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Call me cynical, but shouldn't this $2B go towards compensating his employees well enough to not have to use government welfare programs? [0] [0]: https://www.

Call me cynical, but shouldn't this $2B go towards compensating his employees well enough to not have to use government welfare programs? [0] [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-takes-walmarts-spot-with-bezos-act-2018-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-takes-walmarts-spot-w...

maxxxxx 8y ago
There is more glory in philanthropy than in paying your employees. The ROI in terms of reputation is higher. Addition: the same is true for funding something like a computer lab at a school. Lots of good PR for funding a new one but nothing for keeping an existing one funded for the next few years. Although I think it's more valuable to make sure existing infrastructure stays funded.
- dforrestwilson 8y ago
  Wondering - is the actual ROI likely higher due to tax benefits on charitable giving as well? Crazy thought but are we incentivizing this behavior? I haven’t seen any math on this, but if I pay workers more I still pay the same tax rate on profits and profits will be lower. OTOH if I pay them less, profits are higher, my stock goes up. I donate stock to my charitable fund and get a personal tax break.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  You aren't anywhere near cynical enough. Taken far enough, programs to "help the homeless" -- instead of programs to reduce homelessness -- are a de facto plot to keep homelessness alive and well. It's a form of oppression of the masses. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-principle-and-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-...
  - iooi 8y ago
    I don't necessarily agree with you, but another interesting take on this is by Slavoj Zizek, who argues that charitable giving perpetuates the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      There's a place for charity in the world. But charity doesn't you give you a middle class life. When a man worth many billions can't be arsed to pay his employees a living wage, but wants to kick a few bucks towards "helping the homeless", something smells very rotten.
  - dbatten 8y ago
    Given that Bezos envisions, for example, creating a network of preschools in low-income areas, I'd say he's at least thinking about helping people get out of cyclical poverty. Still, I'd also like to see Amazon pay its employees better...
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Or he could just pay his employees adequately so they aren't forced to live in poor neighborhoods and they could afford to pay for private preschool themselves if they decided for themselves this makes sense for their family. But, no, that he won't do. Which means there's actually a hidden agenda here. Actions speak louder than words. You can charitably argue that he needs a good therapist to help him root out subconscious bias, but you aren't going to convince me he's somehow doing a good thing here.
    - gammateam 8y ago
      so the one person that reads the article gets down-voted to oblivion, thanks for taking the fall mate! Your altruism will not go unnoticed I was going to comment about the preschools and how that idea came from ideas solicited by the public because everyone was just assuming it was just arbitrary helicopter money exclusively for PR
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        I've read the article. I've also had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I spent nearly 6 years homeless and got myself off the street without going through a program. The programs are often revolving doors that don't really fix the intractable personal problems that are a root cause of homelessness. The other two big issues: inadequate income and lack of affordable housing. Bezos is directly responsible for his employees lack of adequate wages, an issue he won't fix. No, he is going to build preschools in poor neighborhoods so that poor kids can get properly educated and break the cycle of poverty 2 decades from now when they grow up. Conveniently kicks the can down the road and does nothing to solve homelessness in the here and now, plus comes with all kinds of plausible deniability. "Just wait 2 decades! You'll see! It will help them... Eventually!" "The beatings shall continue until morale improves." and all that.
  - ajcodez 8y ago
    I see some parallels with aid sent to Africa. Charitable giving can alleviate suffering short term with the side effect of perpetuating suffering long term. > Aid [to Africa] is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      You might enjoy reading Diet for a small planet. It gets remembered as a vegetarian cookbook, but the first half of the book is about international politics and how food aid is part of the problem.
skybrian 8y ago
Why not both?
- burlesona 8y ago
  I think the point is that if his business is making so much money to make him the worlds richest person and his company one of the top two in the world, you would HOPE that would trickle down into good jobs throughout his business such that people who work for him had no need of public assistance. Alas.
s3m4j 8y ago
$2B divided by 600k employees would be more than $3000, which is actually huge for many people.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  If you're making $50k/year, that's a one time 6 percent bonus. Color me unimpressed.
  - Finnucane 8y ago
