AOC- Amazon Pays their Employees in Starvation Wages.

[ImpulsE69]

For example, we can attach a salary to raising a child.

fuck to the no about a salary to raise a child. We don't need more incentives for people to continue to spit out more kids. I would hard vote that no, and bring a bunch of illegals to vote as well.

 

[Maxima1]

fuck to the no about a salary to raise a child. We don't need more incentives for people to continue to spit out more kids. I would hard vote that no

Agreed. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

 

[Jaskalas]

Ha ha ha you'll never get the GOP to increase taxes due to automation, they will tell you that the owner deserves all the profit.

I'm sure the gallows will change their minds. I mean, the people will have their share. One way or another. I suggest the easy way, but if Republicans insist then we will do it the French way. Their choice.

 

[Jaskalas]

Or win the lottery.

If you cant figure it out, how do you expect to do anything in life?

How many lotteries have you figured out?

You sound like a millennial.

You sound like food. A nice round meaty morsel.

You sound like someone living in a delusion. As if the world is static and unchanging. That decades past are the same as future decades. That is simply not true. You understand that, right? Basic concept of time, and things ever changing. Take Capitalism for example. It wins because it strives to be efficient. Labor is no longer efficient. Even slave labor in China is being automated and REPLACED. Was Chinese labor too richly paid when you grew up? And by rich I mean dirt poor and wishing Foxcon didn't install suicide nets. Those poor SOBs are too expensive and being replaced.

I digress, point is Capitalism evolves over time. It learns how to ELIMINATE labor. Costs bad. Profits good. We get it. Do you?

Do you understand that labor = consumer? They are one in the same. So tell me. How does Capitalism survive with no consumers? After all the jobs and the value of labor are slowly and methodically eliminated, who remains to buy the goods and services?

This is the ultimate dilemma. One day soon Capitalism will destroy itself. Period. Unless we save it.

Granted, it is not "one day", a switch will not be flipped. You will not suddenly wake up one day to a world ended. You'll see it coming. It's a decades long slide into ruin via Income Inequality (Read: Children make far LESS money than their parents even working the SAME jobs).

The trick is we need to be intelligent. To see it coming before it is too late to stop the ruin and save Capitalism. To save ourselves.

If you think a job should pay starvation wages then you have not been paying attention. Actually those jobs could, IF we provide a fully functional safety net. $1k/mo PLUS rents and mortgages eliminated. No small task to accomplish that. Speaking of delusions, you realize our society HAS the money to fund Basic Income, right? I'm just double checking to make sure a person of your caliber bootstraps can do simple math. United States personal income, annually, $17.5 trillion. The cost would be about $4 trillion of that. So "we cannot afford it", let's not go there. The funds do exist.

So tell me. Can you see the world for what it is, that Capitalism is wounded and DYING. Do you want to save it with us?

I hope so. You hope so too, even if you don't know it yet. Nice juicy plum you are.

 

[mect]

fuck to the no about a salary to raise a child. We don't need more incentives for people to continue to spit out more kids. I would hard vote that no, and bring a bunch of illegals to vote as well.

America has no issue with family size. If not for immigration, we would be below replacement levels (current fertility rate is 1.72 births per female). Additionally, I've seen no evidence that providing a salary for raising children would increase fertility rates. Particularly if there were plenty of other jobs available that brought fulfillment.

 

[brandonbull]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/fact-check-aoc-amazon-wages-bezos/index.html

CNN does some fact checking on AOC and her claim that Amazon pays their employees a starvation wage. IMO, AOC is way iout of line. She says that Bezos made his fortune on the backs of cheap labor. That statement is misleading.

I personally know a few people employed by Amazon and not counting the generous amount of stock they received, they do not earn "starvation wages".

 

[Victorian Gray]

"The median pay of Amazon employees in the U.S. was just over $35,000 last year, the company disclosed for the first time in its 2019 proxy statement Thursday."

"The median total compensation, meaning half were paid more and half were paid less, for Amazon employees worldwide in 2018 was $28,836, up $390 from 2017, according to the proxy statement."

"In the U.S., where Amazon's new $15-an-hour minimum wage took effect Nov. 1, the median was $35,096—a new metric reported for 2019. The company said the new wage floor would benefit more than 250,000 Amazon full- and part-time employees and more than 100,000 seasonal workers."

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-amazon-reveals-typical-worker-minimum-wage.html

Seems like they employ a fair number of folks who aren't particularly well compensated.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Seems like they employ a fair number of folks who aren't particularly well compensated.

I’d imagine they employ quite a few with little to no marketable skills either.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I’d imagine they employ quite a few with little to no marketable skills either.

Lol, so how much would minimum wage be now if it had kept up with inflation?

