Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS) Act
sanders.senate.gov
sanders.senate.gov
We have decided that there should be a minimum standard of living for people that live in the US. Paying for that decision falls on all of us, not just the companies that happen to employ those with lower paying jobs.
This is essentially a special tax on companies that happen to have business models that require low skill labor. Why should companies(1) with business models that only require high skill labor get off the hook when it comes to paying their fare share of the bill for our countries social services?
1. or more correctly those companies stockholders and employees
That's not what is being called a subsidy.
Federal benefits to low-wage workers are being called a subsidy that reduces wage demands in the market. Other than EITC (which actually does act as a wage subsidy in a certain range), that's a problematic claim, too, but it's a different claim than that market wages are a subsidy.
We have decided no such thing. People need shelter food and clothing, these are necessities. We have decided a bare minimum of those necessities that people have a right to have. Either employers pay for these, or governments pay for these. Without them people don't have enough food to eat, don't have shelter to live, or clothing to wear.
An employer is not your mother. Just because you go to work for someone, it does not automatically endow them with a special responsibility to make sure you can afford to live your life in the way a bunch of other people say that you should be able to.
When we (as a citizenry) get together and decide on how we want to support each other we can't just pawn off the costs of that decision on a 3rd party. We have to accept those costs ourselves.
We have a serious unemployment problem that will only get worse with automation. Rather than tying survival to work, I'd rather see UBI and workers who won't take abuse because they're only working part-time for beer money.
It's telling that Sander's proposed bill would only require "large employers" to pay up here. If local businesses were all paying higher salaries already they wouldn't need this exemption in the first place.
Wait, what?
All the companies mentioned in the document make profits way higher than the "subsidies" they receive. They could easily increase wages or pay this tax.
Another way of looking at it is SNAP gives workers a better alternative to working - not working - so it raises workers' reservation wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_wage
If it were not for SNAP, you'd actually be able to hire more workers at a cheaper price because the alternative to working - not working - would no longer be as attractive.
(Posted this comment top-level on a dupe, deleted it there and reposting here.)
Take Amazon for example, if a living wage bill is passed, what is to say that they do not move towards a 100% robotic workforce in their warehouses in a few years?
But the marginal tax rate at that part of the curve, taking into account the EITC is close enough to zero that it’s not an issue.
I like the plan, I think that it needs a slight tweak. The fine should be 200% of the subsidy, and perhaps it should only apply to workers working at least 20 hours a week.
There are plenty of individuals who work multiple jobs, still get only 30-some hours, and still collect public assistance. Seems like a needless clause.
Remember this doesn’t change anything about what the employee is paid, it’s a fine for paying an employee too little to be self sufficient. I’m not sure that makes sense if someone is only working for you one day a week, for example.
Monopsony: a market structure in which a few buyers substantially control the market as the major purchasers of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/13/tesla-wor...
Disrupting a market as nothing to do with wages. Amazon did disrupt the retail industry, but the workers conditions and wages are bad. The "disrupt" aspect can also lead to a quasi monopoly situation (Facebook, Google), so much for market competition...
Also competition in low margin markets tends to be a driver for lower wages, not higher wages.
High demand in a market can drive higher wages, not competition.
Tech workers have the luxury to choose from dozen employers because:
1) it takes years to train a CS engineer and it takes weeks if not months to get him up to speed in most companies (due to the immaturity of the industry IMHO), so you want to retain him.
2) there is a shortage of tech workers.
3) there is a bubble with a ton of money poured into it.
4) the tech industry is high margin, with a marginal cost for a unit (either a software copy or a new customer in a service) generally quite close to zero. Basically successful tech companies earn more money that they know want to do with.
This is an exceptional situation.
The real issue is that wage inequalities are growing quite significantly, and as a consequence, capital inequalities are becoming absolutely huge. It's a snowball effect. And with a lot of money, specific individuals/companies can heavily influence political and societal decisions/opinions (by owning newspapers, tv channels... by financing political parties/campaigns, by lobbying heavily the law makers).
