7 ms·

Thousands of Amazon workers receive food stamps

41 points by 0xmohit 8y ago

deusofnull 8y ago
Food stamps are not intended as a subsidy for private industry to take advantage of so they can underpay their workers. Yet a casual observation of these conglomerates actions and policies clearly shows this is their strategy.
- lovich 8y ago
  At some retail stores the management actually provides guidance to people on how to sign up for various forms of welfare. Was given the instructions myself when working at walmart
- pasbesoin 8y ago
  "Corporate welfare" is a real thing. Something to keep in mind, the next time -- and every time -- a politician or partisan goes on about the "travesty" of (personal) welfare from an "economic" perspective. And, this "corporate welfare" takes on many and many overlapping forms. For example, many children in this country (the U.S.) have health insurance, health care, and dental care through Medicaid and government programs. A lot of their parents are working. Personally, I don't begrudge this -- not to those children -- in the least. Good health is the foundation of a good life. That also means a productive life that contributes to our shared society. But, those jobs aren't paying those parents what it takes to support their families. Something that is arguably necessary for those people to be able to continue to work them. (And many of those parents, themselves, do not have health care coverage. Which, among many other things, also keeps them more vulnerable as a population.) It's getting hard for me to avoid using Amazon for some things. Local stores no longer carry them. And it sure is convenient (well, price/marketing manipulation and increasingly rough and unreliable shipping aside). But it feels like we are being funneled into an increasingly inescapable form of this social abuse, at the same time.
  - deusofnull 8y ago
    Agreed it certainly does feel like we are on the highway to some kind of neo-feudalism. My words, not yours, of course. It does frustrate me to no end when these Free Market right-libertarians hark on about personal responsibility and demonize welfare. Like, do they realize the amount of public funding, safety nets, government contracts, and subsidies the private "free" market relies on? Then they have the audacity to call out poor folks asking to be able to go to the doctor, or reliably eat 3 meals a day every day. The cogitative dissonance is real as hell.
- thrill 8y ago
  So, the conclusion can be that the elimination of food stamps for anyone capable of working would elevate their, and so by definition, the average of everyone's, wages?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- bena 8y ago
  It feels more complicated though. Let's say I have only enough work for 8 hours a week. Should I hire someone for 40 just to give them "full employment"? What benefit do I get from that? Or let's say I only have enough capital to pay for 8 hours a week. Should I run myself out of business hiring and paying someone for 40 just because it's "nice"? Also, we have to get into the actual value of the work provided. What is the value of the job performed? That's an incredibly complicated function and I don't really know the answer to it. And then you do have people who are abusing their power to pay less than they should. Companies who lean on their employees being able to qualify for welfare even with a full 40 hours. I think that at the very least, a full-time, 40 hour a week job should be able to enable someone to acquire room and board for themselves.
  - deusofnull 8y ago
    If you only need 8 hours of work from a worker, then find someone looking only for part time work. They're out there. The problem is there are millions of people working 40 hours a week or more , sometimes at multiple jobs, who still can't afford to guarantee they and their families eat 3 healthy meals a day or go to the doctor. Look at the increase in worker productivity since the 70s and then look at the lethargic growth in worker compensation. Those two variables should be tightly coupled.
    - bena 8y ago
      I did say that a 40 hour a week job should be able to provide you with a basic existence, did I not? Of course, there is going to be some disagreement as to what "a basic existence" entails. But that's a discussion for another time. I think that if you work a full 40 hours in a week, you should be above the poverty line. That minimum wage should be tied to that at the very least. I don't think it currently is. And if I need full time work, but the only jobs available are 3 part time jobs at 10 hours each, I'm sorry, but my need doesn't really transform them into better jobs. I'll take what I can get.
cartercole 8y ago
The the requirements for food stamp eligibility should be changed?
- mickronome 8y ago
  If Amazon is actually taking advantage of the food stamp programme rules, how can changing the rules have any other effect than making people starve ?
  - benologist 8y ago
    Amazon would be just fine if they were forced to do the right thing now and then. AWS alone nets $20+ mil a day in profit, there's no reason to evade taxes globally, call your workers contractors, have them piss in bottles or eat off food stamps. There's no reason to have a store full of counterfeit crap and fake reviews either when they could have appropriate due diligence instead. These are all easy problems to resolve when you are the world's richest man and revenue's still growing. They're also easy problems to ignore if you're OK with being awful until the EU forces you to meet a minimum standard of conduct.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  It means they are so underpaid they need food stamps. It means the taxpayer is subsidizing Amazon. It just another example of corporate welfare at the expense of the public.
  - pitaj 8y ago
    These people could be just not working at all, in which case they would be more of a tax burden. What policy rules would you put in place that would stop "the taxpayer is subsidizing Amazon" while not hurting these employees?
    - lutorm 8y ago
      You mean Amazon would get by without any employees at all?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pitaj 8y ago
