Amazon Relief Fund | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Relief Fund

amazonrelieffund.org

18 pointssmacktoward17 comments

Why does Amazon need donations for their workers when they have a market cap of almost $1T? Surely they have enough money?

Market capitalization is not indicative of cash-on-hand. You should at least look at their assets, or maybe operating income, which are both substantial and publicly available.

https://ir.aboutamazon.com/quarterly-results

Because you don't get rich by helping people with your money.

This is like those uplifting news posts about people paying for cancer treatment via gofundme ... strictly speaking it's better than the alternative of no treatment but at the same time a sign of something terribly wrong with our society: https://xkcd.com/463/

I encourage anyone considering donating to this to instead (or in addition) donate to a general COVID-19 relief fund.

The economic impact of donating to a fund that disburses selectively to Amazon associates is that it increases the value of being an Amazon associate. In effect, this allows Amazon to pay their associates less.

In economic analysis, this is called the incidence of a intervention. The incidence of your donation is that a good fraction of each dollar is effectively a donation to Amazon.

This is very similar to the finding that a lot of tax credits to the poor actually get co-opted by Walmart to pay their lowest associates even less.

- Market cap is not liquid assets. Amazon can't sell my shares of their company and use it to fund their employees.

- This is not run by Amazon. It's run by the Emergency Assistance Foundation, Inc[1]. a 501c(3) charity. Their LinkedIn says they have around 20 employees.[2] I have no idea how effective this charity is.

1. https://emergencyassistancefdn.org/

2. https://www.linkedin.com/company/emergencyassistancefoundati...

- Amazon owns its own shares, thats how they give out restricted stock units to employees. They have plenty.

- EAF looks like they're teaming up with Amazon, which is really admirable of them. Still doesn't excuse why Amazon isn't paying their employees and contractors.

Won't anyone think of the poor megacorps and airlines in their time of need?

Seriously though, a humanitarian effort to support workers laid off during this crisis would be nice. The problem being that popup donation centers during disasters are often scams. This isn't exactly a scam but its purpose is to pay its own delivery crew.

If you want to help people, donate to food banks (or volunteer!) Please support your favorite bands or artists directly by buying merch or music (bandcamp, patreon, etc). Performing artists have had all their income disappear overnight.

It looks legit. It could also be a scam. Is there a link from amazon.com to this site somewhere?

[EDIT] Excellent points were made that while amazon IS creating a fund, this particular web page may very well not be the actual implementation of said fund. Proceed with caution.

It is mentioned in a post on the amazon blog:

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to...

I doubt that the website is legit, Amazon mentioned the relief fund, but did not see the url in blog post. Also, choice of UI/UX elements does not adhere with Amazon websites, so I doubt whether is legit (I may be wrong, but will consider this website as fake unless url is mentioned in blog post)

The certificate is issued by GoDaddy - it's almost certainly a scam.

I wondered the same, but actually there's a PDF with Amazon fonts that says that the relief fund will be limited to Amazon associates, so you know for sure this is "legit".

You can also donate via http://www.amazonrelief.org

It is certainly interesting that the https cert for amazon.com comes from DigiCert and the one for this website comes from GoDaddy.

must be fake, from the whois I cannot see amazon being registered, its just hidden which is not normal by such a huge organization. I might be wrong but just from the whois I wouldn't believe its amazon.

From what I can tell this "Emergency Assistance Foundation Inc." manages programs like this for other companies. They seem to be legit but I don't know anything about them.

https://emergencyassistancefdn.org

Imagine working for a company and needing to apply for a grant to take two weeks off when you're sick.

I'm glad Amazon is doing this, but this is the dystopian side effect of making so many people "independent contractors."

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