[ecnerwala]

My grandfather who was born in a poor country and was a farmer through out his life had a better life than these employees. Its a shame that decades (or should I say centuries) of productivity increases in US haven't trickled down in order for these employees to have better options than working at Amazon.

[thehappypm]

An Amazon warehouse worker very much can live up to the extremely high standard of living in the US, perhaps not lavishly, but at this income level can still own a home, have a family, have health care, and so on. Poor farmers in third-world countries watch their babies die from curable diseases.

[Broken_Hippo]

An amazon worker makes, on average, $15 per hour. That's $31,500 per year. That is just a bit above poverty - the poverty level for a family of 4 is $26,500. You probably are going to have issues saving up for a house, and are going to be lucky to have enough leftover money to actually use the health care. Deductibles of $2-3k are really difficult at that range, especially if you have a family.

In short, you are going to need your spouse to work as well. Then things look up, so long as both of you work. Good luck if you aren't dual income, though.

Folks in the US die preventable deaths, by the way. And a lot of "third world countries" have health care in place, sometimes more fairly widespread than the US.

[cm2012]

The median US salary for an individual is 30k per year (median family income is 50k). So with an Amazon job an essentially unskilled worker can make more than half of all other Americans.

[dragonwriter]

> The median US salary for an individual is 30k per year (median family income is 50k).

Median family income is ~86k. [0]

Median household income, which is likely what you wanted to cite and is the more common measure, is still much more than 50k, at ~68k. [1]

Median personal income is about 36k. [2]

Median hourly wage is $20.17. [3]

So, no, a $15/hr Amazon worker isn’t making above-median wage and, even if they work 40hr weeks for a full year, isn’t making above-median income.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N (nb: “family” for this purpose is defined basically as a household of two or more related by blood, marriage, and/or adoption.)

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=249&eid=25956...

[3] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000

[thehappypm]

So, at Amazon's entry level, you're making 85% of the median personal income, plus benefits. And that's for their lowest paid FT employees, it can only go up from there. Where's the problem exactly?

[missedthecue]

fwiw, your numbers are correct, but the 30k figure includes part time workers and is therefore skewed to the downside. Among full time workers, the median annual income is about $51k for men and $48k for women, according to data collected by the BLS.

[Broken_Hippo]

So? The average is still not much above the poverty level, and as such, still poor.

[random314]

But look at the low median wages. There are already so many poor people in the US, whats 1 million more?

/sarcasm

[missedthecue]

In Bessemer Alabama, where the union effort recently was voted down by the employees, the median annual income is $19,000 and Zillow is full of houses selling for $110k.

$31.5k is a middle class income there and certainly not poverty level.

[Broken_Hippo]

The US poverty line for a family of 4 is 26,xxx. 4-5k above poverty level is not middle class: you are still poor. It isn't like that 5k a year - $416 before taxes - puts you in middle class. You are still getting free lunch, for example. You still qualify for SNAP.

House prices aren't telling you anything: Poor folks have trouble saving up for a down payment and have more issues keeping credit good enough for a house, due to lack of funds to pay things. House prices matter little if you can't actually qualify to buy them.

[dazc]

Many people don't make enough money to buy a house without a partner's income. This has been the case before amazon existed.

[Broken_Hippo]

The comment I replied to did not specify this, though. They just said buy a house, which is obviously not always possible.

[cowsandmilk]

> An amazon worker makes, on average, $15 per hour.

That’s Amazon’s minimum, not average. That is, every Amazon worker makes more than that.

[Broken_Hippo]

Not according to these - where do you get your information?: https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Amazon-Warehouse-Worker....

https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Amazon-Warehouse-Worker....

[bildung]

> An amazon worker makes, on average, $15 per hour. That's $31,500 per year. That is just a bit above poverty - the poverty level for a family of 4 is $26,500.

This is also pretty much at the poverty line if relative poverty is calculated like in most other OECD countries - as 60% of median income. That would be about $3100/month for two adults.

