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Comment by catillac | Hacker News Reader

There will be a lot of cynicism on this post from the HN crowd, but these are unbelievably good recipients. I have interacted with Jose Andres many times, and go to his DC restaurants when I visit, and he is truly a wonderful soul who spends all his effort helping others. I don’t know much about Van Jones beyond what I see on TV, but if he’s of the same character as Jose Andres, that is stellar and they will both do wonderful things for our world with that money.

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It deserves cynicism. If he wasn’t a jerk he’d just pay his employees more and maybe pay some taxes. When everyone is fair upfront they don’t need to give us free turkeys on thanksgiving we can buy our own.

His employees are free to seek a better paid employment if a jerk they work for underpays them. What's up with this nonstop handout mindset lately?

So its alright for rich CNN contributors to get handouts from Bezos, but unacceptable for average Americans?

It's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it. It's the same freedom afforded to everyone in this country.

I would bet similar things were said in 1790s France.

> His employees are free to seek a better paid employment if a jerk they work for underpays them.

So, people have options to stop being poor, people have options to not have to pee in a bottle at work, but they chose to do it, why?

Poverty removes many options, lack of good education removes many options, abusive corporations keep options far away. The system is the problem, people is just living in a system manipulated for the benefit of others.

It's not a handout, it's asking for growth to be shared fairly. It's about taking care of our fellow humans. It's about creating a society that works for everyone and not just the few.

>people have options to not have to pee in a bottle at work

Just because a few weird individuals chose to do this doesn't mean you have to do it. It's a folk tale used as a rallying cry against Amazon. It has as much meaning as Googlers earning $300K/year choosing to live in vans parked outside the office. Some people make questionable decisions. It doesn't speak at all to any sort of environmental problems.

I'm curious if you actually think there's a real equivalency between choosing to eccentrically live in a van despite having more socially acceptable alternative options enabled by a salary far above the median vs making desperate moves to keep a poverty-low-but-not-the-absolute-lowest job that is designed to force turnover for all but the "highest performers." I understand there's a lot of hyperbole in a topic that deserves way more nuance, but IMO trying to make these seem the same causes more damage than anything else, since it drives this negatively reinforcing cycle where the effectively disenfranchised group of poverty wage workers somehow has a real stake at the table.

And the handout-mentality people want to give that abusive system more power by demanding handouts on which they become dependent, and demanding censorship.

> It's not a handout, it's asking for growth to be shared fairly. It's about taking care of our fellow humans. It's about creating a society that works for everyone and not just the few.

Stop with the feel good euphemisms!

Which SPECIFIC policies do you want? Full blown communism? Single payer health care? Universal Basic Income?

Every ACTUAL policy has costs, trade offs and drawbacks. Put actual dollar amounts on the table, and a rational discussion can take place.

Just handwaving about a society where everyone someway somehow gets everything they need to happy, healthy, fulfilled, and self-actualized accomplishes nothing.

It is a handout. It's a handout you agree with, but it's a handout.

What's up with this complete lack of empathy mindset lately? We hear this all the time "if you don't like it, leave". Quite often employees have very few options and their only leverage is to leave but not many people have large amounts of cash available to be unemployed.

Yeah, why don't they just stop being poor??

I remember this from the bible.

Expecting a living wage from a full-time job, especially when you're working for one of the most profitable companies in the country headed by the wealthiest man on the planet, isn't a "handout mindset".

You'd have to be an absolute doormat to accept poverty in exchange for your full-time labor. "Get a different job" isn't the solution here, because there is clearly a massive demand for jobs at Amazon, and those jobs should pay people fairly for the work that they do.

Define "fairly".

S/he did in the first sentence. Please don't engage in this sort of verbal aggression.

They did not. If you're referring to "living wage", that's not an objective or widely accepted metric.

Please don't jump into conversations and chastise people for no reason, especially when you're incorrect.

It's a widely discussed, easily understood, and thus popular yardstick, both among economists and the general public. I think you know this quite well. This isn't high school debate club and barking orders at people like 'define fairly' isn't clever, just rude.

So you've decided to unilaterally determine my intent and tone, appoint yourself the arbiter of behavior, and inject yourself into a conversation to double down on your incorrect stance (from Wikipedia: "Due to the flexible nature of the term 'needs', there is not one universally accepted measure of what a living wage is...") and lecture me about rudeness?

I'll pass on continuing this conversation, thanks.

He pays all the taxes he owes.

And he isn't even involved in any arcane minimization schemes. ProPublica showed that he sold ~$4 billion in Amazon stock last year and paid a billion of it to the government.

And made $100B that year. Can I get a 1% effective tax rate too?

Yes you can, just don't realize your capital gains.

"Don't be poor"

Like to hit 1% effective just living on $20k/yr is $2M/yr in capital gains.

His equity appreciated and will be taxed appropriately when it is sold.

Except it doesn't get per se, loans are taken out and paid back on a schedule smaller than the appreciation of the stocks which were used as collateral.

That's what that $1B was, and is relative scales we're talking about.

How do you pay back loans without income?

Your capital you used for collateral on the loans accrues value quicker than the loan's payments.

Hence that 1% effective rate.

But eventually, you sell that capital to repay the loan, triggering a tax event.

Except you had access to the capital the whole time via the loans, and only pay back according to the loan schedule, negating most of the tax burden.

