Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

Re:Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees by dantheman on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @10:26AM (#18121993)

This is disastrous for low skilled workers. It removes the bottom rung of the economic ladder -- if you have no skills or little skills, the best way to develop skills is to be employed. If you don't provide more than 15$ per hour of value then you won't be able to get a job.

This also helps create a moat around amazon - if they can get the costs of everyone to go up, when they unleash better picking/warehouse automation no one will be able to compete with them.

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Re:Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees by wlll on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @10:37AM (#18122095)

I don't think that's how employment pools work.

Sure, there's an element of "this job is only worth $7.5/hour, so if we have to pay someone $15/hour we won't do it", but I'd suggest that those jobs are actually not that common.

I'd instead suggest that most jobs need doing, and they will just cost more. Ditches still need digging, burgers still need flipping, and it will just cost a bit more now.

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Re:Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees by conanbatt on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @12:03PM (#18122876)

Lots of interesting things happen when you play with price. Sometimes its higher-paying workers that benefit the most: if you can handle data management manually at 7.5U$S you hire cheap labor. If it costs 15U$S you hire an engineer to make a permanent and scalable solution.

I am not enamored by the concept of minimum wage, and to this day its a fight among economists.

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Re:Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees by drak0n1c on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @01:59PM (#18124063)

The minimum wage has exactly the same effect on labor as the carbon tax has on the energy industry. There are winners and there are losers. But generally, when the government decides, there is deadweight loss in efficiency.

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Re:Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees by simula67 on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @10:58AM (#18122274)

You don't need to speculate. There is a research that shows it does hurt lower skill workers : http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf

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Re:Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees by wlll on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:58AM (#18122839)

That's an interesting read, in summary it seems that rises in the minimum wage have a small negative impact, mostly for low paid young people.

That makes sense, there's going to be jobs that just aren't profitable when the wages go up. If I can make $4 on a box of shleem, and the kid who packs the shleem's wages go up $5 I have to pack the shleem myself, or stop selling it.

One thing that the report mentioned, and is maybe a possible cause of this negative increase, was that kids will leave school sooner when the minimum wage is higher. Perhaps to counter the issue there could be some sort of means-tested grant system to help keep kids in school?

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