    A lot of Amazon employees make a lot less than $50K. You think $200/month wouldn't make a difference to someone who can't afford food?
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      A billionaire's philanthropic bribe should not replace fair compensation.
  - taurath 8y ago
    And for a lot of families that is the difference between a staycation and Disneyland. Don’t underestimate how much an unexpected infusion of cash helps people that are near paycheck to paycheck.
  - smnrchrds 8y ago
    Are warehouse workers getting paid $50k/year? EDIT: For comparison, 50k USD is approximately 65k CAD, which makes higher than the median starting salary for a mechanical/electrical engineer in Canada. I would be surprised if they are paying their lowest-paid employees that much.
  - NeutronStar 8y ago
    And if you're making $15k/yr that's 20%!
- partiallypro 8y ago
  The $2B isn't over 1 year...it's over several years or decades. In reality it would be a few dollars per year extra for 600K employees. Let's not get carried away.
woah 8y ago
What is the problem with the employees using public benefits? Genuinely curious.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  They use them because they aren’t paid enough to live on. Therefore, the government and thereby our taxes subsidize the company.
  - vivekys 8y ago
    Why don't they quit and find other better paying job?
    - 2bitmachine 8y ago
      Why don’t you spend a little more time thinking critically about the real options faced by the working poor in a society with vast inequality and decades of flat wage growth?
    - gldalmaso 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
    - stochastic_monk 8y ago
      That’s a complicated issue. I’d hope they’d get better jobs, but in the interim, should any full-time position be permitted to pay an unlivable wage? If so, why?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  This means that the public is subsidizing a company owned by the richest man in the world because he refuses to pay his employees a living wage. Doesn't this sound wrong?
  - rahul003 8y ago
ianleeclark 8y ago
There's a good 2-part podcast about Benevolent Billionaires from the "Citations Needed" podcast that goes a bit over the history of billionaire benevolence and what the good deeds cover up.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  Any chance you could braindump a tl;dl?
  - culiuniversal 8y ago
    Just until someone actually responds... I haven't watched part 2, but I remember part 1 being focused on Bill Gates as the main example to showcase their points. A big focus is how non-profit organizations aren't as benevolent as they appear to be. For example how Bill Gates' charity has more money than it began with and how a lot of what's classified as "charity" ends up being stuff like media influence and making a documentary about why private schools are gonna save education in America. They also point out how easy the media goes on Gates and other "charitable" billionaires and how seriously they take their worldviews despite not having any real education in, say, economic theory or history. Here's part 1: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so... And here's part 2: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-part-ii-bill-gates-in-africa https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so...
whatok 8y ago
Should Bezos pay part-time workers full-time wages so they don't have to use government programs?
- taurath 8y ago
  Bezos decided to hire them part time, so the question is kind of ludicrous.
  - whatok 8y ago
    How is it ludicrous? They are counting part-time workers among the "benefits" total which is disingenuous and not apples to apples at all.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I think the point is he could just offer full-time jobs instead.
      - whatok 8y ago
        There's nothing to say that people were offered full-time work and opted for part-time instead. Regardless of employee preference, it's still not apples to apples if trying to make a comparison to income qualifying for government benefits. Is a business owner that only requires part-time work supposed to hire full-time workers for some arbitrary reason all of a sudden?
dv_dt 8y ago
Will this be more or less than the tax breaks given to the new Amazon HQ...
DogOnTheWeb 8y ago
Reminds me of the writing coming from Anand Giridharadas. In the New York Times last month he wrote: "...even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-philanthropy-fake-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-phi...
tapoxi 8y ago
You need to sell shareholders on the latter.
riknos314 8y ago
Sounds nice on paper, but that's not how accounting works. While Bezos' wealth has skyrocketed in the last year, the portion of that wealth that actually came out of the Amazon ledgers was under $2 million in 2017. [1] Since it is the responsibility of the company to compensate employees, at most Bezos' cut is taking $2 million out of the pie, which divided across the several hundred thousand Amazon employees would give each worker less than $20 per year. Not exactly life changing. Regardless of whether or not Amazon should pay employees more, basing that argument on the CEO's capitol gains on long-standing investments is ridiculous. [1] https://www1.salary.com/Jeffrey-P-Bezos-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-Amazon-Com-Inc.html https://www1.salary.com/Jeffrey-P-Bezos-Salary-Bonus-Stock-O...