Hence the 1% figure based on the numbers you yourself provided.

In what way does that negate tax burden. You have to sell (some of) the assets to pay the loan you borrowed. That causes a tax to be paid.

He only has a 1% effective rate if you change the definition of effective rate. I assume you're fine with making that change, but the federal government isn't currently.

The federal government that Amazon spends millions lobbying.

I'm well aware that what they're doing is legal; I'm saying it shouldn't be.

Taxing unrealized capital gains isn't happening because Amazon is lobbying the federal government, it's a fundamental premise of the US tax code and starting to tax them is arguably unconstitutional (I'm not arguing it is or isn't, but I've seen arguments that it is unconstitutional from reasonable sources).

I would find it hard to believe it's unconstitutional given that the 16th amendment defers the definition of taxable income to US code.

And Amazon's lobbying isn't the only reason, but it is a reason.

Your representatives don't have to accept Amazon's bribes, you know. They choose to do so because they're corrupt and convinced you to be mad at a different party entirely while they pocket the cash for future campaigns where they convince other people like you that they will serve your interests.

Where did I say I don't blame them too?

I shouldn't have to say this explicitly but yes, accepting bribes and giving bribes are both bad.

Yep, and he also owns literally the largest mansion in Washington DC ( https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/news/a..., https://www.geekwire.com/2020/party-jeff-bezos-d-c-mansion-a...).

It has a Ballroom, and can host parties with hundreds of people.

Why? Because he just enjoys flying across the country and entertaining political elites out of the goodness of his heart? What could possibly be fishy here?

He pays all of his employees no less than what Bernie Sanders considers a living wage. At what point would people be satisfied that Bezos pays enough?

Why is Bernie Sanders the authority here? Given inflation and a year-after-year growth in productivity, the minimum wage should be closer to $25/hour. Sanders falls way short of reality - but likely because the powers that be are more likely to compromise with a half-measure than give up more wealth to meaningfully improve America's economy by paying people equitably.

I never said he is the authority, but is probably the most prominent and well known Amazon critic on the planet today, and leads a huge populist movement that has been pushing for a 'living wage', which Sanders defines as $15/hr.

My question remains - at what dollar amount will people be satisfied that Bezos is being fair?

> at what dollar amount will people be satisfied that Bezos is being fair?

70k a year :) https://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pa...

$15 an hour is $120 a day (8h) and $600 a week (5 days) and $2400 a month and $28800 a year.

$20 an hour is $160 a day, $800 a week, $3200 a month and $38400 a year.

$35 an hour is $280/d, $1400/w, $5600 a month and $67200 a year

Never. People with a scarcity mindset tend to be resentful of anyone who's achieved any level of success greater than their own.

Wage growth is starting to take off in the US due to extremely fierce competition over job applicants. If, as you say, Amazon doesn't pay employees enough, they will leave in droves for better paying jobs.

Of course, if your facts aren't correct, they won't. To wit, 71% of Amazon workers in the recent unionization drive in Alabama voted against a union, citing, of all things, the good pay and strong benefits of the job.

Didn't Amazon also do a whole bunch of union busting before that vote, including trying to film the ballot box? (Or am I getting my Amazon union busting stories confused?)

I wonder if 71% of workers who voted against the union really believed that, or what percentage just voted it down for fear of losing their jobs.

Genuine question because I'm out of the loop: it looks to me like the "Bezos doesn't pay taxes" argument is just pointing out that most of his wealth sits in unrealized gains in amazon stock. When he sells stock, he pays taxes. Is there more to it that I'm missing? Is the prevailing argument that we should be paying taxes on unrealized capital gains?

Bezos doesn't sell stock. What little he does goes into Blue Origin and is written off again. When Bezos needs cash, he just borrows from the bank using his shares as collateral. No taxes.

Borrowing mean returning the money at some point. Where does this money come from, and how isn't it taxed?

Person dies, wealth gets inherited at new cost basis, heirs pay off loans with new (higher) cost basis, tax revenue isn’t collected.

At least that’s the model as I understand it.

I assume this means the banks are giving > 40 years loans? Isn't inheritance tax fairly high? A quick search says 40% federal, with around 20% state.

IIRC estate tax doesn't kick in until after ~$20M? I don't really know much about this particular area of tax law though so I wouldn't rely on my comments.

> tax revenue isn’t collected.

If you completely ignore estate taxes, this would be true.

Yeah you're probably right - my tax knowledge of this area is not great since I haven't had to care about it.

I think that kicks in after $20M?

This is not true. He realized $4 billion in gains in that ProRepublica article people referenced, and he regular sells shares.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/05/11/jeff-b...

You or me would sell stock and pay taxes.

He borrows against the shares, which keeps his votes while cashing out non-taxable income.

But wouldn't he need to sell stock eventually to service the loan payments?

Yeah- but you postpone it indefinitely, or pay it back in a year where you have negative income or other circumstances that afford a better tax situation.

Or get sneaky and attempt other "creative" legally questionable solutions, like having an entity you control buy that debt from the bank and hold it while giving you a 0% rate, or something similar.

Not necessarily. The wealthy put up $-worth of shares as collateral to borrow $$$$-worth of money from the bank at low interest rates.

