45 ms·

One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

405 points by ZuckMusk 2y ago

brk 2y ago
So they’re only one third through their optimization process?
ars 2y ago
How many non-Amazon warehouse worked are on food stamps or Medicaid? Without that comparison this title is just flame bait.
- jonathankoren 2y ago
  What’s the point of a job, if you can’t live on it? If you feel anger when reading that the largest and most profitable companies in the world won’t pay a living wage, the. You should be. There isn’t two side to simple greed and exploitation.
  - astrange 2y ago
    "Living wage" assumes you're the head of a household, so it's a pretty incoherent idea applied to just anyone. You can live on pretty much anything as long as another member of the household can supply the rest. Minimum wage increases generally do not negatively affect employment, but if you set the minimum wage high enough to be a head of household "living wage", it certainly would make people unemployed. Or instead we could pay people welfare benefits and support them that way.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    You could just find a job to be fun. Eventually there will be jobs not worth paying people to do; subsidizing that at the government level seems fine (albeit not capitalistic) but that does require taxation (not necessarily on the higher paying jobs) to cover the shortfall.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Part of the reason for minimum wages is that by eliminating bad jobs (the ones seemingly not worth paying people for), it can save time and effort for workers who accidentally take those jobs when they could have found better ones. This is called search effects. Another related one is that it can increase your competitiveness with other countries, basically by making employers stop wasting time and think of more productive things for people to do. But the main reason they can help is that, insofar as employers are monopsonies (sole payers of wages), they often literally don't know what wages they "should" pay because they don't have any incentive to find out, and in that case setting a higher minimum wage actually causes everyone to become more employed.
  - nomel 2y ago
    Why is this related to amazon though? It sounds like the blame should be fully put on the federal/local governments for the minimum wage that they've set.
    - readyman 2y ago
      The politicians are paid by the capitalists to keep minimum wages low.
      - astrange 2y ago
        Capitalists (large business owners) generally pay higher wages than the alternative, small/family business owners. Eg Walmart/Amazon have better benefits than an equivalent small business, unless you're the owner of that small business. But also, wages generally go up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N (This is "income", which is a superset of wages. I didn't link wages because those are confusing, average wages go up during recessions because the lower earning people get laid off.)
        readyman 2y ago
        >Capitalists (large business owners) You don't know what a capitalist is and that's on you. Regardless, benefits and job security are abysmal at small businesses so even if you were right, the aggregate effect is the same. Productivity goes up and wages don't. >But also, wages generally go up Just utter nonsense. Accounting for COL, wages more often remain stagnant in the US over the past 50 years.
        astrange 2y ago
        > You don't know what a capitalist is and that's on you. Are you going to provide a definition? I think it's people who own and trade capital. > Regardless, benefits and job security are abysmal at small businesses so even if you were right You're agreeing with me and then doing "even if you were right"? Also, this is pretty much out of Marx - capitalism was better for workers than the preceding stage. Small businesses are the preceding stage. > Accounting for COL, wages more often remain stagnant in the US over the past 50 years. You said wages don't go up, which means nominal wages don't go up. If you wanted to say real wages don't go up that's a different question. And it's true because our response to the 2008 recession was bad. But not our response to the 2020 one! They're way up now! It's great. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 Note, it's difficult for them to go too far up because of "wage-price spirals", and also generally because voters hate it when prices go up.
  - ars 2y ago
    Amazon is hardly one of the "most profitable companies in the world". Also Amazon can't really raise prices without losing sales - I've already shifted many of my purchases because Amazon is too expensive. They don't really have room to raise wages without hurting the people who are buying the products. People forget that a lot - if you raise wages you also have to raise prices, which ends up hurting the exact people you are raising wages for. > What’s the point of a job, if you can’t live on it? To have more money than you had before. I feel no anger here, people are paid based on the economic value of their output. They are not paid based on their worth as humans. If you want to be paid more you need to be able to do move valuable work.
