Surviving on less than half a billion seems like such a belt-tightening gesture.........

Why would I care???

It shows how outsized Bezos' net worth is. He's stealing wealth from his employees.

He created Amazon.

Last edited Sun Oct 21, 2018, 02:45 AM - Edit history (1)

...for paying his minnions 15. living wage while the greedy bastard (and others like him) horde the wealth. Response from republican friend..oh but he gives, they give millions upon millions to charity--then we argued about fraudulent charitable foundations recently in news such a trump foundation...anyway the greedy wealthy only want more..they're never satisfied...the repub friend said to counter that fact ..text me back and said well he, they give millions and millions to charity--name an issue Bezos has contributed to..well then get back to me when you've researched. Pessimist that I've become...do theyre foundations really help, I asked ? Given the current criminal investigation into trump's charitable foundation--imo... not so sure the wealthy genuinely help others without something in it for them..imo--true alturism is non existent -- yes Im officially a cynic! [Someone recently said that poverty in America's, or was it around the world could be solved in 1 day (was it bezos, gates, zuckerberg, buffet ) then, stated how it can be done--please allow me to research; will insert findings and source.]

Snip (The Root)
Remember when we found out that capitalist behemoth Amazon had upped its minimum wage to $15, and we knew there was some kind of catch? Turns out there was—to pay for the living wage, employees agreed to give up monthly bonuses and stock grants.

You cannot run an enterprise like that without employing an army of people, and if you don't pay them a living wage, you are literally stealing from them.

I'm not saying that he shouldn't be rich, but if his net worth is $145 billion and he has employees who need government assistance to survive, then he's stealing the value of their labor.

than those who do the same job working for another company that is not worth as much as amazon ?

matching the market when they literally have lobbyists doing their level best to make sure that their company can best win at the expense of localities and states.

What gives with the Bezos love-fest here? I really do think we're well and truly screwed if half of us on the left really have no problem with this kind of wealth inequality and seem oblivious to the mechanisms that help to create it. This particular thread has been fucking depressing.

Have you seen starting wages for Amazon techies?

If Bezo is just going to steal their money?

I'm glad someone finally figured out his scheme.

Hopefully the FBI will read DU and find your post.

He has all that wealth, but republicans just made him wealthier and took the money out of your pocket and mine.

That and sexual molestation and bone saw murders are republican family values.

to the local bank and deposit a billion dollar check. Life would suddenly be much easier and much harder all at the same time. I'm up for it. LOL.

.... before the check clears.

Would have to open an account with Goldman Sachs. They own the government so they are never going under.

which was to set up a web-site (Amazon.com) where
sellers can set up merchandise to sell,
and buyers can buy without worry.

I bought a music CD on Amazon which had European format
of some type and did not work on my CD player in USA.

The seller did nothing to take it back and refund my money.
I complained to Amazon with explanation of situation.
Amazon gave me a full refund including shipping cost.
WHichis why I buy on Amazon again and again.

And Bezos became a Billionaire X 500.

WHy did I not think of doing what Bezos did?
I have done computer programming starting in 1962!

They've resolved ever issue I've had. Either with one email or one call.

Overstock is the same.

and Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world.
Walmart takes back anything within 30 days,
no questions asked. I even returned a new computer.

Both outfits follow the motto "customer is king".

like shit and still work there, these companies do not feel altruist enough to pay higher wages.

...those warehouses are an absolute nightmare from everything I've read.

blames the victim. People work those jobs because they need a roof over their heads.

I looked again and did not find the word "blame"
anywhere in my post. Again, the "fact" is that so
long as there are workers willing to work at Amazon
for the wages being paid, why would Amazon pay
them more? Amazon is not a charity outfit or a church
or religious organization. It is strictly an outfit to make
as much profit as possible. If they are not breaking any
laws, what do you propose to do about it?

My solution to such problems? Not minimum wage!
Because we can't have one size fits all. There are low
end restaurants and high end restaurants. It is not
logical or practical for Wendy's to pay the same minimum
wage as say Ruth Chris Steakhouse.

What could work is a law requiring minimum wage in any
outfit based on maximum wage in that outfit. If the CEO
is being paid $10 million/year, then the minimum wage
in THAT outfit should be no less than $10,000,000/100=$100,000.

There is no CEO worth more than 100 times any worker
in that outfit. This type of law would allow a small business to operate and survive versus a large outfit like Amazon
who can afford higher wages and still make a profit.

time employees how to apply for food stamps. Why should a full tume employee from such a successful and profitable company make so little that they need food stamps to feed their families?

Also, you and I are paying for that huge tax cuts Bezos and the Waltons just got. You may feel you owe that to them. I don't.

Amazon makes tons of money anyway and can afford that.

