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Comment by kolanos | Hacker News Reader

Call me cynical, but shouldn't this $2B go towards compensating his employees well enough to not have to use government welfare programs? [0]

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-takes-walmarts-spot-w...

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There is more glory in philanthropy than in paying your employees. The ROI in terms of reputation is higher.

Addition: the same is true for funding something like a computer lab at a school. Lots of good PR for funding a new one but nothing for keeping an existing one funded for the next few years. Although I think it's more valuable to make sure existing infrastructure stays funded.

Wondering - is the actual ROI likely higher due to tax benefits on charitable giving as well?

Crazy thought but are we incentivizing this behavior?

I haven’t seen any math on this, but if I pay workers more I still pay the same tax rate on profits and profits will be lower.

OTOH if I pay them less, profits are higher, my stock goes up. I donate stock to my charitable fund and get a personal tax break.

You aren't anywhere near cynical enough. Taken far enough, programs to "help the homeless" -- instead of programs to reduce homelessness -- are a de facto plot to keep homelessness alive and well. It's a form of oppression of the masses.

https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-...

I don't necessarily agree with you, but another interesting take on this is by Slavoj Zizek, who argues that charitable giving perpetuates the problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

There's a place for charity in the world. But charity doesn't you give you a middle class life. When a man worth many billions can't be arsed to pay his employees a living wage, but wants to kick a few bucks towards "helping the homeless", something smells very rotten.

Given that Bezos envisions, for example, creating a network of preschools in low-income areas, I'd say he's at least thinking about helping people get out of cyclical poverty.

Still, I'd also like to see Amazon pay its employees better...

Or he could just pay his employees adequately so they aren't forced to live in poor neighborhoods and they could afford to pay for private preschool themselves if they decided for themselves this makes sense for their family.

But, no, that he won't do. Which means there's actually a hidden agenda here.

Actions speak louder than words. You can charitably argue that he needs a good therapist to help him root out subconscious bias, but you aren't going to convince me he's somehow doing a good thing here.

so the one person that reads the article gets down-voted to oblivion, thanks for taking the fall mate! Your altruism will not go unnoticed

I was going to comment about the preschools and how that idea came from ideas solicited by the public because everyone was just assuming it was just arbitrary helicopter money exclusively for PR

I've read the article. I've also had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I spent nearly 6 years homeless and got myself off the street without going through a program. The programs are often revolving doors that don't really fix the intractable personal problems that are a root cause of homelessness.

The other two big issues: inadequate income and lack of affordable housing. Bezos is directly responsible for his employees lack of adequate wages, an issue he won't fix.

No, he is going to build preschools in poor neighborhoods so that poor kids can get properly educated and break the cycle of poverty 2 decades from now when they grow up.

Conveniently kicks the can down the road and does nothing to solve homelessness in the here and now, plus comes with all kinds of plausible deniability. "Just wait 2 decades! You'll see! It will help them... Eventually!"

"The beatings shall continue until morale improves." and all that.

> The other two big issues: inadequate income and lack of affordable housing. Bezos is directly responsible for his employees lack of adequate wages, an issue he won't fix.

You realize that if Bezos gave all the Amazon employees 'adequate wages' that you would then still be blaming him for inadequate housing? Or at least different people in Seattle would.

> No, he is going to build preschools in poor neighborhoods so that poor kids can get properly educated and break the cycle of poverty 2 decades from now when they grow up.

The horror. Setting up lower socioeconomic statuses for long term success.

Would it help if the article didn't masquerade this effort as a cure all?

The horror. Setting up lower socioeconomic statuses for long term success.

Poor children live with enormous daily stress and chronic lack of adequate nutrition sets up permanent problems that tend to be unreasonable. Children with stunting earn less wages over the course of their lives and have many other intractable problems.

There is always some hoop to jump through for the poor as to why adequate money must come someday down the road - just not today.

A la President Clinton famously announcing that he didn't want to give a tax cut because poor people would just spend their money foolishly and he was more qualified than them to spend their money wisely.

Would it help if the article didn't masquerade this effort as a cure all?

It would help if you would drop the sarcasm and contempt and take me seriously as a subject matter expert.

I do take you seriously

You came out of the woodworks because Jeff Bezos is doing something with money and the PR engine is masquerading this as a panacea to chronic homelessness. You want the world to know that "something" isn't enough and isn't holistic enough. And I'm right here in the middle saying "huh preschools thats kind of interesting"

I know plenty of people that do things for schools, Jeff Bezos doing things for more schools (or at least on the subject of schooling) at once is nice. I support that. Its not the only thing he might do, not the only thing he has to do, or plans to do, yet it is interesting that he's being held to a separate standard solely from the announcement alone.

If he just said "yo I'm making preschools its gonna be lit", a wild Doreen Michele would have never appeared. But because it was billed as a solution to homelessness and impoverished areas, here comes college educated Doreen Michele to let everyone know its totally wrong and misguided!

Its preschools

You came out of the woodworks because...

a wild Doreen Michele would have never appeared. But because it was billed as a solution to homelessness and impoverished areas, here comes college educated Doreen Michele to let everyone know its totally wrong and misguided!