The bank doesn't just sit on those shares, they use them to generate money for themselves. For example, say the Bank takes $250M in Amazon shares from Bezos and loans him $1B. If the bank projects that the price of Amazon is going down, they short that $250M in shares.

If Bezos did need to pay off one bank, he just borrows from another.

It's the other way around? You borrow substantially fewer dollars than the value of the shares you pledged as collateral so that the bank doesn't call the loan if (when) the value of the shares changes.

For you and me, you are right, but those on the top get to play by different rules.

Also, while it's called a loan, think of it more like a credit line.

I don't think you're missing anything - the sense I get is that it's primarily a knee-jerk political response. I suspect people like to take cynical negative views of things because it's both easy and a common method of trying to signal wise-ness, rarely is it applied consistently though. Bezos is just extremely visible and people take the positive space stuff as an excuse to 'well, actually' be 'contrarian' and negative. Irony though is this seems to be the mostly conventional political position anyway.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demand...

On the specific tax stuff, you can borrow against holdings and then pass them on when you die (I think people that inherit it get the cost basis 'stepped-up' to whatever level they get it at). This means some of that tax value on gains isn't collected.

It's all tied up in unrealized gains for the most part and since it's typically associated with massive non-zero-sum wealth creation - I'm not sure why it matters.

If people want to go after inheritance rather than taking wealth from people that actually created it, I suspect there would be a lot more support.

Interesting. Resetting cost basis upon inheritance does seem like a massive tax avoidance loophole, I can't quickly think of a reason why this should be allowed. I agree also that this would probably be a popular (and sensible) modification to the tax code.

Part of me wonders if the same group of people trying to take away the wealth created by others have both not created much of their own and stand to inherit a lot from their parents.

I don't know - but I have a hunch that a lot of these voices are often trust fund kids, or kids of wealthy parents. It'd be an interesting paradox if they're suddenly against policy that may affect their inheritance.

Currently though inheritance is protected up to fairly extreme monetary amounts (in the US anyway) so the change would have to be fairly dramatic.

This is my current understanding:

Basically, once you're this rich, you can take hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of loans to cover anything you'd like to spend. Now, you can make sure that you're actually "losing" money in any given year by having (almost) no realized income. Then, at the end, you die, having never paid taxes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/briefing/tax-jeff-bezos-w...

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-shor...

EDIT: Yes, this is a big part of why there's now a common argument that unrealized (but very large) capital gains should be taxed.

> once you're this rich, you can take hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of loans to cover anything you'd like to spend

Didn’t ProPublica show, in their leaked tax returns, that Bezos doesn’t do this?

But you have to repay those loans eventually incurring the tax burden when you do, right?

You die without ever selling your stocks. Your heirs can pay off your loans by selling some of the stocks they inherit. Their cost basis for those stocks is their value at the time of inheritance. This way no capital gains tax is ever due on the stock gains made in your lifetime.

At the amounts you're talking about (100s of millions of $$), virtually all of that stock would be subject to the federal estate tax, with the vast majority of it at the 40% top rate.

Those unrealized gains you're talking about are one of the main reasons the estate tax was enacted ~100yrs ago...

Yes, in practice there are more tax sidesteps via foundations, etc. But the step that wipes the capital gains liability is as described.

Sure but Bezos’ heirs will certainly blast past the exemption on the estate tax, which exists specifically as a backstop against this type of situation. They will pay taxes on most of what they inherit.

That’s what trusts are for! To avoid the estate tax.

> Their cost basis for those stocks is their value at the time of inheritance. This way no capital gains tax is ever due on the stock gains

Are you sure that's the way it works in the US? If so that seems somewhat absurd. In Canada there's no inheritance tax but capital gains are realized on death and the cost basis resets. So your heirs inherit the assets and an associated tax bill which honestly makes perfect sense to me (at least for things like stocks).

yep.

https://taxfoundation.org/tax-basics/step-up-in-basis/

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/073115/how-cost-bas...

For Bezos (and the wealthy in general), the interest rate on the loan is lower than your capital gains, so you can just keep rolling the loan forward forever.

And the interest is sometimes tax deductible

Yep. It's a great setup if you can get it (for yourself at least).

Interesting, but how do you pay off these loans except by later selling stock (and paying capital gains tax)?

When you die, your heirs get the stock with "step up basis", meaning the cost basis used to calculate capital gains resets to the market price at time of death. So if they sell right after you die, they pay no capital gains tax.

I'm no super genius, but it does sound like simply changing the tax code to require paying back all loans before changing the cost basis would be both easily and less possibly catastrophic than all of a sudden taxing unrealized gains.

The heirs get the stock at etc step-up basis after estate taxes, which are considerable in the $100m+ realm...

Estate taxes can be avoided with trusts.

Heirs in the United States don't pay capital gains tax, but doesn't the estate of the super rich guy have to pay up to 40% in estate taxes on all his assests (with an exemption on the first ~$5M)?

Jeff Bezos is worth $200B. If he died, his estate would have to pay 40% estate tax on $195B in assets (first ~$5M being exempt), which is $78B in tax. That's still a hell of a lot tax. I know there were some loopholes used by the Walton family and other super rich, but isn't the above how it's supposed to work?

> 40% estate tax on $195B in assets (first ~$5M being exempt)

I think you mean $199.995B, but doesn't change the outcome much anyway.