The Megamillons jackpot is a well defined number, a person knows the federal, state and local tax bite. Jeff Bezos' net worth is an estimate that takes in account hundreds of conditional items.

Have you ever owned a company or been the majority stockholder in one? If not, here is a revelation for you, things are not as cookie-cutter exact as you imagine them to be. A person trying to sell off a large piece of a company is unlikely to get anything near full value unless a buyer's due-diligence confirms that paying full value is a wise investment. If Bezos started selling Amazon stock like crazy, the stockprice would plunge.

flame-worthy about pointing out a decadent level of accumulated wealth. If you want to adjust down Bezo's numbers feel free. Would that make the gap any less obscene in the grand scheme of things?

about the hardships of a life like poor Jeff Bezos's, what the fuck does YOUR observation mean?

He STILL treats his employees like shit.

I am talking about the reality of being a majority owner in even a successful company and attempting to sell out. A person is rarely likely to get anything near the book value of the company unless due-diligence by buyers indicate that they will get a steal by paying full value, and even then they will nickel and dime the seller to death. And please don't try to sell a business that is failing, I was there once, buyers want to straddle you with all the debt then have you help them turn a now viable business to a pure profitable one for peanuts.

Why does Bezos watch wages, have security cameras everywhere, won't hire known drug and alcohol abusers or people with shady work histories. Well I can answer that from personal experience.

First on pay, there some business like food service, merchandizing and automotive services where a business person CANNOT set a gross margin high enough to insure profitability, there are simply too many desperate competitors that will quickly undercut the businesses' pricing. So a business owner has to sell for what he or she can get for a product or service. If that person plans to stay in business, savings have to come from somewhere else.

Drug and alcohol using potential employees? Well, despite the sob stories they give you face to face, they are pretty much certain to let you down when you need them most and they will let you down often. Would I hire a person with a drug or alcohol abuse history? Yes, under some very strict conditions. Their drug test toxscreen has to indicate that they likely have been months or even a year or more without consuming AND the background check of their dependency support meeting attendances have to show that they faithfully attend EVERY
meeting, and even then I would hire them only on a 1 year probationary period that I won't have for a person that does not have a history of abuse.

Security cameras monitoring people's every move, even going into the bathroom or leaving work? Well let me tell you something about a business. If you make and sell 100 crates of something every week, your business survival depends on you selling EVERYONE of those 100 crates. If over the week, one or more employees steal 3-4 crates because you have no monitoring of their work activities, then your capacity to pay salaries for all workers, or pay for benefits, or buy supplies to make more product to keep the business running gets blown out of the water. You fall behind on paying bills, things pile up and soon enough, you are out of business, all because one or more person saw nothing wrong with stealing 3-4 of a 100 crates and you had no safeguards in place to prevent that person or those persons from doing that.

Say what you want, what I pointed out to you are the everyday realities of running a continuing business and even very large companies like Amazon have to deal with those realities.

of us know that you need to price competitively and not have theft! What brilliance! If only everyone were as smart as you! If only you were not the ONLY one who ever ran a business!

He still treats his employees like shit. He has the vast majority of market share in most of the markets he sells to. He could set the policies. He chooses instead to treat his employees like shit. He finally gives them HALF a living wage, and with the other hand he takes away their benefits. In the same breath as he shells out billions to buy Whole Foods.

Spare me your tale of woe about Jeff Bezos's life. Yes, I too have experience running a business. And you are really kidding yourself if you think your or my experience is anything like what goes on in that monopoly factory.

Pretty much a self-made guy.

Everyone who works at Amazon should be middle class.

If you are competent, you move up quickly at Amazon,
and your wages follow upwards.

cost of living has gone up for decades- have to do with whether or not that job should be and could
be better paid?

its a good job.

What is so terrible about a living wage for a full time job, even for those "at the bottom of the ladder," that you are arguing so vociferously against it?

make a profit, and not for altruist reasons. They will pay as little as they can get away with.

I am strongly in favor of a limit ratio between lowest paid and highest paid employees in every corporation.

billions - and by the way, no one on this earth needs billions - his employees could have a living wage. If the Waltons didn't insist on their billions, you and I would not be paying for Walmart employees to feed their children using food stamps. This has nothing to do with changing profitability. It has to do with distribution of proceeds from business.

a hirer's economy works, or that of a service economy which we've largely become? Are you saying most people just don't want to have a better job? They could but they simply prefer to have the crap job they have? You do understand that there is competition for every better job right? That they don't simply grow on trees, and that wages ARE in-fact stagnant? That people are essentially making less than they used to due to cost of living increases that have been greater than wage increases, even while work efficiency has steadily gone up? Profits continue to get funneled to the top .1% and out of communities. Amazon is not a job creator. Amazon has had a huge destabilizing effect on industries.

and lots of those jobs have been shipped to Asia & Mexico.