That's incredibly dismissive.

For one thing, I'm simply here a lot. I didn't "come out of the woodwork" like some lurker who normally keeps my mouth shut.

For another, I comment on lots of different subjects, not just homelessness. I'm well known for my views on homelessness, but long before that I was a homeschooling parent and Director of Community Life for The TAG Project. It isn't at all unusual for me to comment on education and related subjects.

I'm not a big fan of the idea out there that poor families are helped by good preschool education. One of my sons went to preschool and he really benefited tremendously because he had specific issues I wanted addressed. So I'm well aware that preschool can be a good thing and I would rather see more money spent on preschool than on prisons and there are studies that show that spending more on preschools reduces how much we spend on prisons.

But I would much, much, much rather see parents make enough money that they can make choices like whether or not they want one parent to be home full time. I think we really, seriously undervalue full time parents.

(Please note that I am saying parents, not mothers. I get a lot of BS off of people who like to imagine I mean only mothers should be at home with kids.)

I've thought long and hard about a lot of subjects that happen to intersect here and even studied some of them formally.

I'm also medically handicapped and I happen to spend more time on HN on days when I am short of sleep or not feeling so hot, like today. That is a much, much bigger factor in me leaving multiple comments in this discussion (as well as others) than the topic per se.

Though I will say this comment is evidence that your opening line is probably not entirely disingenuous. You are taking me seriously enough to apparently view me as some kind of threat (to what? I have no clue) and thus feel some need to try to shoot me down personally.

It is hard for me to differentiate users, but I don't consider your activity on HN a crutch or needing rational

Glad to hear more about your background in this area though

Jeff Bezos says his action was guided by something akin to a public comment period. Not sure how anyone would have known that in advance but maybe thats something you can contribute to in the future, or push for more billionaires and well funded organizations to take suggestions from the public

Given the ROI that corporations get on lobbying, it would seem to be a better investment to "solve" this issue is to lobby for a tax sufficient to provide funding of preschools, but I suppose that's not a good philosophical fit for a bezos foundation...

I see some parallels with aid sent to Africa. Charitable giving can alleviate suffering short term with the side effect of perpetuating suffering long term.

> Aid [to Africa] is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083

You might enjoy reading Diet for a small planet. It gets remembered as a vegetarian cookbook, but the first half of the book is about international politics and how food aid is part of the problem.

Reminds me of the writing coming from Anand Giridharadas. In the New York Times last month he wrote:

"...even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-phi...

There's a good 2-part podcast about Benevolent Billionaires from the "Citations Needed" podcast that goes a bit over the history of billionaire benevolence and what the good deeds cover up.

Any chance you could braindump a tl;dl?

Just until someone actually responds... I haven't watched part 2, but I remember part 1 being focused on Bill Gates as the main example to showcase their points. A big focus is how non-profit organizations aren't as benevolent as they appear to be. For example how Bill Gates' charity has more money than it began with and how a lot of what's classified as "charity" ends up being stuff like media influence and making a documentary about why private schools are gonna save education in America. They also point out how easy the media goes on Gates and other "charitable" billionaires and how seriously they take their worldviews despite not having any real education in, say, economic theory or history.

Here's part 1:

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so...

And here's part 2:

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so...

Sounds nice on paper, but that's not how accounting works.

While Bezos' wealth has skyrocketed in the last year, the portion of that wealth that actually came out of the Amazon ledgers was under $2 million in 2017. [1]

Since it is the responsibility of the company to compensate employees, at most Bezos' cut is taking $2 million out of the pie, which divided across the several hundred thousand Amazon employees would give each worker less than $20 per year. Not exactly life changing.

Regardless of whether or not Amazon should pay employees more, basing that argument on the CEO's capitol gains on long-standing investments is ridiculous.

[1] https://www1.salary.com/Jeffrey-P-Bezos-Salary-Bonus-Stock-O...

$2B divided by 600k employees would be more than $3000, which is actually huge for many people.

If you're making $50k/year, that's a one time 6 percent bonus. Color me unimpressed.

A lot of Amazon employees make a lot less than $50K. You think $200/month wouldn't make a difference to someone who can't afford food?

A billionaire's philanthropic bribe should not replace fair compensation.

And for a lot of families that is the difference between a staycation and Disneyland. Don’t underestimate how much an unexpected infusion of cash helps people that are near paycheck to paycheck.

Are warehouse workers getting paid $50k/year?

EDIT: For comparison, 50k USD is approximately 65k CAD, which makes higher than the median starting salary for a mechanical/electrical engineer in Canada. I would be surprised if they are paying their lowest-paid employees that much.

The $2B isn't over 1 year...it's over several years or decades. In reality it would be a few dollars per year extra for 600K employees. Let's not get carried away.

$2B represents the tiniest fraction of Bezos worth. (1.1%)

As another said, "color me unimpressed". He could double that and still be the richest man alive. He could triple that. He could quadruple that...

What is the problem with the employees using public benefits? Genuinely curious.

They use them because they aren’t paid enough to live on. Therefore, the government and thereby our taxes subsidize the company.

