Also, the person in charge owns equity that when multiplied by the most recent share sale price equals a valuation that might be the biggest number in the world for a publicly traded company. But that isn’t the same as money, and if it were to be liquidated, the share price would not be worth nearly as much, which it partly is because Bezos owns much of it.
And if you were to increase the supply of Bezos’ shares and sell them all in the open market, then the price would probably drop because the supply of shares for sale is greatly increasing, and because Bezos may not have the same motivations.
I don't actually care about Amazon's stock value. I care that Amazon does not pay its workers enough to have a reasonable standard of living. If it's to be a bridge job to something better, the argument usually made for why retail/fast food pays poorly, they should make enough to actually do that.
They do not.
The reason retail/fast food pay poorly is because there’s a lot of supply for people willing to do retail/fast food compared to the demand. And also because people aren’t going to pay $50 for some French fries, at that point they would start making food themselves, but that’s the same as “insufficient demand to pay someone enough that it would cause $50 French fries”.
I don’t see the purpose of a moral argument when it’s a fact retail businesses earn low single digit profit margins. Walmart can’t pay more even if it wanted to, they would have to raise their prices and then people shop at Target. It looks like it makes a lot of money, but to doesn’t split over all of its employees, and same with every other large retail operation. There’s a couple large ones serving the upper middle class market like Costco and Apple and Nordstrom and Trader Joe’s that might pay a little more, but they are unique and it wouldn’t scale for the whole population.
Here’s another example. Two people buy some land, and build two different hotels. Person A pays labor near to as low as people are willing to accept, and Person B pays more. Let’s say person A pays $15 per hour and person B pays $25 per hour. 10 years later, it’s renovation time. Person A has saved more money for renovations so they can make their hotel nicer than person B. Now, customers will prefer to pay person A more than person B, and they will be able to earn more revenue.
Now person A has more capital to purchase land. They can get bigger loans because their operating income is higher, afford to pay for more land in a more prime location, and build a new hotel. They can expand and take more market share from person B. You can see where the is is going.
Therefore, I don’t see the purpose of discussing the moral imperative for a single business to pay a material amount above market price. Consumers will, by and large, not reward the morally correct businesses. They might pay a $60 premium to Costco, but that’s about it.
Jeff Bezos finds $1 billion every year to pour into Blue Origin. He said in an interview that he couldn't think of anything to do with his money other than rockets. I assume this is from his scheduled stock sales, but it's liquid nonetheless and Amazon's stock price survives.
1 billion a year split over his ~650k employees is about $1500 a year. This would be a life-changing amount for a lot of those employees. I made big changes on less and set the stage for even more. Amazon has so captured the market that most of it would come back to him anyway, but it ensures some of it flows through the bottom. And it would get people off his ass about it. Win-win.
The point is the solution is legislation affecting all businesses. It’s a waste of resources to focus on individual businesses.
Also, I’m not sure which market Amazon has captured. A quick search shows share of online retail revenue at 25% to 35%, and only 6% of all retail. If Amazon ceased operations today, it would be trivial to switch to Walmart/Target/Bestbuy/Costco/Alibaba/eBay/Home Depot/Lowes. Shipping times might suffer for a little bit while the logistics get reallocated, but there’s no moat around Amazon’s retail website or warehouses.
Americans have just received $1200-$2400 in coronavirus stimulus checks, and so we can look at the outcomes and see if it changed their lives. As it happened, it mostly went to reduce debt and into savings. Helpful, but not life changing.
So the supermarkets could easily also collaborate to maintain minimum prices on retail goods, and pay their staff more, etc. It suits them to cry "but competition!", but the competition is optional.
I don’t know the specifics of the dairy situation you are referring to, but all the information from financial reports I’ve read indicate that retail businesses don’t have much pricing power. Hence why you don’t get rich buying stock in grocery stores, but rather high margin businesses like tech companies.
In Australia, there's basically a cartel of 2 supermarket chains (Coles and Woolworths) and they control all retail pricing of groceries.
https://www.farmdrop.com/blog/how-supermarkets-ruined-dairy/
In the UK there are more players, but the game is essentially the same.
Price-fixing by colluding with the competition is illegal in both countries, but regulation is effectively powerless. The supermarkets are both politically connected, and in a position to cause voters pain.
The position might be different in the USA, I don't know. I would suspect not - this article suggests that Walmart has considerable pricing power: https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-low-price-strategy-t...
Meaning if Walmart tried to use their pricing “power” to increase prices more than a couple percent and earn more net income, shoppers would go elsewhere.
I think you're underestimating Walmart's market share.
But what you've described is that it's not a fiscal imperative. That's why it is a moral imperative - it's the right thing to do for your employees.
Mind you, the Henry Fords of the world would say your business does better when everyone pays their employees more because they can afford more hotel trips, and the results of Ford raising his wages shows a very different result from what you've described.
Henry Ford wasn’t making a commodity product at the time he offered those wages. Since then, automakers have dropped pay and payroll, see the myriad economically depressed towns where’s work moved to Mexico or southern states.
I won't buy from Walmart.com for 5 cents cheaper.
Don't speak for me, please.
White-collars are traditionally less likely to fight only because they tend to enjoy better mobility and have better incentives to stay silent (even if they don't maximize their earning potential, their social standing typically compensates). If you mistreat them enough, they will react like anyone else.