Bernie Sanders introduces ‘Stop BEZOS Act’ in the Senate

www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/09/05/bernie-sanders-introduces-stop-bezos-act-senate/

Wasn't Tucker Carlson, or some other right wing talking head, taking aim at Amazon/Walmart for the same reason (workers needing welfare benefits) lately?

I'm sure he'll totally be on board with Sanders' proposal

Get ready to hear about family farms that employ 503 workers.

I read about that proposal via twitter on market watch and made the mistake reading the comments as well. Still too many idiots left.

If Jeff Bezos wants to help low-income people why not just pay them better?
Marina Hyde

not directly Bezos related, but it was certainly touched on in this thread (including in the post above): Amazon will raise their minimum wage for all employees (including temporary and seasonal hires) to $15/hr.

They are also planning to lobby Congress to raise the federal minimum wage.

Yeah once you go to $15, you don't want competition trying to undercut you..

Higher starting wage will no doubt draw higher quality applicants.

That sound you'll hear tomorrow is the collective crying from the Amazon employees who were barely worth the $11.50/hr they were making as they're let go.

Doubt Amazon is going to be laying a bunch of people off in the 4th quarter. They already have to hire tons of seasonal employees. If wages will result in people getting fired the cases will be pretty isolated to specific individuals with performance issues or come after the holidays imo.

It's almost like we need a 3rd option besides not having a job and working full time but not making enough to live.

Just imagine what it’s like to be the guy cheering for poor people to lose their jobs. Imagine how ****ed up your life has to be for you to get to that place.

It's great that Amazon is raising wages, but the messaging around this is bizarre. First off, there's obviously a grammatical sense in which Amazon is raising the "minimum wage" it pays its employees, this is not in any sense a minimum wage the way people normally talk about it. It's just a wage. Amazon is saying that they're raising the wages they pay their employees

It's also kind of embarrassing that they are allowed to brag about lobbying for a minimum wage that is explicitly designed to affect only their competitors. Even if you think that a higher MW is a great policy, obviously ****ing Amazon doesn't deserve any credit for supporting it. They are obviously lobbying for a minimum wage to undermine competitors who wring vastly less value out of their employees.

Thanks Bernie!

Whoops!

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ses-union-says

How many people actually earned those incentives though? It's one of those bull**** carrots they dangle in front of the plebes to get them to burn themselves out. I guess a small number of people did legit earn them though.

Srs question: wtf is wrong with you?

Like, what happened to you to make you this way?

I grunched. Maybe he'll respond to one of us. I sincerely want to know.

I mean, he's having a hard time rationalizing a company paying their employees more (although not quite as much more as advertised) when they haven't obviously done anything to "deserve" more, so he assumes that there must be some delightful cruelty in here. Blammo, people must be getting fired, because they couldn't possibly be worth more than they are currently getting paid, which must be the most optimal of all possible wages.

I was actually wrong in my first post. The crying we heard was from the above-average Amazon employees who were successfully hitting performance metrics for bonuses and had those bonuses taken away to now subsidize the raises for the rest of the herd.

Nobody got fired. Everyone is now equal. Old man Bezos giving them all a tiny taste of socialism.

I think a lot of people just don't understand how much the wealthy actually have or how little the median american makes. Like, they assume amazon was only paying $11.50/hr or whatever because it isn't worth it for amazon to pay any more than that. So obviously, since amazon is raising the base wage, something is being taken away. But the reality is that amazon could probably pay all these people $25/hr and still be doing fine.

Very rough calculation, but Amazon's profits were $2B last quarter that shows up on googling and they have 500k or so employees, so that's about $8/hr/employee.

But THOSE people don't DESERVE $25/hour!

Fixed. Government exists to make sure people can't abuse this principle, but by and large, if you think a business is making obscene profits then you as an American are welcome to open a competing business and do the same thing for lower margins. The good news is that if you can deliver a similar quality product or service for a lower price, then you'll have no shortage of customer money to fund higher salaries for your workers.

If you think the system is corrupt and we're doing a poor job of policing businesses, then be mad at that system. But blaming "the wealthy" is just stupid. Something like 80% of American millionaires are first-generation millionaires. It's the land of opportunity. Take some risks and go get some.

Why go to all the hard work of starting a successful business and paying my employees a fair wage, when I can simply complain on internet forums and have the government steal and redistribute wealth?