 

[Victorian Gray]

I’d imagine they employ quite a few with little to no marketable skills either.

Not the point.

 

[glenn1]

Not the point.

So your "point" is that salaries should be completely independent of a worker's skill level?

Look, I get that you and most progressives want "liveable" wages for workers. No shame in that. However it would be nice if you would acknowledge the disadvantages to enacting a policy to enforce such a living wage. Such as that employment for those getting "living wages" will go down in a simple supply/demand reaction to the increased costs of staffing. Businesses might exit entire lines of business as unprofitable. A non-zero amount of workers with low skills will be completely unemployable since the value produced by their labor can't recoup the costs of their compensation. Et cetera.

I know you and fellow progressives tend to think of business owners as rich plutocrats swimming in vaults of gold like Scrooge McDuck. And think "of course they could pay their workers more, the CEO can just buy one less yacht." However that's not typically the case - just like you businesses have plenty of costs to pay and make plans based on expected revenues and income. Just like you they probably could "afford" to hire more workers and/or pay them more, but it typically means something else gets sacrificed. For example, if I forced your household to employ a cleaning service and pay them $15/hour you could probably afford it. But it also means you'd have to give up other spending to do so - for example, you might have wanted to send your kid to a summer camp or two and no longer can. Or pay for math tutoring to bring her grades up from 'meh' to As. Those objectives are just as valid and just as valuable as hiring the cleaning service and paying them "living wage." Expand that $15/hour principle to every service you consume, from daycare to dry cleaning and soon you'd be out of money to pay people. You'd wind up deciding "I guess I really don't need dry cleaning so I'll iron my clothes myself since I can't do without daycare." Businesses are the same way. They might want to spend more on customer service, or R&D, or any number of things but if you made all their staff artificially expensive because you wanted them to have "living wages" then the business may cut back on everything but core operations and those people don't get hired or get let go. Just like your dry cleaner would.

tl;dr businesses aren't all run by guys like this and raising costs of workers via "liveable wage" laws means less workers, there is no free lunch.

 

[fskimospy]

fuck to the no about a salary to raise a child. We don't need more incentives for people to continue to spit out more kids. I would hard vote that no, and bring a bunch of illegals to vote as well.

American birth rates are below replacement level. We definitely need incentives for people to have kids.

 

[ImpulsE69]

American birth rates are below replacement level. We definitely need incentives for people to have kids.

Replacement level based on what? "status quo'? Who says there needs to be a replacement level? That's only necessary to keep the engine running as is, but we're all sitting here saying there's big problems. The population could stand to decrease a bit. That alone here and world wide would help with some of the bigger issues. Paying people to have kids is not a necessity at this time.

 

[fskimospy]

Replacement level based on what? "status quo'? Who says there needs to be a replacement level? That's only necessary to keep the engine running as is, but we're all sitting here saying there's big problems. The population could stand to decrease a bit. That alone here and world wide would help with some of the bigger issues. Paying people to have kids is not a necessity at this time.

What is the basis for your argument that population decline would be a good thing for the US in either a societal or economic sense?

 

[DrunkenSano]

American birth rates are below replacement level. We definitely need incentives for people to have kids.

It's hard to incentivize having children when it costs so much money to raise one. Hell, supposedly it makes more financial sense that new mothers who earn $35,000 per year or less should quit their job and stay at home to raise a kid because it costs about that much to have their kid taken care of while they go off to work.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

What is the basis for your argument that population decline would be a good thing for the US in either a societal or economic sense?

The planet has too many people?

 

[fskimospy]

It's hard to incentivize having children when it costs so much money to raise one. Hell, supposedly it makes more financial sense that new mothers who earn $35,000 per year or less should quit their job and stay at home to raise a kid because it costs about that much to have their kid taken care of while they go off to work.

Yes, child care has fallen victim to Baumol's cost disease and will continue to get proportionally more expensive until we invent robot nannys. We should absolutely start subsidizing child care. Like, yesterday.

 

[fskimospy]

The planet has too many people?

Why do you think that and why does it apply to the US specifically? After all we are one of the least densely populated developed countries in the world.

 

[DrunkenSano]

Yes, child care has fallen victim to Baumol's cost disease and will continue to get proportionally more expensive until we invent robot nannys. We should absolutely start subsidizing child care. Like, yesterday.

Only the 1% will be able to afford robot nannies unfortunately.

 

[fskimospy]

Only the 1% will be able to afford robot nannies unfortunately.

I think it will be the other way around, only the 1% will be able to afford human child care because it's gotten too expensive.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Why do you think that and why does it apply to the US specifically? After all we are one of the least densely populated developed countries in the world.

Let me put it this way, climate change is going to likely kill off an absolute shitload of people (either through the changes themselves or through social unrest). The US, being the highest per-capita, has the greatest impact on climate on a per-person level, so while I generally support a stance of 'less people, less problems', it's multiplied when it comes to the US.