You die without selling them. Your heirs inherit the stocks at current market value: your capital gain liabilities are not inherited. They sell some stocks to repay the loans. Your gains are never taxed.

More loans.

> "Yes, this is a big part of why there's now a common argument that unrealized (but very large) capital gains should be taxed."

So how will the person pay for those taxes WITHOUT selling the underlining asset.

This is a huge problem in startup land with something called AMT. Where you "on paper" are a millionaire but have no ability to sell your paper shares since the company hasn't IPO yet.

I'd hate to live in a word where you have to pay taxes on unrealized gains because it's not like you're going to get a tax break for unrealized losses.

Do they need to sell to pay their taxes? Government could just accept the shares as payment in kind, plenty of uses for them without selling: sovereign wealth fund, state pension fund, employee owned trust.

I would imagine that what would end up being implemented would be more nuanced. If most of your on-paper net worth is unsellable assets, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say those wouldn't be subject to a hypothetical wealth tax.

Tax law has plenty of examples of various assets having unaccessed value until it's sold. Publicly tradable shares have value because I can sell them to someone for a fairly visible price. If I can't sell it, you could make the argument it's really not worth anything.

AMT also happens plenty to non-startup world people. Own a house and have a combined household income of >200k? You're probably dealing with AMT.

Let's pull on this thread some more.

So if I purchase a home and it's my primary dwelling, and the fair market value of my home goes way up (like more than what my homestead cap is) - I should pay INCOME taxes on this UNREALIZED gain?

See why this is so bonkers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in favor of the super rich to pay more in taxes ... but they are not using any "loop holes" here or getting preferential treatment. It's just that they have radically way more unrealized gains than ordinary people do.

It'd be interesting if all those people who had huge unrealized Bitcoin gains had to start paying ordinary income taxes on it.

In the comment you replied to, the commenter says:

> If most of your on-paper net worth is unsellable assets, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say those wouldn't be subject to a hypothetical wealth tax.

Wouldn't a primary dwelling fall under this umbrella?

I don't think so.

A home is a tangible asset easy to sell. Paper shares in a startup is totally different.

In the UK this is how they planned to fund social care. Taxes would be collected when you sell your home but "levied" earlier.

It was labelled the Dementia Tax and was deeply unpopular.

Well, does it seem like he has realized any gains? The prevailing argument is that as a society we do not have to let one individual amass this much power. It's ok to hold that view without having a deep enough understanding of tax law to know what needs to be changed.

I think it's very reasonable to hold that view (I do as well). But to propose a solution, it's necessary to understand the facts of the current situation, which is what I'm trying to learn.

If you ask Elizabeth Warren, yes.

From an ethical rather than a legal standpoint, I'd argue that when you use stock as collateral to secure a loan you are in fact realizing a gain. This is a common practice and the stockholders then deduct the coast of loan service from the tax liability that they do incur. It's kind of a racket.

> pay his employees more

Doesn’t Amazon pay highest in its industry? I suppose people always want more, but it seems like they are already among the best.

Of course pay varies by location and what’s good in one state is good in another. But it seems the average warehouse worker pay is $12.61 [0] with states ranging from $9.66 for North Carolina (holy cow) to $14.84 in Washington [1].

Amazon pays $16/hour [2] so that’s quite a big higher than the average and even the highest state.

So it seems like an odd complaint, “the company with the highest pay should pay even more.” And would be more appropriate if they paid crap wages.

Warehouse worker isn’t the easiest job, but I’m not sure how a warehouse worker job for Amazon is harder than other employers.

[0] https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries [1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Wa... [2] https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Amazon-Warehouse-Worker...

Your own link [0] shows they aren't even close to the highest (Sysco - $30.99). At $16/hr they don't make the top 25.

And knowing people who work warehouse for Best Buy and Target ($19.33), the working conditions are so much better as to be incomparable to what Amazon does to warehouse workers. Ignoring the fact they get paid more.

So not the highest, but above average.

It’s cool you know people who make $19.33 but I was referencing average pay.

Target seems to pay $13.68/hour [0] and BestBuy $13.69 [1] so they pay substantially worse than Amazon.

It’s hard to systematically understand working conditions though so hard to compare.

But again, the claim that Amazon employees aren’t paid well seems unsubstantiated.

[0] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Target_Corpora...

[1] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Best_Buy/Hourl...

>Target seems to pay $13.68/hour

You're comparing apples and oranges. The $13.68/hr includes high school cashiers. The average wage for a Target warehouse worker is $17, again from your own link [0] on page 2. The average range for best buy is $15, well north of the $12.61 Amazon is paying.

And AGAIN, far better working conditions. So no, not unsubstantiated. And no, it isn't hard to understand working conditions unless you're intentionally trying to gaslight. Amazon has pretty well known requirements for packages per hour that they brutally enforce to the detriment of employee health. Their competitors do not.

Amazon doesn’t pay $12.61.

Target and Bestbuy also have metrics. Companies aren’t “brutally enforcing” performance metrics.

Warehouse workers are average $17 Target and $15 Best Buy

Your link doesn't show Amazon, but found it here https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Amazon-Warehouse-Worker...

which puts in in the average of Target, Amazon, and Best Buy

Not an odd complaint considering he's worth 207 billion. He could more fairly divide that stock wealth among Amazonians. Question is: that 207 billion, did he accumulate that fairly himself or did his workforce accumulate that for him? Hard to answer from the outside but could a single man accumulate 207 billion without help as a corporation of one.

