Amazon and Walmrt not sharing extra profits made during pandemic with employees | Hacker News Reader

Amazon and Walmrt not sharing extra profits made during pandemic with employees

brookings.edu

I don't see why this would be a meaningful comparison. Employees make wages, not profits. They do not expect to share profit with their employer. If the company made a loss, they would rightfully not share the loss either.

Sharing the loss usually comes in the form of layoffs and reduced hours.

This year Amazon went on a hiring spree to fill the extra demand. Does that count as sharing the profit to you then?

No. When they hire employees they (at least expect to) increase their own profit.

Losses are shared between a company and the employee losing their job, income is (unevenly) shared between an employer and the employee, profit is exclusively for the employer.

Wages and the costs of hiring/employing are a cash outflow. Losses mean that outflow is greater than inflow, so wages can be related to losses, but they are not mutually exclusive.

Cuts to jobs and reduced hours can be because of losses, or they could also be due to efficiency gains, in which they could be related to profits instead. Divisions and jobs can be cut because they make neither profit or loss.

Employee's don't share in losses or profits unless their compensation is somehow tied to profits.

Why do you think the authors would want to promote a view where employers are expected to share profit?

Come on. This is an unusual circumstance. Employees are taking risks to support the public in a time of need. It would be very reasonable to think, a public-spirited non-selfish board would take more steps to support their employees, up to and including some share of the windfall profits.

Amazon has hired 400k new employees this year. 400k. Plus overtime for existing workers. [1]

They also paid covid bonuses until (I think) June.

Oh, and they raised their minimum wage from 11 to 15usd/h. [2]

Oh, and they are paying Christmas bonuses of 500mUSD [3]

That sounds like a company making real strides and helping a shit tonne of it's employees exactly at a time it could just yawn and not do anything.

[1]. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazons-hires-248500-people-q3...

[2]. https://www.wired.com/story/why-amazon-really-raised-minimum...

[3]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55093821

>>That sounds like a company making real strides and helping a shit tonne of it's employees exactly at a time it could just yawn and not do anything.

so Amazon is paying 400K employees even they don't need them or what?

How many jobs has Amazon cost, directly (driving competitors out of business) or indirectly (people buying online?) Amazon hires because it needs employees. And fires them the minute it doesn't. A few hundred dollars when your chance of getting Covid is increased by orders of magnitude doesn't look like much of a bonus, but people have no choice.

Covid might have killed a lot of retail jobs this year, but I don't think you can blame amazon for that...

The Brookings Institute who published this have $435,964,000 in net assets. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2020-an... Couldn't they pay their people more?

What if they did. Would it change the argument?

They did. It is not in dispute. It would at least be hypocritical. It's up to each person what that means.

I'm trying to follow this argument.

> Couldn't they pay their people more?

> What if they did.

> They did.

Am I missing something?

Sorry, I misunderstood your question. I thought you asked did they really have that much, not did they pay their people more. I assume they did not because they still have a huge bankroll.

Well, that depends on the argument, but presumably if at some point you state "the moral thing to do is to reduce surplus so that other people may have increased surplus" and no one is really doing that, you have to question the moral argumentation somewhere.

For instance, were I to make that argument, and were you to ask me "During the pandemic, did you Doordash any food? How much did you tip? How much money do you have in your bank account?" and it turns out I tipped a very small fraction of the money in my bank account despite "the delivery driver risking his life to deliver nutrition you require to survive" then you might be well within your rights to ask me to justify this behaviour of mine contradictory to my stated morals and see if the argument extends.

So... it doesn’t change the actual argument.

> So... it doesn’t change the actual argument.

It kind of does. I mean,it's not like they are practicing what they are preaching. If they really believe that sharing the wealth is the right thing to do then why are they reserving their argument exclusively to other companies and organizations?

It absolutely does. If you argue from a basis of moral consensus, it is precisely an argument against that to argue that the moral consensus is the opposite.

They are not arguing from moral consensus, but merely appearing to. It is useful for a company to appear to take the moral high ground in order to increase profits while also not actually doing so of course. See BLM, and others.

Strictly, I suppose they're making no argument at all since they are merely asserting a fact: Amazon isn't paying more. There is an implicit other statement: "this is notable". And I suspect an implicit third piece "it is notably bad".

None of these are arguments but one could imagine that the last one stems from "because we all think it's bad". Of course, absent justification one could just dismiss that last one out of hand instead.

Yes, it assumes companies are bad because they don't follow individual moral standards, but organizations are not individuals and cannot be judged the same way. I would even go so far as to say that because there are so many people in it that the entire organization is an amoral entity.

I actually disagree with you on this front (that corp behaviour cannot be judged on a moral/immoral scale) but the argument is too long to type out. And in any case it doesn't matter since we agree on the part that matters (there is no justification yet provided for Amazon's actions to be judged immoral).

I actually wrote a big thread on r/changemyview that you could probably find haha, about organizations being amoral entities.