We are slowly but surely returning to a wealth distribution and monopoly situation as seen in the 19th century
(Albeit with a far better material situation (food security, hygiene/health, education...) for nearly everyone on Earth due to the scientific and technical improvements over the past 2 centuries)
This situation is a societal decision: do we accept that in a society with the global means and wealth for everybody to have food, a roof, medical care and education, they are still hardworking people on the brink of poverty? If the answer is no, it should be translated in political decision/laws (minimal wage or maybe universal income/social security/free education...).
That makes sense, but seems like most of the political pressure to raise minimum wage is focused at the federal level.
Does the issue of raising minimum wage get traction in state- or local-level politics, and just not get widely reported (aside from Seattle and a few other cities)?
So yes state level changes get a lot of attention, but there's also lots of people impacted by the federal level.
McDonalds on the other hand, already has kiosks installed everywhere and simply has to decide orders can't be taken at the till anymore. There goes 50% of customer facing staff. And here comes more of the population relying on government subsidies.
Basic income is still a more viable alternative, but I have low hopes of this being taken seriously for another 10-20 years.
I'm guessing this bill is made so that it appeals to Trump, too, who's been attacking Bezos lately. Fingers crossed it passes. Amazon has benefited from low taxes, which has catapulted it into a monopoly in several markets. Monopolies are bad for consumers, competition, and employees.
The low taxes is part of the reasons why it's been able to invest more in the company, subsidize Kindle ebooks for years (Apple has called it a price dumping tactic), it enabled it to offer free shipping with a relatively low subscription, and of course cheaper products in general compared to offline retailers.
No, it's not; Sanders was the first major national politician to jump on the grassroots Fight for $15 movement, but he didn't start it. (Heck, Black Lives Matter was involved before Sanders, but they didn't start it, either.)
Since there's absolutely no practical impact to this announcement, its presence on HN is really just an invitation to a political argument; it should get flagged away.
I'm not at all convinced that removing people from federal assistance programs (i.e. necessitating a need for a reduction in those programs' budgets) would in fact directly result in less taxes being paid by me.
> This bill would establish a corporate welfare tax on large employers equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers.
But it does not establish a means to reduce my tax burden whatsoever. I feel this is a valid criticism as the basis of the argument is that it's costing "the taxpayers." Well, I'm a taxpayer. I'm a shareholder in this organization, what's my get? I'm seeing large corps raising prices to offset the new tax, no new benefits for the underprivileged it's supposed to be helping, and no reduction in my personal costs. The net to me of that arrangement is less money in my pocket due to increased prices at the big companies.
> Large companies, not taxpayers, should be required to pay for federal public assistance programs that their employees are eligible to receive.
No, the system should be setup such that taxes are fair and equitable enough to cover the operating costs of the government. I'm seeing way too much of an "us" vs "them" in this arrangement, which I'm not surprised by given who is proposing it.
> The Stop Bezos Act gives large employers a choice: pay workers a living wage or pay for the public assistance programs low-wage workers are forced to rely upon.
We have no constitutional right to "living wage" and for the government to attempt to enforce a right that does not exist is a problem. I'll leave that argument at that.
As substantive policy its a nightmare than would crush the people it purports to be aimed at helping, though, and the danger of grandstanding like this is it can get out of control and build the kind of support for the policy that makes it politically irresistible so that it gets adopted, at least in outline.
I wonder how much of this is the Sanders camp being concerned that Warren had gotten way ahead of them with her recent moves (which are nearly as good as grandstanding and much better as substantive policy.) There's clearly a (mostly friendly, perhaps, but still intense) competition to be the standard bearer of the economic progressive faction of the Democratic Party going into the 2020 cycle.
Electoral maneuvering aside, the simple solution to the policy problem this is aimed at is reducing the preference for capital income over labor income in the tax system, which makes hiring labor at any given wage level less expensive, and thereby more competitive with capital-intensive automation.
Take the sharing economy into account:
Lyft/Uber InstaCart/Pizza Delivery Seasonal Workers such as Amazon Warehouse associates McDonalds/Walmart flex scheduling shifts "involuntary part time"
Say an average person for this particular sharing economy example include two or three part-time jobs throughout the year.