maxxxxx 8y ago

There is more glory in philanthropy than in paying your employees. The ROI in terms of reputation is higher. Addition: the same is true for funding something like a computer lab at a school. Lots of good PR for funding a new one but nothing for keeping an existing one funded for the next few years. Although I think it's more valuable to make sure existing infrastructure stays funded.

dforrestwilson 8y ago
Wondering - is the actual ROI likely higher due to tax benefits on charitable giving as well? Crazy thought but are we incentivizing this behavior? I haven’t seen any math on this, but if I pay workers more I still pay the same tax rate on profits and profits will be lower. OTOH if I pay them less, profits are higher, my stock goes up. I donate stock to my charitable fund and get a personal tax break.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
You aren't anywhere near cynical enough. Taken far enough, programs to "help the homeless" -- instead of programs to reduce homelessness -- are a de facto plot to keep homelessness alive and well. It's a form of oppression of the masses. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-principle-and-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-...
- iooi 8y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with you, but another interesting take on this is by Slavoj Zizek, who argues that charitable giving perpetuates the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    There's a place for charity in the world. But charity doesn't you give you a middle class life. When a man worth many billions can't be arsed to pay his employees a living wage, but wants to kick a few bucks towards "helping the homeless", something smells very rotten.
- dbatten 8y ago
  Given that Bezos envisions, for example, creating a network of preschools in low-income areas, I'd say he's at least thinking about helping people get out of cyclical poverty. Still, I'd also like to see Amazon pay its employees better...
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Or he could just pay his employees adequately so they aren't forced to live in poor neighborhoods and they could afford to pay for private preschool themselves if they decided for themselves this makes sense for their family. But, no, that he won't do. Which means there's actually a hidden agenda here. Actions speak louder than words. You can charitably argue that he needs a good therapist to help him root out subconscious bias, but you aren't going to convince me he's somehow doing a good thing here.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    so the one person that reads the article gets down-voted to oblivion, thanks for taking the fall mate! Your altruism will not go unnoticed I was going to comment about the preschools and how that idea came from ideas solicited by the public because everyone was just assuming it was just arbitrary helicopter money exclusively for PR
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I've read the article. I've also had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I spent nearly 6 years homeless and got myself off the street without going through a program. The programs are often revolving doors that don't really fix the intractable personal problems that are a root cause of homelessness. The other two big issues: inadequate income and lack of affordable housing. Bezos is directly responsible for his employees lack of adequate wages, an issue he won't fix. No, he is going to build preschools in poor neighborhoods so that poor kids can get properly educated and break the cycle of poverty 2 decades from now when they grow up. Conveniently kicks the can down the road and does nothing to solve homelessness in the here and now, plus comes with all kinds of plausible deniability. "Just wait 2 decades! You'll see! It will help them... Eventually!" "The beatings shall continue until morale improves." and all that.
- ajcodez 8y ago
  I see some parallels with aid sent to Africa. Charitable giving can alleviate suffering short term with the side effect of perpetuating suffering long term. > Aid [to Africa] is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    You might enjoy reading Diet for a small planet. It gets remembered as a vegetarian cookbook, but the first half of the book is about international politics and how food aid is part of the problem.

skybrian 8y ago

Why not both?

burlesona 8y ago
I think the point is that if his business is making so much money to make him the worlds richest person and his company one of the top two in the world, you would HOPE that would trickle down into good jobs throughout his business such that people who work for him had no need of public assistance. Alas.

