Wow this is ridiculous. The fund is aimed at homeless and educating early. This is not relevant to anyone he employs. Some people are so ready to get their pitch forks. Damn.
Amazon has yet to learn this one little trick. They think they're being clever by underpaying unskilled labor and leaving them to rely partly on government benefits, but then they end up having to make up for it by hiring more often, losing time to training, having to load up schedules to make up for lost time (making each employee more expensive anyway), and ultimately defending themselves against nasty articles documenting their work practices.
If Walmart--the company which practically invented the practice--can move on from it, so can Amazon... a company that's mastered the art of reinvesting profits both for continual growth and to dodge Wall Street payouts for well over a decade.
If Americans would like people to have proper access to healthcare, they would not make it dependent on having a job and make it a universal right funded by the government, but they don't.
I actually am an advocate for higher wages for all, and more government subsidy of healthcare, education, and access to daycare / pre-school; but we can't leave achieving these to whims of each business or the largesse of billionaires.
Americans recently elected a president who enacted tax cuts that benefit Jeff Bezos and the wealthier segment of society, at the expense of government programs that could benefit the poor, the homeless, and the children in need of care.
Also, from a purely business viewpoint: Walmart employs drastically more customer-facing retail employees compared to Amazon thus (1) their morale and behavior has a direct impact on the immediate customer experience (2) the training costs (hence the cost of replacement) is higher due to the need to train soft-skills and customer-facing skills etc. Amazon does pay hard-to-replace employees way above minimum wage, including software engineering, marketing jobs, automation, managers, etc.
You can't just randomly pick an issue, see it hasn't been done, and conclude no one cares about it. Voting isn't that simple. And getting things done within the government isn't that simple.
But in any case, let's say you're right... there's nothing wrong with pressuring individual companies. Pressure, whether applied socially, economically (through boycotts), or legally are all valid ways of achieving a goal. Some of those may be more effective than others, but people should use whatever tools they have available.
Totally agreed voting isn't simple! Also I tried to word my sentence carefully: I didn't claim no one cares; or that even the majority didn't care; just that they didn't "care enough" i.e. prioritize this to influence their vote over other issues.
Curious when it becomes rational? Literally every federal income tax bracket is more than the taxes on "tea" before the revolutionary war.
Most of us making decent money in high-cost world city are paying 50% or damn near close to it in taxes.
What is left to tax? If you start taking much more from me I simply quit and move to the third world where I can retire today with my current savings.
This whole meme of "irrational fear of taxation" is ridiculous. Those that make money pay 50% or so in taxes, and we aren't seeing a whole lot of return for that money. I'd pay 7% more if I moved to the Netherlands today, and get a whole lot more than 7% in additional value.
The point is that, if a tax system relies on some, even arbitrary structure, there will always be a way for a rich person to pay less by restructuring, and the cost of restructuring will always be worth it the richer you are. The main problem of this tax the rich fuckery is that the supposed rules usually bleed onto the middle class in 10 to 20 years due to trying to make the ends meet. Also, the unsolicited spending, of course, but that's another story.
Economy can be displayed as flows of money, labor and goods. We should look hard at these flows and think where even the rich can't evade by restructuring.
I don't have a pre-made solution, only ideas. The crucial idea is that one rich person is a person after all. What do people do? They consume, give money to others and export funds. Catch them when they do that. They can't avoid eating and sleeping.
Therefore switching the focus of taxation onto things nobody can avoid would be something society needs to contemplate and perhaps tackle. A completely novel way would be something I call affluence source tax. It is similar to a value added tax, however it is levied on everything a rich person does: buying stuff, paying for labor and rent, bartering, and especially for exporting funds!
Forget taxing legal entities because they are always being restructured to minimise taxing. Just look at the people themselves, not the legal entities.
Probably this wouldn't be the granddaddy of all taxing solutions, and most surely the rich will be successful in stopping this, but at least nobody can stop me thinking about this problem.
Now to your example that some other entity controlling the net worth, this won't help because if the rich person wants to buy a private jet with the help of that other entity, the other entity will just pay taxes instead.
Because people are taxed, not companies, rich people can't avoid taxation. It is just an idea.
The flaw in the entire capitalist premise is that this investment is assumed to be an implacable driver of productivity, but as the market is purchased (a free market is either for sale, or it's not actually a free market - it's a manipulated market), investments flow into non-productive asset classes, freezing consumptive momentum (ala Thomas Picketty's book).
Moreover, the sale of the market makes zero-sum games more attractive, since, without the protection provided by competition, squeezing resources from others becomes more attractive than creating new opportunity.
Proof, please. A cite or three to peer reviewed studies will do.
Like everyone else my opinions are formed by a combination of experience, anecdotal evidence, and locigal deductions from facts. This is especially so in the realm of politics where one tends to make sweeping statements about large groups of people.
I’ve encountered many people who claim taxation is theft and heard their views on other political matters. This experience has led me to the conclusion that people who say that taxation is theft largely vote a certain way. Of course I might be wrong.
This is a forum where people post their opinions. Asking someone to be prepared to cite three peer reviewed articles for each opinion is weird. You know I probably can’t cite such articles so I guess that you make the request in an attempt to point out that there are things I think are true that I can’t prove. I suppose you think this diminishes the merits of my opinions. I think you are wrong. Your request says more about you than it does about my opinion.
Why put the onus on private business to implement above market wages and pay people more than the free market allows? This causes all sorts of unintended consequences.