Why don't they quit and find other better paying job?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

That’s a complicated issue. I’d hope they’d get better jobs, but in the interim, should any full-time position be permitted to pay an unlivable wage? If so, why?

This means that the public is subsidizing a company owned by the richest man in the world because he refuses to pay his employees a living wage. Doesn't this sound wrong?

But isn't he paying market wages for them? Similar to what the other companies are paying them.

Yes and presumably other companies should also pay them more but I suppose the blame is more focused on Amazon/Bezos because he is the richest person in the world and this article is about him.

Flip it around.

These people needed government support, and Bezos is giving them a job, so now they need less government support than they did before. Bezos is helping to give money to people who would have otherwise been totally on welfare.

Turn it around again, Amazon has underrun the competition that was paying living wages before and destroyed the jobs those people had before, by not paying taxes.

Their competitors were not paying "living" wages. Brick and mortar retail, especially mom&pop stores, were notorious for paying low wages.

Destroying jobs is a good thing. It means that Amazon can pass on the savings to consumers. I know that Amazon is disliked in Seattle & the bay area, but if you go around the rest of the country, people love amazon.

It's wrong but how is it the company's fault? It is the government's responsibility to set a minimum wage. How come the blame doesn't fall on the policy makers and lobbyists?

It does. You're left with little recourse when policy makers and lobbyists are apathetic or actually working against the public good (by refusing to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't increased in some places for over a decade, and should be indexed to inflation).

Can you not assign blame to someone abusing a broken system? Surely you can. They are still abusing the system.

We can argue until we're blue in the face about whose fault it is and who should be responsible for ensuring workers are paid a livable wage, but I would hope that we can all agree on this:

If you work full-time and you do a good job, then you should earn a wage that you can live on.

The question is, "what is a living wage?" The goal posts keep shifting...which doesn't help the case for this. If it were just "you can afford rent and food" that would be fine, I suppose...but it has now extended to so many other things that I wouldn't really call necessities.

What do you consider living to be?

Should Amazon workers only barely be able to afford rent and food. Should they have $0 left over after rent+groceries? $1? What amount is reasonable, vs what amount becomes excessive? What if they have a child? Or an elderly parent? Or student loans?

> but it has now extended to so many other things that I wouldn't really call necessities.

What ridiculous lavish spending do you think Amazon warehouse workers are capable of buying with their (on average ~$12/hr) wages?

The general argument is that a living wage should cover life. All people are entitled to enough money that they can pay for rent, pay for food, pay for healthcare, pay for basic transportation, and have some amount of discretionary money to spend anyway they want (like say, raising a family, or continuing their education, or having a hobby, or volunteering for a cause their passionate about, or whatever)

I consider it everything up to the level of participation in democratic politics and civil society. Different people may put different needs and functions above or below their line of demarcation.

  breathable air
  drinkable water
  nutritious food
  safe shelter
  quiet and dark sleeping area
  secure property storage
  equal access to the commons
  basic education
  job skills education
  scientific/analytic education
  access to communication
  access to markets
  personal mobility
  medical care
  social contact
  family formation
  social organization
  political influence
   .------------------------------
  <  this is where I draw my line
   '------------------------------
  mercantile education
  philosophical education
  luxury goods
  psychological individuation
  independent exploration or introspection
  artistic and aesthetic pursuits
  finding a meaning in life
  spiritual enlightenment
  Veblen goods

Pretty reasonable list.

Why isn't 'living wage' != 'minimum wage'

Democracy is not working? Whats the alternative.

Yeah, it does. But Bezos/Amazon is simply taking advantage of the laws and the political system (just like many corporations pay so little tax). The real solution is to raise the minimum wage, plug tax loopholes etc and not expect billionaires to play fair, out of the goodness of their hearts.

What's even the point of government services then?

If I use roads or public parks, or my social security, does that mean that my employer never paid me enough, then?

And we already have a concept that covers this. It is called the minimum wage. It makes no sense to talk about government services that people are using when you should instead just raise the minimum wage.

Because the taxpayers are effectively subsidising their employer by “topping up” their wages to the true market level . We see this happening alot in the UK too.

Those benefits are public resources that could be used for other things, like helping the homeless. You could say that taxpayers are subsidizing Bezos' PR stunt

Should Bezos pay part-time workers full-time wages so they don't have to use government programs?

Bezos decided to hire them part time, so the question is kind of ludicrous.

How is it ludicrous? They are counting part-time workers among the "benefits" total which is disingenuous and not apples to apples at all.

I think the point is he could just offer full-time jobs instead.

There's nothing to say that people were offered full-time work and opted for part-time instead. Regardless of employee preference, it's still not apples to apples if trying to make a comparison to income qualifying for government benefits.

Is a business owner that only requires part-time work supposed to hire full-time workers for some arbitrary reason all of a sudden?

Will this be more or less than the tax breaks given to the new Amazon HQ...

You need to sell shareholders on the latter.

Why not both?

I think the point is that if his business is making so much money to make him the worlds richest person and his company one of the top two in the world, you would HOPE that would trickle down into good jobs throughout his business such that people who work for him had no need of public assistance.

Alas.

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