> Amazon spokeswoman Melanie Etches said the figures were “misleading because they include people who only worked for Amazon for a short period of time and/or who chose to work part-time,” she said in a statement. “We have hundreds of full-time roles available, however, some prefer part-time for the flexibility or other personal reasons.” It's possible that some of these part-time people only work so much because of the welfare gap. If they worked more, they wouldn't get food stamps, but wouldn't make enough to both offset the cost of food and the opportunity cost of the time they'll spend working. A UBI would fix this issue if implemented correctly.
- ljm 8y ago
  > If implemented correctly Sadly the operative condition :( I feel like businesses should never have been able to grow so large that they can essentially make government useless. What you have now is a government that offers welfare (as precarious as that is in the US) and a profit-driven corporation seeing that as basically an offset of responsibility. Fuck over your staff and let the government that hates welfare pick up the tab; be dependent upon a job that gets far more out of you than you get out of them. In any sane world this is a gregarious abuse of corporate responsibility. In the more compassionate (i.e. socialist) places you do not get such a cut-throat attitude towards profit at any cost. And this is not big business in the US, it's the damned American Dream. You go from rags to riches, all fame and splendour and a hell of a struggle to talk about at the end of it. So you get every mom-and-pop shop and every other sole trader digging for prosperity the same way: pinch every penny you can, avoid paying your staff as much as you can, treat them as expendable, nothing is lost in the pursuit of wealth. You work hard by making others work harder for you. And everyone wants it because that's what greed is. Welfare gaps are not unique in the world, and neither is corporate exploitation, but what you have in the US is just a smooth veneer atop the roots of slavery; it's all money and property. You don't have to look hard to see that the language has changed but the dynamic has not. Not for a lot of people.
  - pitaj 8y ago
    Corporate abuse of state power is emergent from and proportional to the power of the state in the first place. Only be reducing the power and scope of government can we hope to make meaningful change. The cronyists and politicians are part of a stable feedback loop to maintain the status quo. The state socializes risks and losses while the cronies keep the profits. The state created limited liability and "intellectual property", giving out monopolies and absolving those responsible of any repercussions.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
I'm on the "less government is best government" side of things and I'm having a hard time finding anything that's fundamentally wrong about the bill described in this article. Kind of funny how it takes an independent senator to propose a bill that has a purpose of reducing government waste.
- pitaj 8y ago
  You mean, besides the employers just laying off workers who they can't afford because they've now become significantly more expensive? The workers wouldn't be better off, and would be more of a tax burden than before. This isn't reducing government waste, it's just another tax to "solve" a problem the government created via the welfare gap.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  I'd go further than forcing Amazon to reimburse 100% of the welfare. It costs the government to distribute the welfare and maintain the system. It should be 110% at least.
- mynameishere 8y ago
  Funny how people react differently to things. I read the description and thought it was of almost unparalleled stupidity. "Government invents XYZ welfare policy, and all large employers are 100 percent on the hook--especially those who would dare employ people with few skills." Brazenly foolish. I'm on the "less government is best government" side of things You are most certainly not, and I don't think you should pretend to be so for the rhetorical advantage it might bring.
cperciva 8y ago
What would happen under this proposal if someone receiving food stamps works 5 hours/week at Amazon and 10 hours/week at Walmart? Do they both pay the tax?
- m-p-3 8y ago
  I guess they'd split the cost between those two in proportion of the hours worked.
adventured 8y ago
This is not a failure, it's a success story that is being incorrectly twisted to attack BigCorp (because everyone hates BigCorp). Following this crazy logic, the US may never move to a universal healthcare system, because then the workers will be receiving a 100% tax payer subsidy on healthcare. In just about every other developed nation on earth, if you make very low wages you qualify for welfare state subsidies and programs. Your healthcare for example is entirely paid for by the welfare state if you make low wages, as you're not contributing very much back in and are absolutely not covering your cost on the system. Why is it that when it comes to the US, these stories are bandied about as horrible corporate abuses, when in fact they're a success story from the continued expansion of the US social safety net? Who is overwhelmingly paying for the SNAP program in the US? The rich, they pay an extraordinary share of the cost of these programs (the top 20% pay 87% of all income taxes). The US has one of the most progressive tax systems. Why would having the rich pay for worker SNAP benefits be a problem in any scenario - are we now trying to save the rich money on their taxes? When someone earns the minimum wage in the UK, Spain, Canada, France etc do you think they're actually covering all of their own expenses? They're not. Those workers are all receiving welfare state benefits that subsidize the low pay from the corporations that employ them. If you give these workers a boost via earned income tax credits for example (a vastly superior approach to increasing the minimum wage), you're doing the same exact thing you'd be doing with increased SNAP benefits.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  > In just about every other developed nation on earth... Your healthcare for example is entirely paid for by the welfare state if you make low wages... In just about every other developer nation on earth, your access to basic healthcare is not dependent on your income or employment status at all.
sizzzzlerz 8y ago
Throw in recent stories about working conditions in Amazon's warehouse (making worker's pee into bottles because they won't let them leave work to use the bathrooms) is making Bezos' seem like a bit of a prick. Put another way, underpaying workers so that they have to use taxpayer-funded food stamps finances Jeff's dicking around with rockets.

