Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

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Amazon is hardly one of the "most profitable companies in the world".

Also Amazon can't really raise prices without losing sales - I've already shifted many of my purchases because Amazon is too expensive. They don't really have room to raise wages without hurting the people who are buying the products.

People forget that a lot - if you raise wages you also have to raise prices, which ends up hurting the exact people you are raising wages for.

> What’s the point of a job, if you can’t live on it?

To have more money than you had before.

I feel no anger here, people are paid based on the economic value of their output. They are not paid based on their worth as humans. If you want to be paid more you need to be able to do move valuable work.

> People forget that a lot - if you raise wages you also have to raise prices, which ends up hurting the exact people you are raising wages for.

This is simply false. It’s false just thinking about it, and it’s false from multiple economic studies in the real world. It’s a common falsehood spread by corporations, but it’s false.

First, you can’t have it both ways and say companies “can’t raise prices without losing sales” and then turn around and say, “if you raise wages, you have to raise prices” and “people are paid according to their economic value”. If all of these statements are true, then no one could ever be paid more than their starting wage, because if their pay increased, then sales would go down due to price increases. Even if a person’s perceived economic value increased, they could never be paid commiserate with their value, because that would lead to a decrease in sales. This is obviously false.

Minimum wage increases simply don’t lead to price increases or unemployment or any of the sky is falling predictions typically touted. We’ve known this for over 30 years now. Of course, lest we forget, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 has been fixed since 2009, months much represents a real wage cut in 2024.

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