I had just such a job, back before 1987, and we had trouble finding skilled employees and had to pay them a lot to get them. Now that manufacturing business has gone to Asia.

and very quickly become the only game in town. So no. They can't. Do you really not get that?

Like paying property insurance, business taxes, insuring adequate inventory for future sales and cash reserves for future payment of salaries, benefits and payroll taxes. You should try having a business where YOU are responsible for keeping it running and meeting payroll. Then come back with insights.

that he has benefitted from and should be paying back into, and it is our nation's government's job to make sure that wealth inequality doesn't get this far out of hand. The fellating of the uber-rich should be left to republicans.

There are a few business owners here. Those people have to look at the sausage being made everyday and understand that sometime is not a good picture.

What is right? I think that businesses should not play communities against eachother, getting offers of free roads and infrastructure that SOMEBODY DO PAY FOR.

My view as a business person is that if I want to expand, I budget the cost of paying for things like roads, utilities, water treatment, ect into the projects cost, then I determine whether I can sell enough or charge enough for products to make the expansion viable. That is just how I think business should operate, taxpayers should not bear the burden of private business expansion, not one red cent of it. I have often felt that progressive business people should quit the Chamber of Commerce and form their own organization, call it The Progressive Business Alliance - an organization that realize that communities need taxes to survive and only ask that taxes be spent wisely, that salaries should be as high as possible as long as the business is viable, that consumers should have an ironclad certainty that products that they buy are of the highest quality and are safe.

curios online.

There are some that just hate rich people. I think there is more that a desire for charity there, some just hate their lot in life and hate anyone that has done better.

You know what a true progressive is? A true progressive is a person who had ran his or her own business(es), failed, learned then succeeded, and still believe is principles like fair pay, healthcare benefits, affordable housing. I don't think that Bezos is a good example, but he has worked against homelessness in Seattle when he did not legally have to do shit. People don't know how much he gives to charities, they just assume that he does not. There are a lot of rich people who are the very anti-Trump, they give and want absolutely NO notice of their giving made, they are not running before cameras to talk about how much they give or pounding on a lecturn while yelling about oligarchs, millionaires and billionaires.

To further piss off those that are easily pissed off about the idea of business. I have potential hires background checked and tested for drug and alcohol dependency and won't hire anyone that fail specific red button screens or attempt to mask signs of drug and alcohol use. Why do I do that? Well, in my first business, I did not and ended up hiring a couple people that had serious drug and alcohol abuse issues and one person that stole from me (I also didn't believe in security cameras everywhere, a mistake that I no longer make). Until a person has had a business that he or she see slipping away, with him or her wishing that the drug and alcohol users would get their heads screwed on right and show up to work or show up on time, they have no fucking right to lecture a business person on the right way to run a business, FULL STOP!!!!!!!!

How rich do you think somebody should be able to become? You do realize that the pie IS the pie right? The pie doesn't grow. So among billions of people on earth who in my opinion, have a right to a certain level of dignity, how much should the select few be able to horde while others starve, or work long hours just to make ends meet?

Please stop being his PR guy here. He has plenty, and a whole newspaper. He has worked against homelessness? Do you understand how much money Amazon has taken out of local and state governments over the years due to loopholes or lack of enforcement of taxes on online sales? Do you really believe he has put more back in than he has taken out of communities? He has benefitted off the backs of these states.

He has many faults. But like anyone else, he is likely a complex human being.

How much should one person make? That is a loaded question that you need to think some about. Let's say that a man or woman invents the holy grail of energy sources (100% renewable, not polluting, deployable anywhere). Should that person open source that invention like the inventor of Linux did, then watch as large companies figure out how useful the invention is then build their proprietary systems based on it that they make trillions from, or should the inventor secretly buy up control of the utility grid and monopolize distribution of the new power? In both cases, people become rich, in the latter, one person becomes massively, massively rich. Which route would you say is right or just? I have often read your post so I know a little about what your answer is likely to be. You see fault with both, but are likely really rubbed wrong by a person being massively, massively rich from controlling a needed resource. But let me introduce another possibility that could and DOES happen in real life. What if that inventor of the holy grail power source recognized early on that by holding total control over it's application, he or she could save EVERY utility user, even poor users 50% on the utility bill that the users would be paying had the inventor freely open sourced the invention? Now is the person evil for holding onto control of the invention, even as that person becomes massively, massively rich? The true answer has lots on conditionalities to it, the unicorns and fairy tales answer is that the person is still evil because he or she is massively rich while poor people struggle to pay utility bills, even as they save 50% because the evil person kept control of the resource.

I have thought about things like Universal Basic Income, because as a technologist, I see machines eliminating virtually all jobs held by people. Other technologists here on DU would debate against my viewpoint and it could be that they have thought about the issue as long and as deeply as I have, but came to a different conclusion. But what I do know is that for UBI to work, EVERYONE that has a specific role in the system will need to fulfill their roles, or the system will fail miserably.

