Translation: I'm too Kentishly lazy to be arsed to deal with change, and screw the small merchants/traders.

yawn.

Apparently, there have been studies and the numbers are known.
Having snap for part-time or seasonal might make sense, but if somebody is working 2 part-time jobs or is working full-yime, they should be able to live on the wage for at least 1.5 ppl. Obviously, if you are minimum wage and have 6 kids, you have other issues to deal with.
BUT, it is time to raise minimum wage to the point that it supports 1.5 person for that area. For some, that is simply $8 / hr. For others, it is $12-$15/hr.
Better to pay them that, and then cut taxes.

1, Political Friends
2. Legal bribery
3. People who believe that big corporations are good
4. Illegal bribery

For over a decade Amazon lost money every year. I never actually heard that they ever became profitable, I just assumed it. So possibly it's being supported by some TLA that wants to track people. That would explain the government subsidy.

Please note: This is a hypothesis, not a theory, not a belief. It's merely an idea that's consistent with all the information I have. Don't start believing it just because I threw it out as a possibility.

i knew i should have sold qc stock.

There are federal labor laws regulating minimum break times and maximum time between breaks. If you can't control your fluid intake so that you don't have to urinate more often than that, you're seriously ill. Think before you post.

If people are willing to take the jobs, then Amazon is paying what the market will bear. If Amazon couldn't fill their positions, they'd have to offer higher salaries.

The fact that Amazon is successful is irrelevant. As a business owner, you would not call up your suppliers and say "We've had a really great year, so go ahead and charge us extra for everything we order!" Labor costs work exactly the same way: you pay what the market will bear.

Don't get me wrong, people do need to earn a living, but cherry-picking a few successful businesses and giving them the stink-finger for not paying decent wages isn't the solution.

...that Lord of the Rings show though. Priorities.

But likely more expensive than tipping.

Also, by the time the testing is done, your food will be cold.

Because having "disconnected" time to think and enjoy the world is fun. I don't WANT to be reachable 24/7/365 -- I need alone time away from technology and other people.

i doubt it will take that...long...

while trump is fascists, he is NOT supporting Amazon or Bezo.

> I'm tired of Republicans pretending this is a legitimate concern

(remainder of blather deleted)

I'm not a Republican. I'm a Libertarian. And YES in order to vote a person should have to prove their ID--just like in most every other first world nation on Earth.

Ferret

It's not supply and demand, or only partially that. It's mainly power and control.

Not in a city where 10-20% of the residents are illegal immigrants or otherwise unbanked. I fit right in.

19th century employee management and working conditions are back in vogue! Wasn't the world beautiful, almost 200 years ago? /s

1b is nothing.

Nothing. I work on a start-up.
And what is nonsensical about paying employees decent enough wages that they 1.5 can live on, and then have us all pay much lower taxes?
Or do you like paying taxes or just going deeply into debt?

I really don't care either way about the line. I'll wait an extra 15 seconds to keep my privacy. If other people can't, they need to chill and toke a J.

Smartphone app? Restaurant? I don't go to the kind of restaurants that are likely to have an app (national chains).

For me, it's a lot more painful to pull out cash than sign a check. As it should me. Spending money should hurt.

hmm. U think that Venezuela's issues stem from socialism or Cost of employment? Because these are very different issues.
In addition, Venezuela had real issues due to China coming in and pushing them to focus on oil as opposed to having a diversified economy.
BUT, you obviously do not realitze that and obviously do not care.

In addition, you appear to have ZERO concept of what SNAP is all about. How the fuck do you think it is being funded? Not from company taxes. It is from yours and mine taxes. WE are paying more to so that companies can pay LESS.
Instead, I would rather that those companies pay ppl enough to live on, and then cut taxes. Instead, if is idiots that support minimum wages below living standards that then force loads of taxes here.

Means of production? This is about Amazon. At best you could claim means of distribution.

use plastic...duh.

Is it fair that they don't make a living wage? Absolutely.