s3m4j 8y ago

$2B divided by 600k employees would be more than $3000, which is actually huge for many people.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
If you're making $50k/year, that's a one time 6 percent bonus. Color me unimpressed.
- Finnucane 8y ago
  A lot of Amazon employees make a lot less than $50K. You think $200/month wouldn't make a difference to someone who can't afford food?
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    A billionaire's philanthropic bribe should not replace fair compensation.
- taurath 8y ago
  And for a lot of families that is the difference between a staycation and Disneyland. Don’t underestimate how much an unexpected infusion of cash helps people that are near paycheck to paycheck.
- smnrchrds 8y ago
  Are warehouse workers getting paid $50k/year? EDIT: For comparison, 50k USD is approximately 65k CAD, which makes higher than the median starting salary for a mechanical/electrical engineer in Canada. I would be surprised if they are paying their lowest-paid employees that much.
- NeutronStar 8y ago
  And if you're making $15k/yr that's 20%!
partiallypro 8y ago
The $2B isn't over 1 year...it's over several years or decades. In reality it would be a few dollars per year extra for 600K employees. Let's not get carried away.

woah 8y ago

What is the problem with the employees using public benefits? Genuinely curious.

stochastic_monk 8y ago
They use them because they aren’t paid enough to live on. Therefore, the government and thereby our taxes subsidize the company.
- vivekys 8y ago
  Why don't they quit and find other better paying job?
  - 2bitmachine 8y ago
    Why don’t you spend a little more time thinking critically about the real options faced by the working poor in a society with vast inequality and decades of flat wage growth?
  - gldalmaso 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    That’s a complicated issue. I’d hope they’d get better jobs, but in the interim, should any full-time position be permitted to pay an unlivable wage? If so, why?
maxxxxx 8y ago
This means that the public is subsidizing a company owned by the richest man in the world because he refuses to pay his employees a living wage. Doesn't this sound wrong?
- rahul003 8y ago

ianleeclark 8y ago

There's a good 2-part podcast about Benevolent Billionaires from the "Citations Needed" podcast that goes a bit over the history of billionaire benevolence and what the good deeds cover up.

skrebbel 8y ago
Any chance you could braindump a tl;dl?
- culiuniversal 8y ago
  Just until someone actually responds... I haven't watched part 2, but I remember part 1 being focused on Bill Gates as the main example to showcase their points. A big focus is how non-profit organizations aren't as benevolent as they appear to be. For example how Bill Gates' charity has more money than it began with and how a lot of what's classified as "charity" ends up being stuff like media influence and making a documentary about why private schools are gonna save education in America. They also point out how easy the media goes on Gates and other "charitable" billionaires and how seriously they take their worldviews despite not having any real education in, say, economic theory or history. Here's part 1: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so... And here's part 2: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-part-ii-bill-gates-in-africa https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so...

whatok 8y ago

Should Bezos pay part-time workers full-time wages so they don't have to use government programs?

taurath 8y ago
Bezos decided to hire them part time, so the question is kind of ludicrous.
- whatok 8y ago
  How is it ludicrous? They are counting part-time workers among the "benefits" total which is disingenuous and not apples to apples at all.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I think the point is he could just offer full-time jobs instead.
    - whatok 8y ago
      There's nothing to say that people were offered full-time work and opted for part-time instead. Regardless of employee preference, it's still not apples to apples if trying to make a comparison to income qualifying for government benefits. Is a business owner that only requires part-time work supposed to hire full-time workers for some arbitrary reason all of a sudden?

dv_dt 8y ago

Will this be more or less than the tax breaks given to the new Amazon HQ...

DogOnTheWeb 8y ago

Reminds me of the writing coming from Anand Giridharadas. In the New York Times last month he wrote: "...even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-philanthropy-fake-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-phi...

tapoxi 8y ago

You need to sell shareholders on the latter.

riknos314 8y ago

Sounds nice on paper, but that's not how accounting works. While Bezos' wealth has skyrocketed in the last year, the portion of that wealth that actually came out of the Amazon ledgers was under $2 million in 2017. [1] Since it is the responsibility of the company to compensate employees, at most Bezos' cut is taking $2 million out of the pie, which divided across the several hundred thousand Amazon employees would give each worker less than $20 per year. Not exactly life changing. Regardless of whether or not Amazon should pay employees more, basing that argument on the CEO's capitol gains on long-standing investments is ridiculous. [1] https://www1.salary.com/Jeffrey-P-Bezos-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-Amazon-Com-Inc.html https://www1.salary.com/Jeffrey-P-Bezos-Salary-Bonus-Stock-O...