    - jonathankoren 2y ago
      > People forget that a lot - if you raise wages you also have to raise prices, which ends up hurting the exact people you are raising wages for. This is simply false. It’s false just thinking about it, and it’s false from multiple economic studies in the real world. It’s a common falsehood spread by corporations, but it’s false. First, you can’t have it both ways and say companies “can’t raise prices without losing sales” and then turn around and say, “if you raise wages, you have to raise prices” and “people are paid according to their economic value”. If all of these statements are true, then no one could ever be paid more than their starting wage, because if their pay increased, then sales would go down due to price increases. Even if a person’s perceived economic value increased, they could never be paid commiserate with their value, because that would lead to a decrease in sales. This is obviously false. Minimum wage increases simply don’t lead to price increases or unemployment or any of the sky is falling predictions typically touted. We’ve known this for over 30 years now. Of course, lest we forget, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 has been fixed since 2009, months much represents a real wage cut in 2024.
- notatoad 2y ago
  why does that distinction matter? are you saying it's okay for workers to be on medicaid or food stamps if they work in a warehouse, but not if they work in a different position?
sandworm101 2y ago
What percentage of non-amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps? We all love to hate Amazon, but such statistics are meaningless without context.
- dangus 2y ago
  No one who can hold down a job and is currently employed should need government assistance to survive. Doesn’t matter if it’s Amazon or its competitors.
  - astrange 2y ago
    You need to apply marginal thinking here. They are better off with welfare benefits, which means it's a good thing that they have them. If you gave them more benefits, they would have more negotiating power and be able to become even more employed[0], and then would you complain more? [0] assuming that's what they want to do
    - RobotToaster 2y ago
      Giving benefits to employees, instead of forcing the company to pay a living wage, is effectively a subsidy for corporate profits.
      - astrange 2y ago
        No, giving money to employers is a subsidy for employers. Giving money to employees is a subsidy /against/ employers.
      - nickff 2y ago
        You seem to be assuming that if the government doesn’t give these people the money, the employer will. Why is that? Is it not also possible that the government benefits make low-wage work less appealing, thus lowering the supply, and increasing the compensation?
      - nradov 2y ago
boomboomsubban 2y ago
Here's an actual article about the survey https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-struggle-afford-140000178.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-stru...
brevitea 2y ago
... Just like Walmart. It's a shame.
- astrange 2y ago
  It's not, it's mostly a sign that benefits are working. Giving workers benefits /increases/ their compensation because it increases their negotiating power. This means they're earning more than they otherwise would. Not less. If it was less, that would mean benefits are bad and we should take them away!
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    It's essentially just a subsidy to large employers? So they can not pay their employees enough? Is this what these programs are intended for? I didn't understand it that way but maybe I'm wrong.
    - astrange 2y ago
      If it was a subsidy to large employers it would be paid to the employer. Those are called wage subsidies. (Health insurance in the US works like this, obviously it's not great.) These are paid to the worker though. That means it's a subsidy against the employer! It makes them worse off, not better.
    - brevhtff 2y ago
      [dead]
    - devmor 2y ago
      It is in effect a subsidy to employers, while still being a benefit to employees. As prior evidence shows, there is always someone willing to work for less, if they have to. As such, the only real solution to the issue that does not make the economic situation worse for employees is to punish corporations for paying so little that their employees need benefits from the government. Anything else only hurts the employees or provides greater subsidy to the employer.
ars 2y ago
Direct source: https://cued.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/219/2024/05/Handling-Hardship-Final_May2024.pdf https://cued.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/219/2024/05/Ha... "They were recruited into the survey using the Meta/Facebook" that's a red flag on the quality of the study. "To provide a more demographically representative picture, we reweighted survey responses using data on race and gender composition that Amazon reported to the EEOC in 2021.2" also a red flag because they already don't necessarily have a representative sample, and then are reweighting using data from a different selection criteria. The study said that 13% of workers moved into higher paying jobs within Amazon, and their numbers were removed from the study. Yah, I think I'm going to stop reading this study. Very low quality work.
