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Comment by yepthatsreality | Hacker News Reader

If Bezos continues paying people at minimum wage, hires union busting lawyers, and hires more lawyers to actively lobby to keep minimum wage low for 20+ years while he makes more money. Is he stealing from poor people or is that just people on the Internet trying to convince themselves he is stealing from poor people?

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Amazon has been paying significantly above minimum wage for several years now:

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653597466/amazon-sets-15-mini...

Oh good, a few years will rebalance everything. Honestly the point I was making was that the wealthy will continue to pursue ways to maintain a larger and larger wealth gap as a matter of self-interest.

Bezos wealth isn’t cash he paid himself that he could have been distributing to the workers.

It’s a number based on the value of his ownership stake of the business itself.

If significantly raising the pay of Amazon's low-paid workers would negatively impact it's value then part of Bezo's wealth comes from keeping Amazon's cost of labor low.

Is it? Or is it part of the reason those workers have jobs that pay more than minimum wage, rather than no job, or a minimum wage job.

It’s not a zero sum game. A successful Amazon creates jobs. Presumably if there were better jobs elsewhere, people would not work for Amazon.

It’s also part of the reason that low paid workers can shop at Amazon themselves.

Significantly raising the pay of Amazon workers would hurt Bezos because it translates to less reinvestment to the company. This would also hurt the million new employees that Amazon hired last year as well as the consumers who increasingly relied on Amazon for goods during quarantine.

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