[Broken_Hippo]

Yeah, I know there is some relative stuff there, but figured it was easiest to use the US government's numbers.

[ecnerwala]

You need a bit of perspective. The last part of your sentence hasn't been true in our country in the last 50 years. Working 3 jobs like a robot isn't what I consider high standard of living.

[chakhs]

many 3rd world countries have 100% covered free healthcare, "babies die from curable diseases" is what you read in media to feel superior

[thehappypm]

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/infant-mortalit...

[zennn]

I think people who live in what have been determined to be the happiest societies would strongly disagree with you here.

[krapp]

Own a home, not likely. Not without at least a second job or income from a spouse or extended family.

This is apartment rental income, not ownership class income.

[ac29]

The median monthly mortgage payment in the US is $1200, which means half of them are less than that. Not everywhere is the Bay Area or other super high cost of living areas. (And yes, I realize a mortgage is not the only cost of owning a home)

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive...

[krapp]

Yeah, when you add up all of the actual costs, you still have to be lucky enough to find an affordable property, have good credit and have significant savings set aside beforehand, and then you'll be living on margins so thin one bad accident or unplanned expense will be catastrophic.

It's certainly not true that a $15/hr wage at an Amazon warehouse alone can "very much" support the "extremely high standard of living in the US" mentioned upthread as a general statement of fact.

[virgil_disgr4ce]

The problem is the capital. Poor people don't have capital, they live paycheck to paycheck. Nobody is buying any mortgages without a down payment.

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Why on earth did this get downvoted?

[ActorNightly]

Yeah that is not really true at all. Your grandfather had it objectively worse overall.

[gowld]

How are you measuring quality of life?

I assume you are saying that his work was easier in some sense, but what about the benefits that accrued from that work and the life environment in general?

[ecnerwala]

His work wasn't objectively easier - he worked hard but on his own schedule. To be fair, I am measuring quality of life by what's important to me (rather than any standard metric), but there is a fair bit of overlap. The only weak point was healthcare which has since improved but a healthy lifestyle meant he never needed to visit hospitals. All things considered, I would rather be him than an Amazon warehouse worker.

[aerosmile]

Your grandfather - just like mine - was born a farmer and, statistically speaking, likely stayed a farmer his entire life. Today's United States offers the level of social mobility never experienced in any other country or at any other time in human history.

But there's a catch... the social mobility you get here in the US comes with a higher reward but also a higher risk. If you play your cards well, you'll skip quite a few levels and can go from a poor immigrant to a decamillionaire within a single generation. But if you play them poorly, you might not only be left with nothing and become homeless, but you might literally get killed by disease or the police (yes, that happens elsewhere as well, but not within the runner up countries).

So there you have it - what kind of a risk-to-reward ratio do you want? If you're shooting for the moon, come to the US, get a shitty laptop, start learning to code, and get a job in tech (no, you don't have to go to Harvard to get a 6-digit job as a developer). If you'd rather make sure that the chances of the worst case scenario are as low as possible, I'd recommend a socialist democracy like Austria where the government will never let you to drop below a certain level of comfort.

[lm28469]

This, as usual with the US, is an extremely individualistic point of view on the topic. The problem is that the majority of people are bottom feeders and stay bottom feeders all their lives. Of course, if you play all your cards well and the planets are aligned you might end up better than somewhere else, the drawback is that everyone under a certain threshold will eat shit until they die

> I'd recommend a socialist democracy like Austria

The vast majority of people can't just "chose" to live where you recommend them to go.

You're basically describing the proverbial american dream, it concerns an unbelievably small portion of the people living in the US, imho it's not too far from straight up propaganda to keep the gears turning, ie "I might have to work 2 full time jobs now but I'll work harder and in 5 years I'll make it". It even is a double edged sword, companies like Amazon or Uber made it _because_ they're allowed to stomp on bottom feeders, it's a game with a minority of extreme winner and a majority of losers.