Did you even bother reading the summary? The average Amazon warehouse worker is earning $1000/year more than the federal poverty level for a family of four. That means he's getting far more than he needs if he's single. If he's married and his wife works then his household income should be quite sufficient, and if she's not, why not?

jeff is into $. he could care less about where u r from. its just good business.

Pretty much. It's often in flight mode or sitting at home unless I feel like checking messages.

They also have requirements for identification at point of purchase. I don't know whether those are enforced or not, though.

The problem is at a certain wage level those employees are no longer profitable to hire. It's not clear what that level is, most employers would likely pay a wage higher than most libertarians realize, but at a certain point low-skilled workers start getting pushed out of the market. I suspect a $10 minimum wage wouldn't put many people out of work, $12 is probably fine, but even economists who want a minimum wage hike worry that $15 will put a lot of people out of work.

UBI is a much cleaner fix, if everyone gets $25k/year you don't need a minimum wage at all, Amazon can offer $5/hour and you don't need to worry about exploitation since no one needs to work there to survive. But in the short term a bump to $10 probably helps everyone, including the Amazon employees since everyone offering close to the minimum wage now needs to pay more to compete.

if u dont like what u r getting paid...find a better paying job.

I'm in Canada. We'd have developers from partners from Egypt ,Poland, India, Indonesia, and US. How well they fit depended on their English and their social capabilities. The Egyptians would take frequent prayer breaks, didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't swear and they smelled. As any race, if you stink at work, you're going to have people talk about you behind your backs. The Polish guy had good English, but would only answer questions when trying to make conversation. I wish apk was more like him. The Indonesian was fun, outgoing and good for a laugh. The Indians could also joke. Sometimes you couldn't tell if they were serious or joking. One guy left a bad impression with me for greatly exaggerating/lying about qualifications. There was no fucking reason to lie about knowing how to drive when you can't. There was no pressure or requirement for him to drive. Also, the constant head bobbing is annoying and distracting to me. Many of the Indians at work had kids in minor hockey. Seeing these families wear jerseys and hang out in cold hockey stadiums is nice to see. When I grew up, there's like 1-4 families not white in our town. People were rascist without knowing. Kids growing up will have several non-white friends and so shouldn't be anywhere as bad in 10-20 years as 10-20 years ago. I was relieved to see Canada put more emphasis on English language than jobs. I know people who have lived in Canada for 30+ years and their English is still shit (most worked labour jobs without education and now their bodies are broken down, they don't have other skills, and English is pathetic). It's because they speak their native language at home instead of English. Greeks, Portuguese, Indians and Chinese, I'm looking at you.

Probably overreaching lawyers, yes. Also, Everbrite might fancy themselves as possibly able to leverage that into an experience recording/selling outfit, like when you go on a cruise and get offered a DVD of "your" great memories.

In most other developed countries the government is the customer and can negotiate more reasonable prices. They can also buy generic drugs from elsewhere, where applicable. Some countries, e.g. the UK, their national health services also conduct trials of their own to calculate their drug procurement policies. Most of the cost of prescriptions in the UK is covered by a flat fee prescription charge, i.e. everyone pays the same small fee no matter how cheap or expensive their actual prescription is. It all evens out as everyone shares the burden. People on low incomes can have their prescription charges reduced or even waived: Socialism at its finest! ;)

At the kind of restaurants (grab and go, counter service, fast food) that are described in this article, almost exclusively yes.

These are the places where you order your food from a person at a register (or a kiosk!) and then pay. You might get a number or a buzzer, and a few minutes later, your food is ready. At the salad chains mentioned in the article, you watch them build your salad as you go down the line and then you pay at the very end right before they give it to you. They simply won't let you transact if you don't have a card.

This is why illegal immigrants are so destructive. They're willing to work for less than minimum wage, and employers are free to abuse them. It's so wrong. If we have a worker shortage and we need Mexicans to fill the gap, then we need a guest worker program like other countries have. Apply in Mexico City, get a 1 year permit, come here and work legally, and when done go back home. Lots of places are like that. America gets the taxes, Mexico gets the remittances, workers get protected by the law. It's win all the way around.