In addition, it also neatly handles the issue of job loss via automation.

 

[fskimospy]

Let me put it this way, climate change is going to likely kill off an absolute shitload of people (either through the changes themselves or through social unrest). The US, being the highest per-capita, has the greatest impact on climate on a per-person level, so while I generally support a stance of 'less people, less problems', it's multiplied when it comes to the US.

In addition, it also neatly handles the issue of job loss via automation.

The answer to climate change is not to get rid of people, it's to get rid of greenhouse gas emissions.

If you truly want the US population to decline we need to radically reorganize the way we structure society because it will lead to deflation, debt defaults, inability to care for retirees, and other assorted economic crises. In short: less people, big problems.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

The answer to climate change is not to get rid of people, it's to get rid of greenhouse gas emissions.

If you truly want the US population to decline we need to radically reorganize the way we structure society because it will lead to deflation, debt defaults, inability to care for retirees, and other assorted economic crises. In short: less people, big problems.

Getting rid of future people will get rid of future greenhouse emissions. I don't disagree with you that less people can cause some 'soft issues' problems such as what you listed above, but 'economic challenges' don't tend to lead to half of your population dying, where climate change very likely will (imo). What I consider 'hard issue' problems are things like 50c temperatures in populated areas, cities running out of water, crop failure, and truly mass migrations, on the scales of tens to hundreds of millions.

 

[ImpulsE69]

You're talking about multiple facets here that don't all fit in a nice little 'box'. One thing is cost of daycare (or just the cost of raising a child). It's a circular issue. Childcare is expensive because 'wages'. The more things cost, the more things cost. Wages have only marginally gotten better over the years while costs continue to go up. Part of that going up is still because of wages going up because for 1 person 'everything' goes up in cost.Remember when only 1 person had to work to raise a family? Now 2 people must work in many cases.

Additionally, families are not needed like they were in the past. The family unit and their use is not the same. Most people don't live on big farms. People now have kids because 1. accident 2. the urge that they need 3 kids (not to say that in the past most of those kids weren't accidents - but there was the 'more is better' aspect at that time).

This applies to many things right now. The $15 wage - no matter how much you say 'this will fix the cost of living' it won't. Everything gets passed to the consumer in higher costs and while that cost gets spread out across everyone it isn't sustainable in scale. It may just be pennies but those pennies are spread out on everything and add up quickly and still impact those $15 wage earners more than the higher wage earners (whatever you set the minimum to, it just goes up with it so you never get 'better' in the long run). Sure we can blame the 1% and in many cases they could do more/pay more but ultimately it still doesn't solve the inherent problem that inflation has on costs vs wages. (I'm sure I didn't do a very good job of explaining this, but I'm sure you understand where I'm going).

Paying someone to have kids doesn't really help anyone least of all the issues in the world. We're already paying people to have kids in many scenarios, it's called welfare. It might help keep them off the streets, but it doesn't prevent people from making bad decisions (such as having even more kids when they can't afford the ones they have). It doesn't help most be better people or strive to be better (because they are too busy raising kids).

 

[fskimospy]

You're talking about multiple facets here that don't all fit in a nice little 'box'. One thing is cost of daycare (or just the cost of raising a child). It's a circular issue. Childcare is expensive because 'wages'. The more things cost, the more things cost. Wages have only marginally gotten better over the years while costs continue to go up. Part of that going up is still because of wages going up because for 1 person 'everything' goes up in cost.Remember when only 1 person had to work to raise a family? Now 2 people must work in many cases.

Additionally, families are not needed like they were in the past. The family unit and their use is not the same. Most people don't live on big farms. People now have kids because 1. accident 2. the urge that they need 3 kids

This applies to many things right now. The $15 wage - no matter how much you say 'this will fix the cost of living' it won't. Everything gets passed to the consumer in higher costs. It may just be pennies but those pennies are spread out on everything and add up quickly. Sure we can blame the 1% and in many cases they could do more/pay more but ultimately it still doesn't solve the inherent problem that inflation has on costs vs wages. (I'm sure I didn't do a very good job of explaining this, but I'm sure you understand where I'm going).

Paying someone to have kids doesn't really help anyone least of all the issues in the world. We're already paying people to have kids in many scenarios, it's called welfare. It might help keep them off the streets, but it doesn't prevent people from making bad decisions (such as having even more kids when they can't afford the ones they have). It doesn't help most be better.

The reason why child care has become more expensive in proportion to other things is because we have been unable to increase the productivity of child care workers as opposed to farmers, car builders, etc. This will continue to happen.

Paying people to help their child care would help a shitload of people. It should be one of the top issues of the next administration.