself is insane world wide. Insurance is not health care so that has nothing to do with my point.

Edit: reading stuff before, I see you know what I mean.
 
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ManofGod said:
The cost in the health care industry itself is insane world wide. Insurance is not health care so that has nothing to do with my point.
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I can't say it's a problem where I live. Health care in the US is horrifying if what I read is true, the fact that people are a major illness away from bankruptcy while Apple is a trillion dollar company is completely unacceptable.
 
Funny thing, my college freshman teenage daughter just started working for whole foods a few weeks ago, and was very happy about getting a raise. She has plenty of work experience and customer service.. where we live is quite expensive, so the $4 bump is appropriate. She will remain on our insurance as long as she is a student.
 
ManofGod said:
The cost in the health care industry itself is insane world wide. Insurance is not health care so that has nothing to do with my point.

Edit: reading stuff before, I see you know what I mean.
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That really wasn’t my point. My point was you can pay more in a year here then it will cost you do major treatment or heart surgery in another country.

Cost of healthcare is not insane worldwide. I have seen plenty of cases heck a lot of countries have made if free. It’s just that in America there are billions and billions in profit at stake.

I can promise you if some company in another country tried to charge 20k for a bottle for med they burn down that company head quarter lol. Shit don’t fly like that in some countries. America has become immune to shit like that. Politics keeps them divided and gas lighted lol.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I can't say it's a problem where I live. Health care in the US is horrifying if what I read is true, the fact that people are a major illness away from bankruptcy while Apple is a trillion dollar company is completely unacceptable.
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Congress is bought and paid for by lobbyists. Its not the same America. Before it used to be bribe now everything is a campaign donation lol.
 
NKD said:
Congress is bought and paid for by lobbyists. Its not the same America. Before it used to be bribe now everything is a campaign donation lol.
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Don't worry, it's the same everywhere.

People are brainwashed into believing union = bad while failing to understand that the lobbyists are far worse than unions and in far greater numbers.
 
Dan_D said:
I've got a friend who lives in Canada. The wait time to see doctors there is insane. They also pay a fuck ton more in taxes than we do. She actually came to the U.S. to visit a doctor here so she could get immediate treatment for whatever it was she needed. I hear this isn't all that uncommon for people who live close enough to the U.S. to do this.

https://business.financialpost.com/...ng-and-youre-paying-a-lot-more-than-you-think
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/canada-not-a-good-example-of-universal-health-care
https://www.city-journal.org/html/ugly-truth-about-canadian-health-care-13032.html

That's not to say there aren't benefits to such a system, but there are certainly some cons to it as well.

https://www.formosapost.com/pros-and-cons-of-universal-health-care-in-canada/
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Regardless of the wait they are living longer than us. If it really was what you say then they wouldn't be living longer. Canada is ranked 12th we are ranked 31st. That's a pretty big gap. Political views can change what a person believes greatly but numbers are numbers period. It's like testing hardware, tons of people believe all sorts of things. But you run tests that often disprove common mythical ethos. This is no different.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Just bear in mind that in countries outside of the USA it's generally not a problem, businesses from small to large pay similar minimum wages and don't go bust. Try not to drink the capitalism cool aid. ;)
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Care to share your facts and how those countries relate to the US in population, size and GDP?
 
NoOther said:
Care to share your facts and how those countries relate to the US in population, size and GDP?
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Not really interested.

Raise the livable wages of the middle/working class and the bulk of the population has the expendable income to directly contribute to the economy by being able to afford the products being peddled by capitalist USA, this is a fairly undeniable fact. If you want to know more in relation to specifics regarding population, size and GDP - Feel free to look it up yourself.
 
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