How many of the decisions that determined whether Amazon would become worth >$1T or yet another mediocre web store were made by warehouse workers? Jeff is primarily responsible for Amazon's success. For making Amazon what it is, him being worth ~10% of the whole company is a totally reasonable compensation

He's entitled to more than your average amazon employee, warehouse worker, and probably any other employee: YEAH sure. But I do not agree on paying such a high premium for simply being a decision maker. I'm merely making an argument that it's hard to objectively determine how much more one employee is entitled to the corporations stock pie than another based on merit. Amazon and it's 800,000 employee base built Amazon into the >$1T behemoth it became due simply to the fact one man can't do it alone. A lot of those employees may not have been able to make the important decisions that Jeff Bezos was able to, but they instead contributed blood and sweat. I'm willing to bet even if Jeff Bezos is a super employee, one thousand times more productive and smarter, than the next best employee he still couldn't amass 207 billion himself. By that metric he is overcompensated and others are under.

>simply being a decision maker.

This right here shows you don't understand what it takes to make a trillion dollar company.

They were a book seller that eventually expanded into an online Walmart, that ended up becoming the largest cloud provider in the world.

Just look at Borders/Barne's and Noble if you want to see two companies that were actually in a better position in the same industry 25 years ago. That's the difference between 'simply a decision maker' and an average CEO.

> I'm willing to bet even if Jeff Bezos is a super employee, one thousand times more productive and smarter, than the next best employee he still couldn't amass 207 billion himself.

This is actually just false. He essentially just proved you could. [0]

[0] Reality

It’s not like he gets a $207B salary. That’s the worth of the equity that has increased over time.

He literally has a percentage of the company and it’s increased in value.

So he’s not paid such an astronomical salary. His salary was about $1.6M [0] as his fortune comes through his stock in founding the company.

I agree that it would be absurd to pay someone $1B, but it’s odd complaining that his assets shouldn’t appreciate in value.

[0] https://news.yahoo.com/much-does-jeff-bezos-per-143450179.ht...

> But I do not agree on paying such a high premium for simply being a decision maker

> I'm willing to bet even if Jeff Bezos is a super employee, one thousand times more productive and smarter, than the next best employee he still couldn't amass 207 billion himself

Being 1000x smarter or more productive isn't why Amazon is with >$1T though, and saying "simply being the decision maker" is very dismissive of the hardest part of his job.

I think it's likely that there were a few (Maybe tens) of key decision that largely determined Amazons trajectory. If Bezos was wrong on those, no >$1T company. That's why he's worth 1000x more.

Sure, employees didn't have the chance to make those decisions themselves but why does that matter? Opportunity will never be equally distributed. Bezos happened to flip 20 heads in a row, and got to reap the rewards.

You don't make a company out of a bunch of workers in a field though, do you? People underestimate what good leadership it worth - sometimes even people who I later see worshipping Lisa Su (She's not a chip architect, she lets the chip architects fly - Bada bing Bada boom AMD is up however many gazillion percent).

> Question is: that 207 billion, did he accumulate that fairly himself or did his workforce accumulate that for him? Hard to answer from the outside

Not hard to answer at all, the answer is of course not. The unbalanced property relations ensure that the workers who build the wealth are not fairly compensated and have to consent to surrendering the lion's share of the value they produce to their boss.

> Doesn’t Amazon pay highest in its industry?

Absolutely not. On the tail of the recession, I moved back near my family and got a warehouse job doing the same thing that Amazon workers do. It was shit work under even shittier superiors, but by no means was it worse than what Amazon pays. And that's even being generous to Amazon, comparing it under conditions that totally stacked in Amazon's favor: it's almost like comparing apples to oranges, given that it's now 10 years hence, not to mention that the reference point is the recession. What's the bastion of magnanimity that we're comparing it to, by the way? None other than Walmart.

When I learned how little Amazon workers made, at the time around five years after my experience at Walmart, where you're essentially guaranteed a 50 cent raise every year (or more when the company does well, which is, again, essentially guaranteed), I was floored.

So if other unskilled jobs pay better or have better conditions, why are hundreds of thousands of Americans taking these “horrible” Amazon warehouse jobs then?

Are they all being irrational? Are they being forced at gunpoint to take these jobs?

The real issue is that removing Amazon from the equation doesn’t suddenly make these people’s lives a utopia. They still won’t have healthcare or get higher wages, our laws (the real issue here) will remain the same.

In fact, smaller businesses tend to pay people less and closer to the minimum wage (or even below it, in the case of many Texas and California businesses who employee illegal immigrants).

But nobody writes news stories about tiny warehouses nobody has ever heard of overworking and underpaying their employees.

This line of argument is so completely unhinged. Bezos paid roughly $1B in taxes in 2018, and Amazon warehouses pay well above the minimum wage.

I understand progressives wanting to raise taxes and raise minimum wage, but why in the world would you blame someone personally for just paying the going rate? That's what we all do for the taxes and service providers we pay.

Bezos makes an easy identifiable target, much easier to call out Bezos than any of the Walton's of Walmart.

