Who bears the blame for this though? If social programs are cut then voters freak. If the price of goods increase then voters freak. If taxes increase then voters freak.
It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
In this case, these are Amazon government subsidies by way of the disadvantaged. "Why are consumers receiving low prices and shareholder profits more important than workers receiving a wage they can survive on?" seems to be a question no one wants to answer.
As Galloway showed, we don't love our children, or even fellow humans in this context. We love line goes up more. At least we're making progress with the fertility rate going off the cliff, less humans to suffer under this regime in the future.
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_galloway_how_the_us_is_destr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
If this is a "subsidy" to Amazon, what do you think would happen if they were pulled? Would amazon be forced to raise wages, or would the wages stay the same (because labor supply and demand is still the same) and the people starve instead?
Otherwise, we admit we're just fine with the current setup and that is who we are. We prefer the human suffering for magic numbers in a database.
Ok. So you admit that it's not a subsidy to businesses then and you're just using that word as an inflammatory talking point?
> It's just a big spreadsheet, you're arguing over a cell or two, I'm arguing over the function result and working backwards from there.
The problem is that if you're making wrong observations about these individual cells, you're going to write bad functions trying to wrangle them into the result you want. An example of this is the San Francisco blamed "greedy businesses" on their housing crisis, so they passed a ballot initiative that would raise hundreds of millions in taxes on businesses that they could spend housing. The problem is that housing problem was caused by NIMBYism all along, and despite spending billions of dollars on homelessness since then, their housing crisis only gotten worse and businesses are refusing return to SF even more than other cities.
> Force corporations to raise wages
Do you realize that this is exactly what Amazon wants? https://www.aboutamazon.com/impact/economy/15-minimum-wage
I think this goes to highlight why capital is winning over labor. Shareholders will do whatever it takes to make money without being blinded by ideology. Amazon investors realize that they would actually benefit from an America with higher labor costs because they are more automated their their competitors and are positioned to capture market share in such an environment. Meanwhile, most regular people are apathetic towards politics and those who care are too committed to their ideology to make good decisions.
> Do you realize that this is exactly what Amazon wants? https://www.aboutamazon.com/impact/economy/15-minimum-wage
They fight unions awfully hard for an org proclaiming to want better wages and working conditions for their workers. Amazon wants both the positive PR while maintaining unilateral control over workers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/economy/amazon-u...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_worker_organization
My talking points aren't inflammatory, they are observations. If the observations are inflammatory, change the state being observed if you don't care for current state being inflammatory. "I don't like the truth" is not a rebuttal, and the truth is pretty terrible based on all available evidence.
This is the first result with I look up the definition of a subsidy:
> A sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.
You never disagreed with the parent comment that if welfare got pulled, Amazon wages would stay just as low. In fact, states or countries with less welfare tend to have lower wages, so if it's the opposite of a subsidy for Amazon. Therefore, welfare isn't a corporate subsidy. QED.
The vast majority of the world can and does live with off of less than $17/hour and healthcare benefits, which is what Amazon pays for entry level roles these days. Even in the US, that's enough for a single person without children. If Amazon only hired only these people, would that relieve their burden of having to pay a "living wage" to people?
But changing that in the US would be an incredibly long slog.
Those who refuse to question the legitimacy of our so-called democracy, even more so those who engage in deceitful (even if well-intended!!) rhetoric or other actions[1] to present any such discussions from taking place.
> It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
Consider what voting (or "democracy") is actually(!) composed of. Do we have any good reason to expect other than what we get?
[1] which can come in many forms
e.g., you can only be compensated (meaning stock options inclusive) 25 times what your lowest paid employee is paid.
Would this naturally raise the floor at companies as executives want to increase their own compensation?
I remember an idea like this being floated 15 years ago or so and on the surface it seems sound, but the devil is always in the details.
You can certainly try to address this, and I'm not saying it isn't worth trying. But I do think you'd be playing whack-a-mole with creative management consultancies and accountants trying to find workarounds for a very long time, and you'd need to be prepared for that.
It also doesn't really address the problem so much - while CEO pay is often entirely out of proportion, the money flow to investors is often a far bigger issue, and would also be a workaround: Ensure the CEO has enough shares, and gets to sell enough shares, and they have a vested interest in doing the work even with lower pay. E.g. there are plenty of CEO's on low pay because their ownership is sufficient.