[ptbello]

Call me cynical, but it could also be that AMZN will be automating all those lower paid jobs - as in: soon they won't even need 7.25$/H employees because they'll have machines.

In this scenario, 15$/H would just be their current price point for the following tier of bottom of the chain not-yet-automated tasks.

[patagonia]

Wow brilliant analysis. Automate the lower pay jobs away before your competitors can. Push for raise in minimum wage. This is “Walmart kills mom and pop shops” at a whole new level.

This is also how I see the robot job apocalypse playing out and why we need political change that can handle both the wealth generation and rapid job churn / requirements for job training that AI and robotics will bring. Either pay more or have the wealth disbursed. The alternative is, as has always been, concentrate the wealth in the owners of capital. But this times it’s different. Current wealth generation by capital is unprecedented. And technology allows control and capture of that wealth in an unprecedented manner. At the same time regulatory and political structures have done nothing to deal the with the negative costs associated with the process. What is the point of having an economic machine the likes of which history has never seen if it all just ends up on a ditigal legder for a few dozen people while automated factories are running in the dark and requiring resources stripping the planet of resources needed for you know like ecosystems and such. Not sustainable. So. Yeah. Amazing move for Amazon. Where does everyone else fit in the picture.

[maerF0x0]

Luddites have always been saying "this time is different" about technology.

And economists have always been saying "no its not".

I understand that robots+AI will eventually be superior to humans (their evolution rate is faster than ours, extrapolating...) . The question is how many life times away is that. Moore's law ended, maybe AI will asymptote too?

[vthallam]

This was my exact thought. It's great they increased the wages to $15, but it might also be because now they are in a state to hire fewer humans in logistics and carry out majority of the work through machines.

May be with less humans for $15/hour and machines, their average per unit hour cost is still $7.25.

[java_script]

Call me cynical, but they did this shortly after sending out anti-unionization propaganda videos to managers of Whole Foods. If it really is a reaction to union agitation, then it's not Amazon corporate that we should be praising for this increase.

[IshKebab]

It may be true that paying workers better hurts them less than other less automated businesses, which gives them a competitive advantage (assuming they succeed in raising the federal minimum wage).

However, this does affect 350,000 employees today, and that is a lot of employees.

Also the fact that they have automated many of their lower paid jobs away is really irrelevant - they did that anyway even when their wage was lower. They could have kept automating jobs away and paid them very low wages. The fact that they aren't is definitely a good thing.

[wpietri]

Which is fine by me. We've been automating jobs out of existence since the industrial revolution, and should continue to do so. There are very few people doing a job now that was a job in 1750, but there's still plenty for people to do. That's because we keep turning boring, lower-value work over to machines and finding more interesting, higher-value work for people to do.

This does produce temporary dislocation. Once all the elevators were automated, elevator operators were all out of a job. [1] But I don't think that's an argument against automation. I think it's an argument for a strong safety net and generous retraining programs.

[1] Yes, this was once a job. There are even a few left: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/insider/manual-elevators-...

[nbardy]

I agreed its good to atomate jobs, but raising the minimum wage behind you is an anti competitive move I can't behind.

[wpietri]

Look at it the other way. Suppose they honestly believe that $15 is the right minimum wage. If they just raise it to $15 for their workers, why should they let other companies freeload?

Look at other sorts of pro-worker laws, like safety. If Amazon were lobbying for increased OSHA oversight of warehouses because they didn't want to compete with companies who treated worker bodies as disposable, would that be bad? I don't think so.

[wpdev_63]

Maybe they'll try to automate some more jobs but I feel like they already automated almost everything they can. Just look at their service centers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-lBvI6u_hw They're going automate all the jobs they can regardless of wage so might as well pay a decent wage for the few workers left.