The person starts the year as a seasonal worker for amazon (christmas rush into new years) 160hours total, they then receive unemployment payments for a period of time. Later they become a part time employee of Walmart stocking late at night (400 hours). Finally they drive for both Uber and Lyft depending on customer volume to fill in the time they are not receiving shifts from Walmart (250hours).
According to this bill, there is no logical way to split the federal benefits as defines (school lunch, housing subsidies, SNAP and medicaid. The unemployment is paid from employer's insurance. Is the total amount of tax for each employer simply divided by the number of hours employed? Seems like its being left up to the IRS in order to figure out the implementation.
> Under this legislation, large employers are defined as employers who have more than 500 employees, including part -time workers, independent contractors and franchise workers.
I'm not an expert in legalese (and this isn't the legislation itself), but the last two words imply that McDonald Corporate would be on the hook for franchisee's employee's food stamps.
In other words, it's an announcement of an announcement, the most off-topic of offtopicness.
While technically true at the time the linked summary was written, the bill has in fact been introduced and this is a summary of it as well a statement that it will be introduced.
Whether or not it is “evidence of some interesting new phenomenon” is, I would agree, debatable.
Simply put, no. It is not the responsibility of employers to ensure that any job they offer provides sufficient compensation to an employee to live where they want.
Government actions have done far more damage and kept more people in poor financial straights than lack of pay. From the over zealous war on drugs to fund the politically powerful police and sheriff unions to the expense of the public employee pension systems which have driven up the cost of local government services, fees, and licensing, all at the cost of helping those in need.
I'm not disagreeing with your premise completely, but conflating policies that are genuinely meant to help the working poor and policies that are specifically meant to harm people (the war on drugs being an excellent example) is dishonest and unhelpful.
This probably isn't politically feasible at the moment though, so for now we have to take small victories where we can get them, like getting rid of the most obviously stupid and regressive subsidies.
What's in it for the participating corporation? Well, money.
For the politician, it can be one or more of the following: Fulfilling campaign promises (ie, "I brought jobs here"), legal money (ie, corporation pays into campaign PAC), or illicit money (which usually requires some laundering using casinos, real-estate or cryto to secretly fund).
https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/9a3sjh/old_ma...
Anyone who knows economics here who can comment on whether that is a good argument or not?
…But then how would the employer's tax department know how much to pay in the proposed tax?
Compared to - say - the legislation resulting from the sub-prime crisis - in which powerful individuals at the head of national and global banking systems (and governments) almost ended the world as we know it.
Anyways, of course the actual brief doesn't actually reference how much Amazon employees are currently being subsidized (vs referenceing Walmart's $6.2b), because this isn't about the dollars and cents, it's about rushing something through on the back of bad press and Trump's tweetstorms.
The government grows unto itself, shoot first, aim later.
Democrats have not generally been screaming about a need to return to civility, they've been screaming about a need to return to estsblished substantive and procedural norms.
Republicans have been demanding civility as a means of deflecting the increasingly strenuous objections on those issues.
Surely there are detriments I haven't considered, and please do share them if any come to mind.
Why should companies that employ lower skill workers pay higher taxes than those that employ higher skilled workers?
This is a nice stunt but nobody in Congress will have the balls to vote for it.
Maybe Sanders never aspired to be a national leader and that should be respected but it's still disappointing.
Sanders has used his platform to continue to advocate for Medicare For All, for a $15/hr minimum wage (a concession he was able to get for Disneyland employees), for renewable energy, for justice reform, for immigration reform. What else would you suggest he do? He has been more positively impactful than any politician currently in office except perhaps Senator Warren.
> Now the democrats look as clueless as they looked in 2016. They still don't have a real value proposition other than not being Trump.
Medicare For All, a $15 hour minimum wage, fully funded public schools and universities, justice reform, immigration reform, paid family and sick leave (not an exhaustive list) is not a value proposition?
Democrats clueless? Progressive candidates continue to win in elections at every level. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is crushing it. As long as the Clintons, Biden, and other moderates keep to themselves, we'll be fine.