Of course we can hope for Susan Sarandon's glorious revolution, where I assume rich people will have their gated mansion communities stormed and be dragged out by the heels to be beheaded (which may be an issue for Susan since she is worth around $60 million). But once the heads of the rich people are thrown into a ditch and bulldozered over and everything they owned taken and distributed to "the people", then what happens? My argument is that if people don't seriously think about the society that they want and take responsibility and live up to the roll that they must play in that society, the same old problems that have existed for ages will continue to exist. There is a reason why takes like a Christmas Story were written, societies for ages have had vastly rich people and desperately poor people, that won't change until the fundamental nature of every single person changes and stay changed for the better.

the holy grail in this case is something that feeds off of the livelihoods of others in order to bring the savings to the consumers, and really, in order to bring massive profits to the owner of that grail. Just as an example, Amazon has devalued the work of the writer. Professional writers make far less than they used to. Also, Amazon's model of bringing amazing savings into people's living rooms has been at the cost of tax dollars to states, which has had, regardless of how cheap your last bag of socks were, a far greater negative impact on the commons.

None of which makes Bezos evil. It just makes him human. Nor do I truly want a French Revolution. I think that if we have to have villains, I'd prefer we point upwards(because they truly are responsible whether they are evil or not), but I see nothing just about that kind of solution, nor something particularly different emerging from the ashes of a previous aristocracy.
Honestly, at this point I don't see us ever getting to the point of a French Revolution anyway. We're too easily placated by media of all stripes. Sadly, I think a Handmaid's Tale scenario is far more likely.

But we don't need to drag people out of their mansions and to murder them. We need to culturally understand our role as our government...as watchdogs who understand the true impacts (negative and positive) of companies like Amazon and Uber And Facebook, and to make informed decisions about how to properly regulate them and tax them to the benefit of the American Citizen and America's future. You are right that human nature isn't going to change, which is why the .1% have been so keen on, and effetive at, driving a narrative that makes them genius's, job creators and philanthropists...which is why it bothers me to no end when those of us who are not among them do their work for them, for free. Fuck that. How are people going to seriously think about what you think they need to think about if most of the messaging that is being filtered to them is propaganda that puts people like Bezos on a pedestal and gives us an impression that we have well meaning geniuses who have our best interests at heart at the helm?


As to UBI(BIG). I'm entirely on-board. I think it would be far more efficient than I think you've imagined at this point, and there are myriad ways in which I think it could make a huge positive impact on the human experience. It would free up people for more needed community work that either doesn't pay or doesn't pay well, that is so integral to healthy communities. It would take the shame out of a welfare system that makes just surviving on scraps a matter of charity rather than a human right...which is a debilitating condition that feeds depression and devalues self-worth. It would take away some of the power of proselytizing Christian charities, which are tools of indoctrination...whether good intentioned or not. People would not stop working. People would work towards new possibilities. People would not be held in check because working might offset their welfare, as our current system is set up. Payday loans and other exploitative schemes will be less effective(or at least they have been in microcosms where BIG has been tried).

I do worry that keenly predatory minds will find the chinks in the armor of this kind of setup. I wonder about usury...what happens if you're getting a basic income but half of it is going to pay off loans or a real bad credit card deal? I mean it can happen now too, but you can't squeeze money from a stone, whereas Income Guarantee means there will always be a monthly well to extract from and it could still leave people with nothing to pay rent or eat on. I'm sure there will be challenges, but I can't think of a better alternative.

Other that that, what is your point?

He didn't make anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Pennsylvania_Lottery_scandal

And if that’s where Bezo’s political alignment is positioned, then I’m glad the guy is putting some of that obscene wealth to good use.

He also made a gift this year of $33 million to a scholarship fund to help Dreamers, although he was criticized about the small amount (for him).

rich doing the right thing is so low, and there are plenty of examples of Wapo already becoming a poor-ass watchdog on Amazon specifically. Wapo existed before Bezos bought it. Somehow him buying it makes him a champion of the light? Are you kidding me with this?

Also, do you understand what a drop in the bucket 33 million dollars is compared to the impact amazon has had on state tax dollars?

" Typically, an online retailer only has to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence, such as a storefront or a distribution center. That loophole cost states $17.2 billion in lost sales taxes last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. "

https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/29/technology/amazon-sales-tax/index.html

haha 33 million? Flash in the fucking pan for what this actually does to funding for education.

They'd look at a billion dollars, and be sad it wasn't Bezos-money.

do with the obscenity of just how much money Bezos has...not about how somebody else should have it.

But tickets would then cost $200 each and that would hurt the poor even more.

But that would solve the problem of the lottery winner/bezos wealth gap.

I'll never be a progressive.