In the world of income and wages, the reality is as long as you are making more than minimum wage you only half care what it is. Most people think about it in the abstract, but the reality is for a number of years corporations were able to push down the minimum wage to levels where honest hard working people could not meet their ends meet. It was a function of how much pay they received, not whether they worked hard or not. For the last 5 years, the workforce has been shrinking because baby boomers have been retiring – to receive income from the government for being 65 years old. As baby boomers retire and the economy still moving along, companies are having a hard time to attract and keep workers or at the minimum wage range workers have choices. Amazon is raising its wages to all workers in the US starting in November. Amazon has about 250,000 workers, it recruits another 100,000 for the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

It was noted in the article by Arjun Panchadar of Reuters the federal minimum wage is $7.25 a hour and generally Amazon was paying about $11 a hour.  In addition, Amazon recently passed the trillion dollar valuation for the company as well as increased Prime memberships by $20.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, often times the method to judge a company from a moral point of view is how do they treat the least paid employees. If every company believes their most important asset is their people, what opportunities do they do for their least paid ones? If you are buying stocks, then you have investment dollars and savings which is a great thing. Anyone at or near minimum wage would be hard pressed to have savings. We all evaluate the world a little differently – their are pluses and minus with all companies and how do you rate them? The answers allow for many investors making decisions are how companies are doing and what they should be doing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.