Instead of this how about restaurants start charging enough to pay their employees in the cost of the product instead of me having to figure out how much I feel like paying them..
BTW to the "journalist" who wrote that article, credit card cost money, more than you are going to spend on handling the cash.

Drain the swamp!

The real problem is getting them to actually do it after you elect them.

Yeah, I have to wonder... Have Walmart's pay and benefits improved to the point where Amazon warehouse work actually looks worse in comparison?

Or, have people just gotten sick of hearing nearly identical stories of Walmart employees living off of food stamps and Medicaid to survive and we need a new corporate villain to go after just to keep things interesting? I guess that Jeff Bezos is now worth more than most of the Walton family, so now he's got a big target on his head.

All it takes is one person to open a warehouse and offer to pay Amazon's warehouse workers more to do jobs requiring similar skills/experience/personalities.

You personally can solve this entire problem right away by just doing that one thing!

Of course, if there are some obstacles to you doing that, then maybe you can appreciate that Amazon has improved these people's lives by offering them a better job than they could otherwise get and until you plan to offer them an even better one, it's pretty spiteful to complain about the one Amazon has hired them for.

In 2013, Mother Jones Magazine reporter Mac McClelland wrote an investigative piece called "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" recounting her experience working as a "picker" in an Amazon warehouse in Ohio. In it, she points out that many of her fellow laborers were getting food stamps (aka "SNAP"), because they could not otherwise feed their families on their take-home pay.

It's worth noting that those workers would qualify for Ohio Medicaid - also at taxpayer expense - in addition to SNAP. And HEAP, and an Ohio utilities payment assistance program called PIPP+, as well ...

> Cash actually costs money ...

I love how bits like this pretend that credit card processing is free. It isn't, and far from it. It's going to cost an average restaurant a couple of percent of the check plus a per-check fee plus a couple hundred bucks for a terminal plus a dedicated land line for the terminal (because we apparently live in the 1980's) plus chargebacks plus merchant account fees.

Neither Paper nor Plastic is free.

The DNC also sued Nixonâ(TM)s re-election campaign after the Watergate break in. Everyone said it was a crazy political ploy, but we know how that turned out (the DNC was awarded $775,000 in damages after the truth came out).

Sadly, so many idiots don't get socialistic countries in Europe don't have these problems and people still find work and can live regular lives.

Seems that Amazon is giving jobs to people in need. What's the issue? If they could find a higher paying job, they would.

Amazon is successful, for the most part, because they're the low cost provider. They could pay more and not be as successful, and not employ as many people. Would that be better? One needs to consider not only the employees, but the consumers who are getting an advantage from Amazon's efficiencies.

TFA is about businesses going cashless, not random folks selling stuff out of their front yard, or on Craigslist. Yes, cash is still king for small, person-to-person transactions.

Subsidizing Amazon because it refuses to pay its employees enough to live is not working "reasonably well." It isn't fair to the workers, and it isn't fair to me, and it isn't fair to business that pay their workers enough to live.

This measurement is bullshit, and I expect it'll cause more harm than good.

Apparently 14% of Americans are on SNAP assistance. On the one hand, yes, that's terribly high and it'd be great to have every American be able to support themselves... but at the same time, it's pointing blame at Amazon for daring to offer low-paying jobs. Again, 14% of Americans are on food stamps. Those 14% are going to need help with or without working for Amazon, so I, for one, am at least glad they're employed and partially offsetting their expenses.

I'd be happy to see studies about how many folks are employed full-time and still need SNAP, or the impact of SNAP participation on economic recovery, or the like, but this seems like a hit piece against one company in particular. Apparently in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the SNAP participation rate lowers to only "around one in 10", but it's phrased like a bad thing to be better than the national average.

From TFS, a perfect example of poor research... How did this result compare to the lists of top employers of non-SNAP recipients, or the count of employees for each company? Amazon is a huge company, and they employ a lot of people. I expect they'll be on the top of a lot of lists.

For those claiming this is absurd, keep in mind that the DNC also sued Nixonâ(TM)s re-election campaign after the Watergate break in. Everyone said it was a crazy political ploy, but we know how that turned out (the DNC was awarded $775,000 in damages after the truth came out).