…Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has accumulated a fortune worth $150 billion. That is the biggest nominal amount in modern history, and extraordinary any way you slice it. Bezos is the world’s lone hectobillionaire. He is worth what the average American family is, nearly two million times over.
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In contrast, half of Amazon’s domestic employees make less than $28,446 a year, per the company’s legal filings. Some workers have complained of getting timed six-minute bathroom breaks. Warehouse workers need to pick goods and pack boxes at closely monitored speeds, handling up to 1,000 items and walking as many as 15 miles per shift. Contractors have repeatedly complained of wage-and-hour violations and argued that the company retaliates against whistleblowers. An Amazon temp died on the floor just a few years ago.
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Moreover, Amazon itself paid no federal corporate income taxes last year, despite making billions of dollars in profits. It has fought tooth-and-nail against state and local taxes, and has successfully cajoled cities into promising it billions and billions and billions in write-offs and investment incentives in exchange for placing jobs there.
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One in three Amazon employees in the state of Arizona is reportedly on food stamps.
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A recent study by The Economist found that Amazon opening a fulfillment center in a given community actually depresses warehouse wages: In counties without an Amazon center, warehouse workers earn an average of $45,000 a year, versus $41,000 a year in counties with an Amazon center. The data also show that in the two-and-a-half years after Amazon opens a new fulfillment center, local warehouse wages fall by 3 percent.
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The result of these decades of trends and policy choices is that Jeff Bezos has accumulated a $150 billion fortune while the average American family is poorer than it was when the Great Recession hit.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/08/the-problem-with-bezos-billions/566552/
Wow. He could buy 794,000 median-priced houses. That’s like all of residential Houston.
Christopher Weeks There is literally no reason for anyone in this country to poor or in need of… anything. The money is there. It’s time we take it away.
The mean household income in the US is just over $72K. If we took 80% of income and all we did was distribute that sum evenly, rich people would still be rich and no one would be too poor to eat or pay rent.
Ironically on Amazon: amazon.com – Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World: Annie Lowrey: 9781524758769: Amazon.com: Books
amazon.com – Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World: Annie Lowrey: 9781524758769: Amazon.com: Books]]>
Amazon is a fucking vampire squid.
I seriously doubt that $45k number for warehouse workers. I would be doing that. I’ve never seen warehouse work pay much more than $25k. I left a warehouse to take my janitorial job.
Yeah, I’m seeing $25k to $34k locally.
I think that 40K number is about average salary for all jobs in an area. You get paid less as a gas station attendant because an Amazon warehouse is in your neighborhood kinda thing, Clyde Rhoer.
It says specifically “warehouse workers.” Not trying to make this into a point to try to invalidate all the argument. But that part looks fishy is all.
Oops, you’re right. That was totally my mistake. Sorry.
It appears that associates in the local Amazon warehouse here make $13-17 per hour.
$15 an hour is average for Warehouse workers in most of the country.
Or he could buy about 1/50 of all the gold ever mined.
He could make 149,000 people millionaires and still be a billionaire.
He could finance 300 missions to Mars!
It really is the wealth of a king or nation or something.
Bezos could buy a 4-year college degree at a state college for a little over 3.7 million kids… and still be a billionaire.
million kids… and still be a billionaire.]]>
I figured out the other day that if we took all the money everyone has over $1B in America, right now, it would pay the entire nation’s college bills for 40 years.
over $1B in America, right now, it would pay the entire nation’s college bills for 40 years.]]>
Christopher Weeks Oxfam recently did math (I think I posted it), that just the 2016 gains of the world’s 1% could eliminate world poverty.
Just. The. Gains. They’d all still be multi-billionaires.
Beign that rich should be a crime. Period.
just the 2016 gains of the world’s 1% could eliminate world poverty. Just. The. Gains. They’d all still be multi-billionaires. Beign that rich should be a crime. Period.]]>
We should be less chickenshit with our gulloitines.