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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

> Amazon makes enough in search ad revenue to give every single one of their employees a $35,000 cash bonus and still have change left over.

There was study not too long ago that showed that 48% of Amazon's employees were paid so little that they were forced to depend on some form of public assistance to meet their basic needs. Not only would an extra 35k a year prevent amazon employees from needing foodstamps and housing assistance, but I'd be willing to bet that amazon would make back some of it in increased amazon purchases too. It'd be great if the government cracked down on corporations who use taxpayer money to subsidize their labor expenses

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I've long felt that there needs to be a bill passed to charge companies $x additional tax each year where $x is the amount of government assistance their employees required in order to meet food/housing minimum standards. One way or the other, the companies that are making the rest of us pay for their employees to survive need to be funding these programs.

Or just increase minimum wage. 3x maybe?

Same thing, and simpler to do than making new law. I always prefer keeping tax simple!

Isn't it actually the government's fault for setting minimum wage below food stamp wage?

And who is lobbying the government to keep it that way?

Probably Amazon let's be real here

Socialize the costs and privatize the profits is where all this regulatory capture has gotten us.

Force means "coercion or compulsion, especially w the use of threat or violence".

If "not paying someone x dollars" = force, then at this moment, I'm forcing 6 billion people to do something.

Even the staunchest libertarians disagree with your understanding. Embarrassed that anyone holds or ever held this view, they have left you behind.

Embarrassed anyone on hackernews can't formulate an argument, resorts to ad hominem

The force comes in at the other end, where we beat up people for not having X dollars. If you beat up and murder people for not having foo and we all just take this for granted and pretend there's nothing we can do about it, then we have no choice but to assign blame to the part we can actually comprehend - the choice of who gets foo.

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