[ElBarto]

"Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages."

Instead of picking on Amazon perhaps politicians should look at the actual root cause here.

If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians.

[QuotedForTruth]

"If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians."

If by "politicians" here you mean the one politician the article is discussing, Sen Sanders, you should know that he is for increasing the minimum wage. [1] Of course he needs other politicians and/or their voters to agree.

This corporate welfare angle he is currently attacking is just an attempt to point out the problem with a different argument. An argument that some people may be more receptive to. We've already agreed that we as a society will pay to support poor people. Corporations take advantage of this to lower their payroll costs. Whether they foot the bill for the government costs via corporate taxes or just pay a living wage in the first place is worth arguing about once we fisrst decide to stop letting them take advantage of people.

[1] https://berniesanders.com/issues/a-living-wage/

[dennisgorelik]

> Corporations take advantage of this to lower their payroll costs.

... which is a very good thing for low-wage workers. Because if corporations would not benefit from these "no benefits" savings, then these corporations will be more likely to fire these low-wage workers.

[LitFan]

Companies will not pay a wage that supports a reasonable standard of living for unskilled work. It would be less expensive to automate those jobs away than to pay those people 17 dollars per hour (based on half of the median household income in canada for 2015 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170913/dq170...).

I have a different perspective on this:

Countries want people to have children - it's good for the country. However, people expect companies to support people's lifestyles (in exchange for work). With local companies, it makes sense for the company to want to support the people working there - they at least have a stake. Large companies are often global entities. As a result, they may have no stake in the people in certain countries - or even any countries.

Shouldn't be the country's people (through paid taxes) and government (through support programs) support the lifestyles of the people?

[xamuel]

Unpopular alternative interpretation: the market is distorted by food stamps.

Imagine if the government announced it will pay for lightbulbs for workers whose workplaces don't provide lightbulbs. Inevitably, certain workplaces would stop providing lightbulbs. Would you really blame them?

This will sound unintuitive, but what if one of the requirements for welfare was that the recipient NOT work? Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than welfare. In this age of automation, where it's less and less true that everyone ought to work, maybe this would be a better way to do welfare.

[adjkant]

> Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than food stamps.

Revised:

Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than food stamps without housing.

In order for the not working stipulation to work, the social safety net would actually have to be expanded to cover housing as well, since I would much rather have a job where I can have housing and ramen every single meal than slightly better food but homeless.

[xamuel]

Thanks, I edited my last paragraph to say "welfare" instead of "food stamps"

[ElBarto]

I don't really know how food stamps work as I'm not in the US.

But, having lived in a few different countries, I can tell you that if a loaf of bread costs 50c then left on its own the market will tend to pay only slightly more per day for unskilled work. People can live in a cardboard box but they have to eat.

[JoshuaDavid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap

> The welfare trap (or unemployment trap or poverty trap in British English) theory asserts that taxation and welfare systems can jointly contribute to keep people on social insurance because the withdrawal of means-tested benefits that comes with entering low-paid work causes there to be no significant increase in total income. An individual sees that the opportunity cost of returning to work is too great for too little a financial return, and this can create a perverse incentive to not work.

[mrnobody_67]

Raising minimum wages could just raise the ROI of investing in fully automated warehouses... law of unintended consequences.

JD already has these in China - see Youtube

[lostapathy]

But raising minimum wage at what cost?

It's already gotten really hard for high school kids to find work. Raising minimum wage will just make that worse.

[s73v3r_]

I'm far less concerned about high school kids than I am about people needing these jobs to survive.

[lostapathy]

That ship has already mostly sailed. Raising the minimum wage WILL shrink the pool of available jobs for everyone low-skilled, so the problems high school kids have now will spread to adults that should be independent.

[dv_dt]

Isn't this law just another way to specify a minimum wage?

[ElBarto]

It's a very hypocritical way to blame companies for paying minimum wage, which is set by law...

[dv_dt]

Wouldn’t this bill, if passed, also be set by the law? Its not blaming anyone, it is setting standards we expect companies to comply with.

[ElBarto]

The standard is the minimum wage.