The real issue is that major corporations aren't paying their fair share of the costs of running this country. From underpaying workers (who have to use public assistance) to getting sweetheart deals to build in your area.

Thanks to amazon I have more heavy delivery trucks running up and down my street. Meaning that street wears out faster, meaning my tax money is gonna have to repave it.

> major corporations aren't paying their fair share

Define fair share.

> From underpaying workers (who have to use public assistance)

I'll never understand this line of reasoning. Would you rather have people who can't earn enough to support themselves earn $0 and rely entirely on public assistance? That's what will happen if you require employers to pay people more than the value they generate.

> Thanks to amazon I have more heavy delivery trucks running up and down my street. Meaning that street wears out faster, meaning my tax money is gonna have to repave it.

Presumably Amazon delivery trucks are using gasoline, and fuel/sales taxes should cover some of those repairs. Also, presumably those trucks are using those roads because members of the community are asking Amazon to deliver stuff to them, so I don't see why the community shouldn't bear some of the burden of repairing the roads as well.

> Define fair share.

Fair share, the cost to run the country. For most people that's 33% of what we make a year. For megacorps that can be as much as nothing.

> I'll never understand this line of reasoning.

While I understand how some people don't want to give individuals handouts, I don't understand how those same people are ok giving large corporations handouts.

Take Walmart. If the poverty line where the local government steps up to help people out is $12.25 an hour (for 40 hours worked a week), and Walmart only pays out $7.25 per hour (for 40 hours), the it's on the local government to help those people out by giving them that extra $5 an hour. Well that means that walmart didn't pay the real rate for local wages, and the local tax payers got stuck with the bill.

> Would you rather have people who can't earn enough to support themselves earn $0 and rely entirely on public assistance?

Maybe, at least I'm subsidizing individuals and not the shareholders of Walmart. If we free up that person from the burden of working their dead end Walmart job, they would have an opportunity to improve themselves. Sure, many wont, but some will. I don't see how giving that same handout to Walmart helps any individual, those who own Walmart already have plenty.

> Presumably Amazon delivery trucks are using gasoline, and fuel/sales taxes should cover some of those repairs.

We could debate how fair those gas taxes are, and if they pay for themselves.

I don't mind paying for the right to use the road, but many roads weren't built to handle the increased delivery traffic. That delivery traffic is a new burden that Bezos created and got rich off of. Surely the company that gained the most from using the public roads deserves to be billed for their upkeep.

> Fair share, the cost to run the country. For most people that's 33% of what we make a year. For megacorps that can be as much as nothing.

That's your guess at what people pay now, not what their fair share is. Also, most people in the US don't have an effective tax rate anywhere close to 33%.

> While I understand how some people don't want to give individuals handouts, I don't understand how those same people are ok giving large corporations handouts.

I have no issue at all with individual handouts and think we should eliminate almost all corporate subsidies.

The assistance given to people who aren't employable at a wage that allows them to support themselves are individual handouts, not corporate ones.

> Take Walmart. If the poverty line where the local government steps up to help people out is $12.25 an hour (for 40 hours worked a week), and Walmart only pays out $7.25 per hour (for 40 hours), the it's on the local government to help those people out by giving them that extra $5 an hour. Well that means that walmart didn't pay the real rate for local wages, and the local tax payers got stuck with the bill.

The poverty line (or whatever other metric is used to set the threshold for public assistance) is set based on the cost of living, and doesn't set the rate for wages.

> I don't mind paying for the right to use the road, but many roads weren't built to handle the increased delivery traffic. That delivery traffic is a new burden that Bezos created and got rich off of. Surely the company that gained the most from using the public roads deserves to be billed for their upkeep.

Jeff Bezos isn't sending trucks out on the roads unilaterally. His company is satisfying your area's demand for convenient shopping (that seems limitless). It's just as easy to claim you and your neighbors created the traffic, which is why everyone (including Amazon) should pay for road maintenance.

Also, I have no idea how you determined that amazon has benefited the most from public roads, but that seems like a questionable claim.

I mean the road argument is really reaching here. Roads are never subsidized fairly. My neighbor doesn’t pay any extra for their huge pickup truck that generates a lot more wear on the roads day to day than my bicycle.

I’d rather subsidize the cost of delivery trucks than people’s massive personal trucks, at least I can order things and get some benefit from delivery trucks.

One commercial van comes by and delivers packages to 20 residents vs 20 people drive 2-4ton vehicles to the store and back.

Due to scaling laws the delivery truck maybe does similar road damage, but you've saved fuel and lots of valuable time, better for the climate, and less contribution to traffic.

Are passenger busses ok? They are in a pretty similar place.

I don't understand the point about trying to make this a character referendum on one specific billionaire.

Just make federal minimum wage $15 / hour and be done with it. Why is there so much rhetorical energy wasted on singling out one billionaire or another, as if they are going to feel bad and unilaterally raise everyone's wages in some kind of real world Ebeneezer Scrooge moment?

Democrats technically control Presidency and both US Houses of Congress, but it's looking like they won't accomplish anything because of Manchin's love for the sanctity of the filibuster is greater than his love for delivering concrete economic benefits for his constituents.

Absolutely. I don't want my fief Lord to throw me a morsel of food every now and then. I want to throw him down from his castle and share our wealth fairly, so I can buy my own food myself.

