I guess the bad PR was getting to be a bit much: Amazon has raised its minimum wage to $15/hour, up from the US minimum wage of $7.25. It’s still too low, but christ, how can someone live on seven bucks an hour? American labor policies are disgraceful, and it sure would be nice to have a political party that hadn’t abandoned support for workers ages ago.
But still…
Amazon’s market capitalization currently stands near $1 trillion; it paid Bezos, its founder and CEO, $1.68 million last year. But as Amazon’s stock has risen, so has Bezos’ net worth — it’s currently estimated around $165 billion.
Anyway, it’s a little progress, so this seems appropriate.
But, but… the Republicans were always calling us “Communists” so we simply HAD to update our image. Also, everyone knows that the campaign money doesn’t come from Joe/Jane Sixpack but from hippie-dippy Hollywood celebrities, urban professionals, and tech sector hipsters who think their “Left-wing” because they drive a Tesla and eat free-range, fair-trade, clean, organic, non-GMO tofu.
Besides, COMPROMISE! PRAGMATISM! LESSER OF TWO EVILS! BIPARTISANSHIP! THE REPUBLICANS WOULD BE WORSE!
Edit: …who think they’re “Left-wing”…
So the Trump administration isn’t worse than a Clinton one?
@Akira #1:
Free range tofu?
Related: A new Panera billboard has appeared in my area advertising “100% Clean Mac & Cheese”. WTF does that even mean??
robertbaden:
I don’t disagree. However, as long as the Democrats think they can scare liberals with the threat of Republican rule, they aren’t going to feel any inclination to move the party further to the Left where it needs to be. After all, “who are you going to vote for, the Republicans.”
drksky:
Of course! Soybean Plants need room to run about and frolic! They can’t do that when they’re inhumanely rooted to the ground!
<
blockquote>WTF does that even mean??
It means suburbanites will spend more for mediocre pasta in cheese sauce if they think it’s free of any of the modern food processing that separates modern humans from pre-industrial peasants.
I learned long ago we need to vote in the primaries if we want to be sure to get candidates we want. We ended up with two anti-abortion candidates for our congressman in Anoka, Mn, because voter turnout in the primary was so low crossover voters from the Republicans were able to determine the democratic candidate in an open primary.
.
Plus the Tea Party was able to pull the Republican Party way to the right.
drksky at 4:
That they’re going to charge at least 25% more for the same thing their customers could get almost anywhere else.
Plenty of Adjunct Professors would love to get $15.00 an hour. We can dream, I suppose…
Two notes on the video: (1) the first thing said about the paycheck is not to complain that it is too small, but to imply that payroll taxes remove all of the money; and (2) that a $3 increase to just over $10 would make a living wage -it wouldn’t. For the Portland (Oregon) metro region a single adult needs $13.74, and that is assuming 2080 hours a year (i.e. no vacation or sick days). $15 barely makes it, and leaves little room for any reason to miss work. Much more reasonable would be about $20 an hour along with solid benefits including health and retirement and PTO.
The profitability of a company is an index of how severely labor is being screwed.
Here is a very good book about how workers at the Sea-Tac airport went from making very good wages with benefits to poverty wages and no benefits as a result of changes in laws and the companies screwing the workers.
Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement
by Jonathan Rosenblum
https://smile.amazon.com/Beyond-15-Immigrant-Activists-Movement-ebook/dp/B01HA427EA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538512800&sr=8-1&keywords=Beyond+%2415
@ drksky, #4
By “clean” they mean no GMOs and “organic” (in the marketing sense of the term) ingredients.
They also mean the price went up and the flavor went down. They got rid of my favorite sandwich, the asiago roast beef, too. Give me “dirty” and tasty over over-priced and bland any day- grow the whole meal in a lab using a quantum multi-flux-capacitor for all I care.
@#8, robertbaden
They (and their predecessors like Newt Gingrich in the 1990s) were able to do so because the Democrats ceased putting up any resistance at all on financial and foreign policy issues, and put up only token resistance on social issues (because social issues are usually ultimately financial issues and the rich are fine with “showing respect” but don’t want to back that respect with things like financial aid or higher wages).
But according to some sources, along with the raise, Amazon UK simultaneously cut the Christmas bonus and the stock purchase plan.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-pay-rise-staff-benfits-cut-gmb-union-a8568676.html
@1
“But, but… the Republicans were always calling us “Communists” so we simply HAD to update our image.”
The whole name-calling thing would be childish if it wasn’t so menacing.
When I hear the term “college fund” it sounds like some bizarre anachronism. Something out of a Dickens novel: “Aunt Polly had been putting a few pennies aside every week for the past 10 years and now with what little she had, she was able to pay for little Jane to go to the school in the town.”
That is really nice to hear.
Transformer Manufacturers In India | Transformer Manufacturers In Pune