Amazon’s Minimum Wage Will Change How Americans Think About Work
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
> According to the Pew Research Center, when adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage in America peaked at $8.54 in 1968. If the federal minimum wage had kept up with increases in worker productivity since then, in 2012 it would have been $21.72 an hour. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/07/there-is...
[Inflation-adjusted] GDP is held to represent the productivity of an entire country in a way where one can make historical contrasts.
Therefore, [inflation-adjusted] GDP per capita (a.k.a. PPP, Purchasing Power Parity) could be a valid measure of average individual worker productivity.
Many low-income workers DO NOT want to lose Medicaid as it is a big benefit, works well, esp. for large families (consider a grandma that has adopted three of her grandchildren and needs to care for them, I talked to one last week).
I own a small business with a few part time employees, and I run into people asking for less pay but more in other benefits (PTO, holidays, etc.)
Will be interesting to see the impact of this.
From there I get a lot of mixed feelings about projection. Who am I to tell someone that they should increase their income if they're happy with their lives? Or perhaps they don't understand/see a path from here to greater economic success? If that's the case, we have a different problem. I really don't know, it's very confusing. It's hard to consider public policy in a way that doesn't project my own sense of values on others.
How big a raise are we talking here? It's a fast food job. I doubt we're talking CEO-level bonuses.
The raise is not going to be enough for them to move from being workers to being owners.
We're talking on the order of several dollars an hour, which is a lot when you're making minimum wage.
>The raise is not going to be enough for them to move from being workers to being owners.
I feel like this is intentionally obtuse. It may not directly make them an owner, but if they leveraged that raise it could put them on the path there. They could take management classes at a community college or something. Even without the classes they could double down on the behavior that was returning a good benefit and learn those management skills "on the job." Instead they reduced their hours to maintain the same weekly take home pay. Of course there's a nearly infinite number of options unrelated to Subway they could have spent their new money/time/leverage going towards. But not one time did it happen in ten years and across several stores.
There was a bit of exaggeration for effect there, but my point is that a few dollars above minimum wage may be a big percentage rise in your opinion, but is still not a good wage. They go from "hardly able to afford food" to "maybe able to not live paycheck to paycheck - until something unforeseen happens".
edit: offtopic because you said they wanted less hours but I'm leaving it there:
Maybe they wanted to enjoy spending some of their newfound discretionary income on something other than rent and bills. Or maybe they wanted to go from a shitbox car that needs repairs to a slightly better shitbox car. Or a million other things they've been waiting until they have the cash for.
I feel like you may be a bit out of touch on how close to the edge someone living on slightly over minimum wage actually is. There's a thousand things they might need to spend that extra cash on. It costs more to be poor.
back on-topic
I know you said they wanted to reduce their hours but from my own experiences when I was doing shitty jobs I honestly felt that I wasn't being paid enough for my time so as long as I can earn enough to eat and pay the rent, I'd rather just have the time to do what I want, because (at least to me), that free time is really what makes life worth living at all.
So, at least in my case, an incremental raise to a sandwich workers wage wouldn't be enough for me to still want to exchange my time for that money.
Now I'm being paid well so I have enough incentive to keep me from wanting to reduce my hours because I can see progress being made, but only just... Maybe I overvalue my time but at the end of the day, time is all we have, and it's limited.
A few extra dollars per hour isn't going to change someone from a sandwich maker just above the poverty line into some trust fund baby that has the time and spending money to do extra courses and start being an entrepreneur.
I know what you're saying about them having (slightly) more of an avenue to success with a raise but there's always more that any of us can do to improve our lot in life, if we have the energy. Arguably poor people have more demands on their time, so I feel that looking at the poorest workers and saying, "why don't they do better" is a bit unfair.
Also, how do you know what they did with their extra time?
In other words, the unemployment level has finally dropped far enough that employees start to feel the benefits of competition. This is good news for lots of people, but not really a paradigm shift.. ?
Warehouse has always paid well for the educational requirements. Many people don’t love walking a few miles a shift, nor not having time to use the restrooms. Others obviously thrive in it, they have a lot of workers and can’t all be turned over every month.
I thought the goal of the living wage was to ensure that, in general, people can cover their necessities without having to resort to welfare.
Once the first couple levels of maslow's hierarchy are taken care of, doesn't the usual advice of "start climbing" apply to the rest of it?
I included that.
That translates to ~30k/year, which doesn't sound like much, but for a dual-income family a $15/hr min wage (Something Amazon is lobbying for) becomes 60k/year — Pretty much the median household income in the US [1]
Just putting some perspective.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...