Another reason to temporarily suspend cynicism is that this is a very interesting method of philanthropy. Allowing the recipients to chose their own destinations for the money could lead to a more diverse and disruptive set of expenditures. I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years.

Is this an annual event? I never saw a definitive answer on that.

>> I am interested to see this award program's effects in 10-20 years

One of the challenges of this "pay it forward on steroids" approach is that it will likely be hard to attribute measurable changes to the original investments.

It does seem notable that Bezos has captured a huge set of resources, then paid it out to others for redistribution under their policies and procedures; he's essentially acting like a government which raises some concerns.

He has more capital than entire nation states. It's absurd that we celebrate this kind of undemocratic power in America.

I mean I'd say Mackenzie Scott (fka: Mackenzie Bezos) is someone who should be lauded more here. Not that it's a competition or that one takes away from the other but she's doing more to chip away at the status quo of philanthropic giving vs others.

In 2020, she gave away nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations. And has distributed $2.74 billion so far this year to about 286 orgs. From what I've read, these grants/donations don't come with any strings attached unlike grants from a lot of big foundations.

Agreed! Unfortunately, quite a bit of the money that she donates to some of these organizations goes into the pockets of extremely well-paid executives. That what's always bothered me about giving to charity orgs more widely. Luckily, there are websites that allow you to check how much charity organizations are actually spending on their programs vs. their expenses...

I do think that giving directly to individuals who will make sure that all of the money is spent wisely is an interesting alternative approach.

J. K. Rowling too, though not on quite the same scale: she would be a self-made billionaire, but she's given away enough that I don't think she's a billionaire anymore.

To me, she seems like a really admirable public figure in general.

Personally, I'm too confused to be even cynical about it. I don't know anything about Van Jones other than what I see on TV, but that by itself cannot explain why Bezos felt he deserved the "award".

Previously he's been known for being openly communist (i.e. not just a regular socialist). As an aside, I still find it odd how we've rightfully shunned other totalitarian and mass murdering political ideologies, but we've completely whitewashed communism. I couldn't imagine another newscaster openly identifying as a nazi.

Are you sure you haven't just been taken by a talk radio conspiracy theory? The only thing I could find on this was that Glenn Beck was harping on it ten years ago. That guy is not well known for being a fountain of truth. [0]

[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2009/sep/08/glenn-beck...

It says on his wikipedia page that he's a Leninist. It's not a conspiracy theory if he's open about it.

I ctrl+f'd "Lenin" on Van Jones' Wiki page, and this is literally the only time Lenin is mentioned:

>He became affiliated with many left activists, and co-founded a socialist collective called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM). It protested against police brutality, held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin, and aspired to a multi-racial socialist utopia.[13]

I'm not sure how being in a study group that discusses Lenin's theories automatically makes one an actual Leninist.

Does co-founding a Leninist organization not make one a Leninist? Why would you create an organization if you don't believe in its ideals?

Does one have to adopt every ideal of something when founding an organization? Would that not be the point of discussing those theories? What do we like? Dislike? Want to modify/mold to fit our current system?

But given your tone, and responses to other commenters, I am 100% certain that your feet are dug in and you aren't actually open to being swayed. So, enjoy your day! :)

> Does one have to adopt every ideal of something when founding an organization?

Let's change the labels. If someone founds an organization to spread nazism, is it a reasonable inference to suggest that the founder might be a nazi? I think yes, and that it is facile to suggest that the founder of an organization whose core principle is Leninism, is not actually a Leninist. And that's to say nothing of Jones' other activities that were cleaned off of wikipedia.

Are we supposed to take your word for it that it's a "Leninist organization"? Your only supporting evidence for that idea is the passage above mentioning that members of the group studied ideas from Lenin (and others), but that alone is not enough to make an organization "Leninist" (if it were, then I guess our high schools are all Marxist/Leninist/Nazi organizations too since we studied and discussed those beliefs there).

It is possible (necessary, even) to study, discuss, and debate all of history's notable policial/socio-economic ideologies and movements, regardless of which ideals you yourself hold (and which actions of those movements' prominent figures you view as justifiable).

Don't take my word for it, take theirs. Here is one of their documents. http://www.noisyroom.net/blog/STORMSummation.pdf

His wikipedia page does not say that. It seems like this controversy comes from his stance 30 years ago[1]. Van Jones was protesting the Rodney King verdict and was rounded up as part of mass arrests. From there he fell into a crowd that radicalized him as a communist, but a few years later his politics changed. He became more focused on unity and results rather than revolution for the sake of revolution. He also says “One of my big heroes is Malcolm X, not because I agree with Malcolm, but because he wasn’t afraid to change in public,”. I don't see any reference to him still considering himself either a communist or a Leninist. Why don't we allow him to "change in public"?

[1] - https://eastbayexpress.com/the-new-face-of-environmentalism-...

You are suggesting that we hold him to a different standard than everyone else and give him the benefit of the doubt. Other people have had their careers ruined for far, far less, while Jones gets a television gig and $100M for his troubles.

And wikipedia does discuss his Leninist activities. See below.

>You are suggesting that we hold him to a different standard than everyone else and give him the benefit of the doubt.