There is a simple answer that doesn’t distort the private market - expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Instead of giving it out once per year, give it out every month to people who qualify. The EITC has traditionally been supported by Republican and Democratic administrations. I don’t know how it would fare in today’s political climate.
As it is now, some companies pay below what people need to survive, and force their employees to collect welfare to make up for the difference... effectively forcing tax payers to subsidize their business.
Without that adjustment, (your idea with) the EITC distorts markets.. by reducing the pressure employees and job seekers place on a company to pay adequate wages. In a market without EITC/welfare, working a job that paid too little to survive would result in your employees leaving, or at least unionizing/striking. No one would work for you knowing they wouldn't obtain enough money to pay their bills.
It is all about labor being performed at a loss.
People cost money to just exist. Showing up for work is not free.
What happens when business operates at a loss, ignoring investment plays?
It runs dry and then dies.
People laboring and not making enough to fund their labor do the same thing. They die. Really.
Since we do not generally look at people tipping over as being acceptable, especially ones who are employed, others step in, or are forced to step in and subsidize the business.
It is one thing to suggest doing that for a small business makes sense. Fine.
It is quite another to suggest large, very profitable ones need us to do that.
They don't, and that is what this is about.
How much it costs to exists has no bearing on what companies should pay you. That would be like me trying to get a raise based on my mortgage being unaffordable.
People laboring and not making enough to fund their labor do the same thing. They die. Really.
And that’s a social issue. Raising minimum wage to take care of that makes about as much sense as your health insurance being tied to your employer.
Let the free market sort out how much people should get paid and let the government and the taxpayers (including corporation) provide a safety net.
Yes I consider myself to be a “big government free market capitalist”.
It is one thing to suggest doing that for a small business makes sense. Fine. It is quite another to suggest large, very profitable ones need us to do that. They don't, and that is what this is about.
Okay, so we have the government provide a safety net, tax all business the same at a graduated tax rate like we do individuals and let them deduct wages like they do now.
I do not care how much money people make, encourage them to make as much as they can, but insist they also pay their own way.
For about 40 years, in the US, wages for basic labors have been near flat, while cost and risk exposure have gone through the roof.
Back when this all started, the promise was it would get cheaper to live, so no worries.
So which is it?
Actually make it cheaper to live?
Fund labor properly?
Let people suffer and die early?
I do not find any subsidy acceptable, unless there is real need.
Amazon has no such need. Amazon has a want, and so does it's many peers. Understanable. But, labor has real needs being unmet and those come well before I have any real concern for wants expressed by people unwilling to fund real, basic needs of labor helping them to make more than enough money otherwise.
I know, rough. Get that. But, we are talking about real people here, lives, kids, families. All of that matters one hell of a lot more than persuing an idealized, fantasy free labor market ideal ever will.
In fact, the only way to change that is results. Better answers to the "which is it?" question I just posed.
Answers today are trending worse, not better. And that is a primary driver behind a large and growing number of people, myself included, seeking to do things very differently.
People should get as wealthy as they can. Business gets as big as it can too. All good, so long as doing those things does not leave the carnage it currently does.
I will not respond again, but will gladly read replies.
Sounds like a convoluted way of having a job and getting paid for it.
If Americans would like people to have proper access to healthcare, they would not make it dependent on having a job and make it a universal benefit funded by the government, but they don't.
I actually am an advocate for lower prices for all goods, and some government programs for healthcare, education, and access to daycare / pre-school;...etc.
Literally, don't support Amazon and get as many people to not support it.
But, if I'm allowed to be cute and meaningless, Bezos' wealth comes from Amazon stock, whose value comes from its future earning potential. Pay workers more, and that stock becomes worth less, so there is less to give away. But because Amazon doesn't earn any money today, the present valuation comes from promises of future fat profit margins, so a simple statement by Bezos that he will continue to increase worker wages with revenue would instantly make the stock almost worthless. And of course, Amazon can't really pay workers more today, since it doesn't have fat margins, all it could do is shift expenses down, but that doesn't really end up being so significant. At a 5% discount rate, Bezos networth of, say, 100 Billion, would be enough to pay each current Amazon employee an extra $5 per hour in perpetuity, and over time, inflation would eat away at that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/07/24/the-wal...
Costco also invests in its workers who perform really well. An executive actually said once that they decided not to advertise specifically to pay workers more which would create incredible service which would spread company word of mouth. They got around $100 billion a year in revenues that way.
https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/040915/3-reasons...
So, companies like Walmart lost $100 billion / yr to Costco and $35 billion / yr to Publix when I looked at the numbers. Plus whatever they lost other years. Walmart finally learns having workers that care a tiny bit about the company might be good for the bottom line. Costly lesson. Also shows the benefit of dominance: they can literally throw away billions in potential sales from obvious strategies with no negative effects on their executives. ;)
Remember, Amazon excels at high volume logistics and labor is merely another good.
They may well actually be clever. For example, hypothetically, they first squeeze labor until cementing some cost threshold acting as a defensive moat for competition then second they play nice. Or not.
Those people have to show up for work and doing that costs them more than they make doing said work.
So, they either die for lack of resources, and that is not civilized
, or
someone else has to pay.
I value and support public assistance. Could be any of us who needs help.
I do not support assistance being necessary when it is clear the enterprise can fund it's own labor.
Market dynamics do not tell the whole story here.
If we were to actually watch people die, no assistance at all, those wages would come right up.