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With almost a million employees the decisions by Amazon are impacting a large part of the (150 million) US workforce. The dysfunction in our government is risi
by WisNorCan 8y ago
With almost a million employees the decisions by Amazon are impacting a large part of the (150 million) US workforce.
The dysfunction in our government is rising at a time that corporations are growing bigger than ever.
The obvious result is that companies like Amazon will have an outsized effect on the major issues for our society, like minimum wage and healthcare.
- adventured 8y agoNothing has actually changed about the scale of corporations. That's just a popular talking point (it's actually always a popular talking point). US GDP in 2000: $10 trillion US GDP in 2018: $20 trillion Largest market caps in 2000: Microsoft & Cisco, about half a trillion dollars. Double that to match the doubled GDP, and you get an Amazon today. Amazon is not more powerful than these companies at their peaks: GM, Ford, Walmart, Sears, Standard Oil & Exxon, IBM, US Steel, JP Morgan, AT&T, Kodak, etc The US Government's spending has more than doubled in size in the last 20 years as well. Its power has dramatically increased as well since the mid 1990s (just the capabilities for control that the espionage improvements and law changes have given them, is extraordinary).
- WisNorCan 8y agoPicking Microsoft and Cisco’s stock price during the dotcom bubble to use as valuation benchmarks seems disingenuous. Picking anywhere outside the bubble makes the original point of rise of corporations clear.
- shimon_e 8y agoHow does it look with population increase taken into account?
- RightMillennial 8y agoIs Amazon seriously approaching 1 million employees?
- CydeWeys 8y agoIt looks like they're at around 600K now worldwide. Most of these are not SWE jobs, of course. I don't know if that figure is only full-time employees though; if not, then the total number goes up substantially.