They are winning primaries so far. That's different from being elected.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/9/4/17818204/midterm-2018-polls-gen... (New 2018 midterm poll has Democrats up 14 points on Republicans)
[2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/democrats-surgi... (With the Midterms Two Months Away, Democrats Are Surging in the Polls)
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/04/politics/midterm-polls-democr... (Democrats have double-digit advantage in midterm elections, polls show)
[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/trump-does-not-want-governme...
[5] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/04/s...
In practice, it’s a little more complicated than that because automation requires investments that are long to set-up, risky, etc. but there are reasons to believe that this suggestion, if it passes would have two effect:
- accelerate automation overall;
- convince Amazon to employ directly more of its workers (they are typically going through employment agencies at the moment) and re-think its schedules. The dirty secret of that industry is that Amazon would like people to come at certain hours but doesn’t really think beyond its operations, partially because they have an arms-length relationship with temporary workers. Agencies are all too willing to comply, and force powerless temp workers into the grinder, arguing that they are just bowing to “the market”. The layers of bureaucracy prevents Amazon from raising internally the point that shifts at reasonable hours, with breaks. This means employees can think more critically of their job, and contribute greatly to innovation.
Human labor is so far behind machine labor, that raising its cost by a little bit won't make much of a difference.
When it comes to manual labor, machines are so much cheaper, more efficient, cheaper, less risky (medically, legally, criminally), stable, and reliable, that there's no comparison really.
Big companies like Amazon therefore automate wherever they can already.
Based on articles about their fulfillment centers, the only jobs remaining there are those robots don't do very well right now. These will eventually disappear regardless of the passage of provocatively-titled PR-focused laws (which probably won't pass anyway in current congress).
I'm not sure I understand your second point, especially how relevant it is to the current discussion. This is about Amazon compensating employees with such minimal and pay and benefits that they must seek welfare assistance and thus effectively are paid by the taxpayer. Working conditions have nothing to do with that, although (obviously) the same weak employees (or "contractors") who receive so little pay will receive little consideration in these and other regards as well.
They make sure not to hit work-hour thresholds to owe employees full benefits. In some areas, they demand that employees use a work-van to get there, and they have to pay the driver absurd amounts to use that “service”.
Working conditions are so dire that the temp workers can’t offer suggestion on working conditions, conditions that would help Amazon integrate better automation in their current system, and make paying workers more comfortably more sensical.
You can’t extract work problems from their context.
Not sure I follow.
From reading articles about it, the "working conditions" are "dire" because Amazon can press workers to work very hard (fill quotas) in large warehouses that are barely suitable for human habitation.
Both of these are related to Amazon squeezing pennies out of employees/contractors who have zero leverage.
The problem isn't that these employees can't offer "suggestions". Amazon knows very well that if it lowered quotas, allowed more breaks, and added air-conditioning to warehouses, working conditions will improve.
It doesn't do these things because these employees have zero leverage so Amazon makes more money by not offering these improvements.
The fundamental problem is that unskilled labor is very low value, and as automation increases, will get even lower.
Amazon use some bots and are working on automating more of the warehouse jobs, IIRC.
Unrelated: I like your username! :-)
Their goal seem to be 100% automation, and the only remaining jobs are those that can't be automated just yet.
I don't know anything about Walmart, but given Amazon's path, they have no choice but to follow suite to stay competitive.
Unrelated: thanks!
While it's possible that some manual warehouse workers have the capacity to "retrain" to a more skilled job, the reality is that there are more than enough incentives for them to have done so already: pay, benefits, job security, status, etc.
Those who chose minimal-wage, no-benefits work in terrible conditions over much better skilled work have done so because they are either strongly deterred by the nature of skilled work or lack the capacity for it.
So the problem isn't "retraining". The problem is that the percentage of humanity that can be replaced by machines of superior intelligence is increasing.
unless you mean putting more money into AI research, which they are
still, the jury is still out on whether the laws of nature allow to build AIs that can do every job and totally replace human resources. and whether reaching that point implies you’ve just built a new sentient being that will be unionizing and campaigning for equal rights and equal pay and better silicon in no time.