41 points by 0xmohit 8y ago

Food stamps are not intended as a subsidy for private industry to take advantage of so they can underpay their workers. Yet a casual observation of these conglomerates actions and policies clearly shows this is their strategy.

lovich 8y ago
At some retail stores the management actually provides guidance to people on how to sign up for various forms of welfare. Was given the instructions myself when working at walmart
pasbesoin 8y ago
"Corporate welfare" is a real thing. Something to keep in mind, the next time -- and every time -- a politician or partisan goes on about the "travesty" of (personal) welfare from an "economic" perspective. And, this "corporate welfare" takes on many and many overlapping forms. For example, many children in this country (the U.S.) have health insurance, health care, and dental care through Medicaid and government programs. A lot of their parents are working. Personally, I don't begrudge this -- not to those children -- in the least. Good health is the foundation of a good life. That also means a productive life that contributes to our shared society. But, those jobs aren't paying those parents what it takes to support their families. Something that is arguably necessary for those people to be able to continue to work them. (And many of those parents, themselves, do not have health care coverage. Which, among many other things, also keeps them more vulnerable as a population.) It's getting hard for me to avoid using Amazon for some things. Local stores no longer carry them. And it sure is convenient (well, price/marketing manipulation and increasingly rough and unreliable shipping aside). But it feels like we are being funneled into an increasingly inescapable form of this social abuse, at the same time.
- deusofnull 8y ago
  Agreed it certainly does feel like we are on the highway to some kind of neo-feudalism. My words, not yours, of course. It does frustrate me to no end when these Free Market right-libertarians hark on about personal responsibility and demonize welfare. Like, do they realize the amount of public funding, safety nets, government contracts, and subsidies the private "free" market relies on? Then they have the audacity to call out poor folks asking to be able to go to the doctor, or reliably eat 3 meals a day every day. The cogitative dissonance is real as hell.
thrill 8y ago
So, the conclusion can be that the elimination of food stamps for anyone capable of working would elevate their, and so by definition, the average of everyone's, wages?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bena 8y ago
It feels more complicated though. Let's say I have only enough work for 8 hours a week. Should I hire someone for 40 just to give them "full employment"? What benefit do I get from that? Or let's say I only have enough capital to pay for 8 hours a week. Should I run myself out of business hiring and paying someone for 40 just because it's "nice"? Also, we have to get into the actual value of the work provided. What is the value of the job performed? That's an incredibly complicated function and I don't really know the answer to it. And then you do have people who are abusing their power to pay less than they should. Companies who lean on their employees being able to qualify for welfare even with a full 40 hours. I think that at the very least, a full-time, 40 hour a week job should be able to enable someone to acquire room and board for themselves.
- deusofnull 8y ago
  If you only need 8 hours of work from a worker, then find someone looking only for part time work. They're out there. The problem is there are millions of people working 40 hours a week or more , sometimes at multiple jobs, who still can't afford to guarantee they and their families eat 3 healthy meals a day or go to the doctor. Look at the increase in worker productivity since the 70s and then look at the lethargic growth in worker compensation. Those two variables should be tightly coupled.
  - bena 8y ago
    I did say that a 40 hour a week job should be able to provide you with a basic existence, did I not? Of course, there is going to be some disagreement as to what "a basic existence" entails. But that's a discussion for another time. I think that if you work a full 40 hours in a week, you should be above the poverty line. That minimum wage should be tied to that at the very least. I don't think it currently is. And if I need full time work, but the only jobs available are 3 part time jobs at 10 hours each, I'm sorry, but my need doesn't really transform them into better jobs. I'll take what I can get.