Haha, same username?

Unfortunately not. You'll find it though, I don't want to share my username here publicly.

Why does making a moral statement require adherence to that statement? Sounds like a pretty basic tu quoque and it follows that no one really has to question the moral argumentation at all. Why do you think people make up these sorts of conditions?

Well, because there is no moral argument. There is merely a statement made (entirely implicitly here) without logical reasoning. And a statement, asserted without evidence or reasoning can easily be dismissed without it.

There can be no tu quoque fallacy when there is no argument made. For instance, if I were to say "I'm at the beach" and you were to say "But you are not. I see you downtown in front of me." that's not tu quoque just because it references the guy making the statement.

Make the argument and perhaps we can see.

>>Couldn't they pay their people more?

Sure. But what % of Brookings full time employees cannot feed /shelter /educate their kids to the point that taxpayers have to step in? Compare to Amazon.

The awesome thing about Amazon shares (or public equity) is you can be a B&N, McDonald’s, government employee or even unemployed, and still share in the profits

Given that amazon does not pay dividends or conduct share buybacks, thats not really the case

Shareholders benefit from the profits via a rising stock price even if they don't pay out a dividend.

Profit isn't directly correlated to share price.

They meant profit via sell - buy price, ie personal profit, not company profits.

> Shareholders benefit from the profits via a rising stock price (...)

They really don't. That's not how stock works. Paying dividends is the only way the company's profits get to the pockets of shareholders. The rest is just speculation which nowadays is largely unrelated with performance.

They meant profit via sell - buy price, ie personal profit, not company profits.

This article confuses stock price with profits.

Additionally in a single year Amazon almost doubled the number of employees they have. Does that not count as sharing profits with people?

With companies going bust left and right, Amazon has been one bright spot to give people jobs. Yes, I know they are warehouse jobs, but when over a million people accepted such jobs I think reports of how bad they are are overblown.

You can’t become the world’s first trillionaire by sharing extra profits, silly rabbit!

This is the wrong conversation. Their govt should be supporting them, and the profits should be taxed appropriately to pay for it.

Edtech companies have faired well in the pandemic (in theory and in stock price), should the students receive a cut of the profit? Teachers?

Not trolling, simply restatong the problem in another domain, which has actually left me feeling even more unsure of the answer.

Not true. Amazon created thousands more jobs and Walmart is paying $5 more base than local grocery chains. Thousands of unemployed small retail/restaurant paid $10 now have at least $15/h jobs.

It's almost like they think that people get primarily paid based on the dollar amount of revenue they generate. The salary of employees is conditioned on a multitude of factors, mostly relating to supply and demand, industry norms, the quality of their work, how much better they are than the median employee, etc etc. Profits made are obviously a factor, but less so when there's a high supply of potential workers.

tl;dr: You get paid based on what you can demand. Money and power are never given, they are only taken. I have been both in a position as an employer and an employee and people who worked for me didn't get raises unless a couple things were true: they were good at their job (i.e I valued and needed their labor) and they went to me to demand more money. If you don't demand more money (or are not in a position to demand more money, like many low-skilled employees), you're (probably) not going to be paid more.

> It's almost like they think that people get primarily paid based on the dollar amount of revenue they generate. The salary of employees is conditioned on a multitude of factors, mostly relating to supply and demand, industry norms, the quality of their work, how much better they are than the median employee, etc etc. Profits made are obviously a factor, but less so when there's a high supply of potential workers.

> tl;dr: You get paid based on what you can demand. Money and power are never given, they are only taken. I have been both in a position as an employer and an employee and people who worked for me didn't get raises unless a couple things were true: they were good at their job (i.e I valued and needed their labor) and they went to me to demand more money. If you don't demand more money (or are not in a position to demand more money, like many low-skilled employees), you're (probably) not going to be paid more.

If you are a low-skilled worker or any worker not in position to demand more money then you organize with others in the same position until as a group you are. It's called a union and Amazon employees have until now failed to form one through in some circumstances a lack of action and others through actively voting not to. If they have failed to benefit through these circumstances as their employers have the fault is their own.

There is also union busting but of course a company can do that since it's legal to bust unions.

Interest in public benefit corporations will only increase from here.

Have they ever shared extra profits with employees?

There's a weather report every day. It's something notable. There has never in history been a day without weather.

...Except all Engineers at Amazon saw their stock appreciate in value.

Clickbait tittle.

Still shareholders sharing in the profits increase, not employees

Maybe the takeaway is that employees should negotiate a stock component in their compensation package?

I assume many/most employees are also shareholders, no?

Yeah not sure what the parent is saying, Amazon (software) employees at least have substantial equity packages.

What I meant is that not all employees are shareholders

But, since all shareholders benefit from increased stock valuation, those employees that don’t receive stock as comp can still buy shares and participate in the company’s growth

well, barely sharing...but title didn't fit

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