The opposite. I am suggesting we allow people to evolve over time. If someone demonstrates that the person they are today is different than the person they were 30 years ago, I think we should be more willing to forgive those 30 year old beliefs. If the person shows no indication of change, I am fine with them being made to account for those old beliefs.

>Other people have had their careers ruined for far, far less, while Jones gets a television gig and $100M for his troubles.

You are insinuating that Jones can just pocket the $100m which almost certainly isn't happening and is probably illegal depending on how all the paperwork is being done on this.

Would you say the same things about someone who was formerly a nazi, but who still engaged in far right politics? I do not believe you would.

A Nazi is not the opposite of a communist. Someone doesn't become a Nazi post-WWII because they believe in fascism. They do it because they are motivated by the hateful beliefs of Nazis. Therefore there is a higher barrier to prove that the person has truly changed before they can be forgiven. However there is still a path to forgiveness.

> Someone doesn't become a Nazi post-WWII because they believe in fascism. They do it because they are motivated by the hateful beliefs of Nazis.

Thank you, this is precisely my point. How can someone still support communism after the Soviet purges, the holodomor, Chinese cultural revolution, the Cambodian genocide, etc., etc.? Communism has oppressed and killed an order of magnitude more people than fascism, but in your opinion is this somehow more tolerable because those victims were killed out of love?

Just as fascists follow their failed ideology because of hatred, communists follow their failed ideology out of a lust for power.

This thread is about Leninist socialism, which is not Stalinist or Maoist tyranny.

That's no more of a defense than claiming you're "only" a fascist instead of a nazi.

(still waiting on the reply cooldown for the other comments ITT)

Would you say republicanism/democracy are immoral due to the slavery of pre-Civil War America?

That is the equivalent of what you are doing. You are blaming a theory of government for the crimes of a specific implementation of that theory. Genocide is not a central tenant of either fascism or communism anymore than slavery is a central tenant of republicanism, democracy, or capitalism. Fascism and communism are more authoritarian than other forms of government so they are both more attractive for people who seek totalitarian power, but that doesn't mean they are synonymous with the crimes of those totalitarians.

If Jones identified as a Stalinist, Maoist, or something similar I would definitely consider that more worrying as that is more similar to someone considering themselves a Nazi. Identifying as a general "communist" is not the same thing.

The difference is that communism is an economic idea, which was used by regimes that did brutal things. Whereas the Nazi ideology drove the violence.

In one case, it was correlated. In another, causative.

A core tenet of communist ideology is violent overthrow of democratic governments to implement a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Both are rooted in violence.

Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal? Admittedly, I'm not a scholar, but it seems to me that democracy is mostly concerned w/ how leaders are chosen. Whereas communism is about how resources are distributed. It sounds possible to have a democratically elected government that sets a communist economic policy.

That's not true, because the goal is to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat through violent revolution. Democracies are incompatible with dictatorship and must be overthrown in order to purge the other social classes. This is why every instance of communism has led to human rights abuses and/or mass murder: totalitarianism is part of the ideology.

It’s been a long time since I read the Communist Manifesto. Do you mean to say that Marx’s goal was violent overthrow? I thought he described more of an evolution of systems until the workers paradise was reached.

> Aren't democracy and communism orthogonal?

Theoretically, yes. Practically, if you concentrate all ownership in the state you remove the means by which private citizens can check it.

Isn’t communism ownership by the people? I thought totalitarianism or fascism is where the state owns the means of production.

I'm not aware of any communist country that didn't turn into an authoritarian state where the government imposed strict censorship and controls on the population.

When you look at why, it starts to make sense. Without strict economic controls black markets start to appear, where goods are bought and sold outside of the communist economy. Communist philosophy requires that black markets don't exist, because they allow for capitalism, private property, and a market economy. So Communism requires that these things be removed from society, which requires brute force.

Therefore taken from first principles, Communism is an authoritarian philosophy because it controls an individuals ability to buy, sell, and trade goods.

Not actually true.

These guys are stooges of the elite for maintaining narrative control. They are part of the same media bloc as the Washington Post, which Bezos owns - that bloc being neoliberal establishment. To call them "unbelievably good recipients" is orwell speak.

I can maybe see this argument being made against Van Jones. But Jose Andres?

I've interacted with José Andrés in the past too, and can attest that he's an amazing human being. He is the kind of person who will try his hardest to use every single one of those dollars to help other people who are desperately in need of that help. It's really great to see Bezos doing this.

Agree. They seem like good choices. Maybe he’s making a pivot now that he’s retired from Amazon?

I will caution people to not read too little or too much into this.

Personally I live by the maxim of “I don’t need a reason to do something nice, but I do need a reason to do something mean.” So I suggest we all wait and see what else he does before further analysis.

probably attempting to buy his way into heaven now that his fortune has been won. The same thing Gates is doing.

everyone: look at the billionaire who bought himself a dick-shaped rocket ride to space

Jeffy: hey everybody, I gave away the change I found in the cushions of my couch!

They are great choices, it's a generous and interesting form of charity. The focus on civility is a strange demand from the guy who has his workers peeing in bottles, but ok, I guess you need to stand for something at some point in the face of criticism.

Will this counterbalance the negative responses of the last few days? Probably not, the criticisms about the power wealthy individuals wield in society aren't affected, but it's a well timed gesture of good faith and the recipients are well chosen.

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