People don't want "social mobility", they want a decent life and access to basic things like medicine, affordable housing, toilet breaks no matter where they are on the social ladder... for every sociopathic wantrepreneur who wants to make it big you have thousands of family who just want to not be treated like cattle

[aerosmile]

I mean... I am a living proof that you can just move to a place like Austria. And yes, we were a family of 4, quite poor, and had nobody to turn to for help. My sister loves it there, I didn’t so I moved to the US. If we were able to make those decisions, why is it that other people can’t? I know the usual excuses, but we’re taking about life-transformational decisions that IMO are worth making a few sacrifices for (eg: moving kids out of school, not seeing your parents for an extended amount of time, living in a tiny studio apartment, etc). Not recommending it to most people, but I would push back on the idea that it’s impossible.

[vaidhy]

Amazing for you!! I cannot even get a visitor visa to EU without jumping through hoops. When I moved to US, I had to make the same sacrifices. However, I also accept and understand the privileges I had that allowed me to make the transition. For most of the world, passports are a burden that will not allow them to get to a better life.

[lm28469]

It's not impossible, but it's statistically unlikely.

> If we were able to make those decisions, why is it that other people can’t?

Because we all come from widely different backgrounds, families, education, get different opportunities, make different choices, &c. It's easy to compare people's lives to our own stories but you can't sum up everything with "if I made it everyone can make it", there are so many variables, the majority of which we can't understand before going through them ourselves.

Regardless of that, if I was part of the 10% or 15% of American below the poverty threshold and you told me "just move to Austria, anyone can make it" I don't think I would take it well

Of course you'll always find people who manage to drastically change their lives, but I'm personally not really interested in the edge case. Btw I started searching about social mobility and found this, which supports social mobility in the US is pretty poor https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-...

[random314]

Standard conservative thinking.

Society is meant to be hierarchical, bottom feeders are supposed to serve the small percentile of elites.

This is the natural order of things.

Social support systems for the bottom feeders makes the bottom feeders entitled. Democratic government focus inevitably moves towards social programs which must be pushed back hard by the elite.

Most elites inherit their elite status. We must ignore this and talk about anecdotes of how some software engineer made a lot of money in Silicon valley. Buying bitcoin and TSLA a few years ago is also an undeniable marker of extraordinarily elite thinking, which society must reward.

We must never bluntly state our beliefs but cloak it in other acceptable words, so you don't get canceled by the SJWs and bottom feeders.

The naturally superior and their offspring will and must be allowed to ascend the social hierarchy.

BTW, conservatives have larger amygdala. Anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs

[Petrova]

The US objectively has a low amount of social mobility compared to other countries

[charlesju]

You know a good portion of this country is fighting to continue working in coal mines, right?

[lotsofpulp]

There's only 50,000 people working in coal mines, and if you x10 for related businesses, that's only 500k people out of a country of 330M. I can't imagine this constitutes a "good portion" of this country (USA).

https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/

[Joeri]

Also, those mines are heavily subsidized, basically $80K per year in subsidies / tax breaks per miner. Effectively they're being paid a government wage to keep mining.

What you're seeing here is a large section of the population that likes the idea of coal mining, and willing to spend a lot of tax money to keep that idea alive.

[lotsofpulp]

A large section of those states’ populations maybe. On a national level, they’re only relevant because of their ability to swing votes from one party to the other.

[squeaky-clean]

Working in coal mines, and working to support coal mines, aren't entirely the same thing. (More than) Half the country is against government provided healthcare, but that doesn't mean half the country works in private medicine or is immune to disease and injury.

[lotsofpulp]

Access to healthcare affects every single person and their community in a pretty obvious way. I don’t see any reason to assume people other than those in the coal industry and maybe their family and friends to care much about it. Maybe a few more for political ideology, but I still can’t see it being a significant amount.

The only reason we hear so much about it is because the states with coal industry hold some swing Senate and Electoral College votes.

[ecnerwala]

I am not in the US. But your point is actually in support of my last sentence :). Of course, I do agree that there are a bunch of worse work environments.