cartercole 8y ago

The the requirements for food stamp eligibility should be changed?

mickronome 8y ago
If Amazon is actually taking advantage of the food stamp programme rules, how can changing the rules have any other effect than making people starve ?
- benologist 8y ago
  Amazon would be just fine if they were forced to do the right thing now and then. AWS alone nets $20+ mil a day in profit, there's no reason to evade taxes globally, call your workers contractors, have them piss in bottles or eat off food stamps. There's no reason to have a store full of counterfeit crap and fake reviews either when they could have appropriate due diligence instead. These are all easy problems to resolve when you are the world's richest man and revenue's still growing. They're also easy problems to ignore if you're OK with being awful until the EU forces you to meet a minimum standard of conduct.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
It means they are so underpaid they need food stamps. It means the taxpayer is subsidizing Amazon. It just another example of corporate welfare at the expense of the public.
- pitaj 8y ago
  These people could be just not working at all, in which case they would be more of a tax burden. What policy rules would you put in place that would stop "the taxpayer is subsidizing Amazon" while not hurting these employees?
  - lutorm 8y ago
    You mean Amazon would get by without any employees at all?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pitaj 8y ago

> Amazon spokeswoman Melanie Etches said the figures were “misleading because they include people who only worked for Amazon for a short period of time and/or who chose to work part-time,” she said in a statement. “We have hundreds of full-time roles available, however, some prefer part-time for the flexibility or other personal reasons.” It's possible that some of these part-time people only work so much because of the welfare gap. If they worked more, they wouldn't get food stamps, but wouldn't make enough to both offset the cost of food and the opportunity cost of the time they'll spend working. A UBI would fix this issue if implemented correctly.

