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Comment by Noble6 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state. They also offer benefits. Concluding Amazon isn’t paying enough, because a large portion of their workforce qualifies for food stamps, is the wrong conclusion.

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This just means that minimum wage is currently set at poverty wages.

Minimum wage is set by politicians, not some arms length regulatory agency. So it's entirely possible that the minimum wage is stagnant for intractable political reasons and out of touch with reality.

Amazon warehouse pays $21+ an hour here, and you only need at least 12 hours a month to keep the job. The vast majority of workers are part time, and work in 4 hour shifts.

> Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, so that's not saying much.

Going by state minimum wage, your statement is incorrect. According to Google the average Amazon warehouse worker in California makes $17-18 an hour. California minimum wage is $16 per hour.

Wherever you’re getting the pay rate info is wrong. You can go to the Amazon Hiring site and see they’re offering $20.75/hr right now in California. Amazon has always paid high wages for warehouse work, and not even close to the Federal line, so brining that up proves nothing.

I'm sure Bezos appreciates the PR you're doing for him, but you're wrong. "Up to $20.75/hr" is what they're offering, that's not the same as $20.75/hr. The pay rates marginally above minimum wage for California.

https://hiring.amazon.com/app#/jobDetail?jobId=JOB-US-000000...

Attacking someone character shows mental weakness. Even if everyone in the state worked at that pay rate, it would still be more than enough to live above poverty, which was the original point. If you want a consolation prize for finding a single contrary data point, then you’ve done it but haven’t really said anything relevant.

> Attacking someone character shows mental weakness.

Sure sounds like an attack on my character...

You didn't clarify what kind of minimum wage you're talking about, and I pointed out that you're mistaken regarding state minimum wages.

If you knew someone working at an Amazon Warehouse position who needed to use government benefits to get by, would you consider them "well" or even "fairly" paid?

What is your null hypothesis here? Would they be better off if Amazon moved their warehouse to another state or country?

Amazon can raise prices slightly.

Or Bezos can have fewer yachts?

The "hypothesis" is that you can, in fact, dislike it when people are criminally underpaid by corporations, even if it is supposedly a "good" wage.

The point is that amazon isn't doing anything nefarious in paying people minimum wage

By that logic, if we had universal health care, you could then say every single person who chooses to use it instead of buying private insurance "needs govt benefits to get by" and is therefore not well paid.

They either aren't working very many hours or they have a lot of dependents. There is no other way to legally qualify for government benefits even at the lowest wages Amazon pays.

If you have several children and are a single parent, should Amazon pay you 2x or 3x your childless coworkers, just to keep you off of government support?

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