The Daily Populous

Friday February 26th, 2021 night edition

image for Costco lifts minimum wage above Amazon or Target to $16 per hour

(Reuters) - Costco Wholesale Corp is raising the minimum wage for its hourly staff to $16 from next week, a dollar more than what its competitors Amazon.com Inc and Target Corp pay per hour.

The membership-only retailer’s move comes as U.S. President Joe Biden plans to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, and a week after rival Walmart Inc raised its hourly wage to an average of $15.

Costco's Chief Executive Officer Craig Jelinek made the announcement at a U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing on worker wages at large companies.

We want people to stay with us,” Jelinek said, answering to Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee.

Issaquah, Washington-based Costco, which has over 180,000 employees in the U.S, has seen sales boom during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers stocked up their pantries.

The company, which raised hourly wages to $15 in 2019, also offered a premium pay to workers during the virus outbreak.

Even as big corporations raise their hourly wages, many small businesses have opposed a $15 federal minimum wage, saying it would lead to job cuts and closures. »

The amoral atheist? A cross-national examination of cultural, motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, and their implications for morality

Authored by journals.plos.org

By contrast, only minor differences between believers and disbelievers were found in endorsement of other moral values (individualizing moral foundations, epistemic rationality).

According to a Pew poll from 2019, 44% of Americans think that belief in God is necessary for morality [9].

In fact, atheists form the social group that Americans believe to be least in agreement with their vision of America [1]. »

Nearly 70 per cent of Canadians say next vehicle purchase will be electric

Authored by techbomb.ca

A new survey by KPMG in Canada also indicates that most Canadians will do that within the next 5 years.

Interestingly, over half of Canadians believe that EVs (Electric Vehicles) could overpower the electrical grid or eventually be to expensive to operate given rising electricity prices.

Further, 59 per cent of Canadians planning to buy an EV said they will buy their own charger. »