ljm 8y ago
> If implemented correctly Sadly the operative condition :( I feel like businesses should never have been able to grow so large that they can essentially make government useless. What you have now is a government that offers welfare (as precarious as that is in the US) and a profit-driven corporation seeing that as basically an offset of responsibility. Fuck over your staff and let the government that hates welfare pick up the tab; be dependent upon a job that gets far more out of you than you get out of them. In any sane world this is a gregarious abuse of corporate responsibility. In the more compassionate (i.e. socialist) places you do not get such a cut-throat attitude towards profit at any cost. And this is not big business in the US, it's the damned American Dream. You go from rags to riches, all fame and splendour and a hell of a struggle to talk about at the end of it. So you get every mom-and-pop shop and every other sole trader digging for prosperity the same way: pinch every penny you can, avoid paying your staff as much as you can, treat them as expendable, nothing is lost in the pursuit of wealth. You work hard by making others work harder for you. And everyone wants it because that's what greed is. Welfare gaps are not unique in the world, and neither is corporate exploitation, but what you have in the US is just a smooth veneer atop the roots of slavery; it's all money and property. You don't have to look hard to see that the language has changed but the dynamic has not. Not for a lot of people.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Corporate abuse of state power is emergent from and proportional to the power of the state in the first place. Only be reducing the power and scope of government can we hope to make meaningful change. The cronyists and politicians are part of a stable feedback loop to maintain the status quo. The state socializes risks and losses while the cronies keep the profits. The state created limited liability and "intellectual property", giving out monopolies and absolving those responsible of any repercussions.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

I'm on the "less government is best government" side of things and I'm having a hard time finding anything that's fundamentally wrong about the bill described in this article. Kind of funny how it takes an independent senator to propose a bill that has a purpose of reducing government waste.

pitaj 8y ago
You mean, besides the employers just laying off workers who they can't afford because they've now become significantly more expensive? The workers wouldn't be better off, and would be more of a tax burden than before. This isn't reducing government waste, it's just another tax to "solve" a problem the government created via the welfare gap.
theandrewbailey 8y ago
I'd go further than forcing Amazon to reimburse 100% of the welfare. It costs the government to distribute the welfare and maintain the system. It should be 110% at least.
mynameishere 8y ago
Funny how people react differently to things. I read the description and thought it was of almost unparalleled stupidity. "Government invents XYZ welfare policy, and all large employers are 100 percent on the hook--especially those who would dare employ people with few skills." Brazenly foolish. I'm on the "less government is best government" side of things You are most certainly not, and I don't think you should pretend to be so for the rhetorical advantage it might bring.

cperciva 8y ago

What would happen under this proposal if someone receiving food stamps works 5 hours/week at Amazon and 10 hours/week at Walmart? Do they both pay the tax?

m-p-3 8y ago
I guess they'd split the cost between those two in proportion of the hours worked.

adventured 8y ago

This is not a failure, it's a success story that is being incorrectly twisted to attack BigCorp (because everyone hates BigCorp). Following this crazy logic, the US may never move to a universal healthcare system, because then the workers will be receiving a 100% tax payer subsidy on healthcare. In just about every other developed nation on earth, if you make very low wages you qualify for welfare state subsidies and programs. Your healthcare for example is entirely paid for by the welfare state if you make low wages, as you're not contributing very much back in and are absolutely not covering your cost on the system. Why is it that when it comes to the US, these stories are bandied about as horrible corporate abuses, when in fact they're a success story from the continued expansion of the US social safety net? Who is overwhelmingly paying for the SNAP program in the US? The rich, they pay an extraordinary share of the cost of these programs (the top 20% pay 87% of all income taxes). The US has one of the most progressive tax systems. Why would having the rich pay for worker SNAP benefits be a problem in any scenario - are we now trying to save the rich money on their taxes? When someone earns the minimum wage in the UK, Spain, Canada, France etc do you think they're actually covering all of their own expenses? They're not. Those workers are all receiving welfare state benefits that subsidize the low pay from the corporations that employ them. If you give these workers a boost via earned income tax credits for example (a vastly superior approach to increasing the minimum wage), you're doing the same exact thing you'd be doing with increased SNAP benefits.

mgkimsal 8y ago
> In just about every other developed nation on earth... Your healthcare for example is entirely paid for by the welfare state if you make low wages... In just about every other developer nation on earth, your access to basic healthcare is not dependent on your income or employment status at all.

sizzzzlerz 8y ago

Throw in recent stories about working conditions in Amazon's warehouse (making worker's pee into bottles because they won't let them leave work to use the bathrooms) is making Bezos' seem like a bit of a prick. Put another way, underpaying workers so that they have to use taxpayer-funded food stamps finances Jeff's dicking around with rockets.