Another big part of Amazon-related workers is their delivery third-parties. Self-driving truck could help, but they will still need people to unload the trucks and deal with the idiosyncrasies of every location. There were plans to use autonomous hexacopters (“drones”) but I don’t think those make sense at scale and for larger items.
You’re saying building a hand that can feel and sense is not really AI in general. I say that “sense” and “sentient” have the same latin root — sentire, to feel.
From what we know about intelligence and its relationship with sentience, giving something a sense of feeling implies applying artificial intelligence... and is a step towards artificial sentience IMO. It’s definitely not a step away from it. Those sensors sound like nerves to me.
Robots for a higher minimum wage!
People Over Profits. Why is that such a difficult concept? Why is the "free market" so revered? Show me why it is better than the least well off living comfortably with shareholders making a lower return. If a trillion dollars isn't enough, what is?
Don't prevent companies from getting rid of their human workforce - redistribute wages "paid" to robots to humans.
I just think that responsibility should fall equally on all of us and not, as this bill does, single out particular kinds of businesses over other types of businesses.
You can't not do anything when people are being taken advantage of and you're waiting for midterms and 2020 elections.
Disclaimer: I donate heavily to progressive candidates (and only progressive candidates).
That being said, I'm generally against the minimum wage for the same reason(1) (in a way this bill is a de-facto minimum wage increase from the perspective of employers). Wal-Mart shareholders shouldn't have a greater responsibility to pay for the social safety net than Google shareholders.
1. Though to be clear I think this bill is much worse due to the complexity of the implementation. At least a minimum wage is simple.
In preparation for the move to a totally AI driven customer interface (which WILL happen, barring any large scale disaster), legislators needs to implement some solution to keep currency flowing to the people.
If everything except highly skilled professions are automated, there will be a hell of a lot unemployment. Off the top of my head, one potential solution I've heard is that companies should pay wages to robots and those wages will be paid as tax to the government who would redistribute the wealth as universal basic income.
We're surely decades or more from near total automation, but it's worth thinking about as a serious matter as we are living in the robot revolution.
If a job is beneficially for the economy, and individual, and an employer, though not enough to keep someone out of poverty - this is precisely when government programs should fill in the gap. And I would think should be the perspective of someone who calls themselves a "Democratic Socialist."
A huge part of the problem with how healthcare and labor benefits are handled in the United States is exactly this - that they are far to tied to an individual's job. Divorcing them actually helps all parties. Most developed nations operate this way.
Naming this legislation after Bezos is petty and vindictive. It's below the office of a Senator, and a bad precedent to set to using the power of lawmaking to single out individuals.
I don't think it should; but on the other end, why would people work for Walmart if the salary it offers is not enough to survive? And why should Walmart rely on the subsidies offered by the state to integrate the shitty wages it's paying?
In other words, the employees work for you, you are the one who should pay them- subsidies are altering this balance. (Ah, and tips too, my other little obsession. Otherwise I'll bring my own waiter, thank you).
Of course the state should provide a "safety net"- which for me includes full, free, high quality medical assistance, education, and maybe some for of low rent housing. But that's about it.
Sanders point is that the current system is de-facto redistributive, in favour of companies who use temporary workers at a large scale and with patterns that appear to be designed to evade regulations on employee protection. Say, there are obligations that kick in when an employee works for more than 40 hours per week; employers who have thousands of employees tasked to work only 39 hours could obviously hire almost as many and be responsible for sick pay, holidays, health insurance.
You response is probably that this means the union decision was badly designed, and no one who knows anything about labor negotiations would disagree with you. It is a case of the spirit of the law versus its letter. I’m sure you want to say that this is not the company’s role to write the law. That would make their lobbyist laugh a bit, but let’s assume this is true. Sanders is precisely trying to fit one to the other. What constitutes a clear breach (and how the numbers quoted in the project are established) is probably a nightmare of analytical ad-hoc decisions, but it’s probably more honest than refusing to support financially basic human needs from people who, de-facto, work full time for you.
But I don't see why Bezos in particular is singled out.