Posted on 06/30/2018 7:52:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
And she won’t see the irony in wanting to import millions of immigrants, legal and otherwise, who would exponentially exacerbate this situation.
To be fair, the $20 an hour is nothing like that in reality if they have to pay for gas, insurance and car repairs. In the courier industry, independent owner operators get paid by the delivery with a bonus for successful on time deliveries at premium speeds, also bonus for weight above a certain minimum (40 pounds when I was doing it).
In one calendar year I was paid a gross of $65,000 (Cdn) and had a net of about $18,000 without fudging the numbers. You could easily be paying $200-$300 for gas in a week to keep on the road, mandatory insurance of $70 a month over top of car insurance (which you would get anyway) and inevitable frequent car maintenance and repairs. And you spend a small fortune on coffee and snacks, it’s a high energy job especially in hot weather.
I would think $20 an hour was chump change for these part timers, they will net about $10 if they are lucky.
The left must see some sort of gun I don’t — the one that MAKES people take these types of positions.
But I am not overly concerned. Just as $15/hr for fast food = robot restaurants (I think almost ALL MacD’s have order kiosks already), $20/hr minimum for packages gets us those drones they have been talking about for what, 10 years now?
It’s too bad that none of these immigrants could be a threat to the jobs of most media employees, that I know of. They’d change their tune so fast their heads would spin. It’s too bad that the elite who want unfettered immigration, section 8, all these social engineering policies, are never affected by them. We need to find ways to fix that.
I’m going to write in caps because this makes me mad and adult language ahead.
AMAZON DELIVERY HAS SUCKED BIG BULL BALLS THE LAST 18 MONTHS. LYING ABOUT DELIVERING PACKAGES, LEAVING PACKAGES AT OTHER HOUSES IN MY AREA.
SCREW THESE DELIVERY PEOPLE AND THEIR LAZY INCOMPETENT THIEVING ASSES.
$18/hour for an independent contractor who has to pay all his operating expenses is pathetic. I wouldn’t get out of bed to do that work for a penny less than $50/hour.
Am I the only one that sees a phallic symbol aimed for a hole in their logo?
Wait until these whiners get dinged by the IRS for not paying quarterly taxes on their 1099 contractor pay.
Those expenses are tax deductible, so it’s not all gloom.
Strange what some people think they are worth another have not wants more of your stuff.
Amazon....you’re about to be screwed
They will be lucky to net out $9/hr, of course provided that they pay taxes and insurance.
You just provided the perfect example of free market wages. If more people thought that way, there would be no need for minimum wages. Let the market decide the wage.
If there is a product or a service that people are willing to pay money for, a successful business will have money left over in profit once everyone is paid off. If the cost of the product or service doesn’t leave a profit, the company will soon go out of business. If the cost of the product or service is not worth the value, the customer will go elsewhere or do without. That company will also go out of business. After a time, the ones that successfully find the right balance will succeed and the others will whither and die. That releases the resources to the world for other attempts at providing products or services that people need or desire.
Right. But the contractor is responsible for all payroll taxes (as both employer AND employee). And the contractor also has to insure his vehicle for commercial use. I can’t imagine why anyone would work under these conditions.
My nephew with an associate’s degree has climbed the ladder at Amazon from stock boy to management and a very nice salary in 3 years.
He didn’t cry when he was making $12 an hour. He just worked hard and now is making more than double that plus benefits. Plus some Amazon shares that are at 1700 now. As an added benefit he met a Jamaican girl who is quite pretty and seems pretty conservative. I don’t care what color a girl is as long as she’s pretty and conservative :-)
True. I think that gets lost in all of this.
I had delivered newspapers for over a year, as an adult news carrier. I had a route of over 200 homes and apartments.
And on the tax returns for those years, I took tax deductible expenses, such as the car expenses, expenses for office and billing supplies, etc.
This was about 25 years ago. I recall calculating how much per hour I was netting, not gross but net, and my net was about $12 an hour back then. Adjusted for inflation I think it would be over $20 an hour today.
Safe to say, it was worth it to me to get up in the middle of the night and deliver the papers for that pay, even though there were expenses of doing business, as an independent contractor, I was making satisfactory money. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.
The ultimate issue is lack of upward mobility for someone willing to start at the bottom in an unskilled job, work hard, and produce their way up the ladder.
Look at American history. We began as an agrarian society. A motivated, industrious individual could go into the wilderness, acquire farmland at little or no cost and own a farm. If he was industrious and highly productive he could acquire wealth by adding to his land holdings and increasing his productivity by investing in equipment (plows, horses, and later machinery) and hiring laborers. The most industrious would eventually own mills, feed stores, and other infrastructure business.
As the nation began to industrialize an unskilled worker could get a job in a factory sweeping floors, moving around boxes and equipment, and doing other menial directed tasks. Those workers who displayed good attitudes, were highly productive, and showed up for work every day on time would eventually be taught a skill. If they continued to produce they had opportunities to move up to higher skilled jobs or even into management. It is noteworthy that many unskilled poor southern rural blacks with no hope of upward movement due to Jim Crow laws moved north in the early to middle 20th century in order to obtain factory jobs and have the chance to improve their economic prospects. They were pursuing the American dream.
The deindustrialization of America, in the pursuit of “free trade”, destroyed many avenues for industrious unskilled and undereducated Americans to move up the economic ladder through hard work and determination. The small factories that once filled urban areas, and were scattered across fly over country are now gone. Also gone are the small businesses that provided raw materials, parts, and services to those factories. In the 20th century small businesses employed most American workers. As small companies grew, their reliable and productive workers had opportunities to grow economically with the business. Today small businesses are failing at a greater rate than they are created for the first time in our history. This closes another door for economic advancement for the unskilled and semi skilled.
The Uber driver and Amazon contract delivery carrier do not have the same opportunity to sacrifice and grow as the floor sweeper in a factory 50 years ago. No matter how hard they work, or how much they produce, as contract workers their earnings are capped and there is no opportunity to develop more valuable skills. The 21st century outsourcing economy is not creating pathways for upward economic mobility for the millions of people with limited skills and education. The replacement of unskilled citizen workers with robots and unskilled immigrants will only exacerbate the situation.
Globalization is killing the American dream by eliminating opportunities for economic advancement. Today there are nearly 100 million Americans of working age who are not employed. Those Americans can vote and if the slow growth 21st century economy continues to provide fewer opportunities for employment and economic progression, the increasing number of unemployed will vote for socialism and redistribution of wealth.
Great story ... but someone who delivers packages for $18/hour as an independent contractor isn’t even on the bottom rung of the ladder. They’re going nowhere in Amazon.
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