- taeric 2y ago
  Removing those that progressed out of the pay scale feels especially odd? That should be seen as a success of employment for this, no? I'm also not a fan of focusing the headline or finding on a single company without a cohort to compare against. If anything, this would punish individual companies for hiring low income people at all. Easy to have 0% here if you just refuse to hire anyone that qualifies, after all. And that is a terrible goal. If I'm off on any of that, happy to be corrected.
blakesterz 2y ago
The numbers country wide: According to Pew [0] The numbers vary from month to month. But in April 2023, the most recent month with available figures, 41.9 million people in 22.2 million households received SNAP benefits. That translates to 12.5% of the total U.S. population. Fed says [1] 84,041,447 individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in the 51 states and the District of Columbia that reported enrollment data for January 2024. 0 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/19/what-the-data-says-about-food-stamps-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/19/what-the-... 1 https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica...
- decremental 2y ago
  The 51 states huh
  - something168581 2y ago
    > in the 51 states and the District of Columbia in the 51 (states and DC)
    - decremental 2y ago
      [dead]
- llsf 2y ago
  That is the number that a friend working for SNAP told... 1 out 8 Americans is on food stamps.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    You'd be surprised, many people qualify for SNAP and may not realize it. It's based on income, and handled by the states, and the income limit climbs based on number of children. Some states you can get it if you're pregnant no matter what. (It can often be a strategic thing to get if you can, because large numbers of other programs that require applications will declare you automatically qualify if you get SNAP.) Most states are following the federal guidelines of 200% of the poverty line. Four kids is $80k a year and still qualifies. Household size: monthly pre-tax income limit - 1: $2,430 - 2: $3,288 - 3: $4,144 - 4: $5,000 - 5: $5,858 - 6: $6,714 - 7: $7,570
RobotToaster 2y ago
I'm surprised it's that low.
mountainb 2y ago
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would otherwise need to be replaced at higher rates. Should the companies shoulder more of the burden? It would be fairer and more just, but words about justice are cheap and power is expensive.
- gruez 2y ago
  >It prevents competition How does food stamps/medicaid prevent competition?
  - notatoad 2y ago
    because small companies can't get away with paying poverty wages. amazon jobs are ubiquitous and well-known enough that people treat it as a fallback. if you can't find a better job, you go work in the amazon warehouse or as a wal-mart cashier, because they're always hiring. companies that don't operate on the same scale aren't constantly hiring, so they can't get the same benefit of being the fallback option for people and have to offer wages that are high enough to actually attract employees.
    - ilya_m 2y ago
      Is this really? If foodstamps were to suddenly disappear, would Amazon increase their wages? I doubt it. In fact, there would be _more_ desperate people scrambling for some paying jobs, which would depress wages further. Right?
    - gruez 2y ago
      > amazon jobs are ubiquitous and well-known enough that people treat it as a fallback. if you can't find a better job, you go work in the amazon warehouse or as a wal-mart cashier, because they're always hiring. I agree that larger companies are better capitalized and therefore can better withstand economic shocks than smaller companies, but how does that mean that foodstamps "prevents competition"? Foodstamps aren't tied to a specific employer, so it doesn't favor large companies over smaller one, because employees can continue to get benefits even after switching jobs.
johnea 2y ago
This is reminiscent of the incidents where walmart was instructing new hires on how to apply for food stamps...
- twoodfin 2y ago
  Like universities guide students on how to apply for government grants and loans? Or for that matter, professors applying for research grants? What’s the scandal?
tycho-newman 2y ago
Walmart is another such employer.
- bluedino 2y ago
  Very true. Companies like McDonald's and Walmart (the two employers with the most employees that qualify for food stamps) have a lot of part-time employees. Do Amazon Warehouses?
  - astrange 2y ago
    Is that "McDonald's" or is it "McDonald's franchisees"?
- abigail95 2y ago
  Is this bad? I'm so confused by this whole thread. Can you get higher productivity by hiring these workers than Walmart? If no - then why is Walmart the bad guy for paying their employees more than any other company that would have them?
scarface_74 2y ago
Trying to balance my bleeding heart and pro capitalism free market proclivities… Let the market decide how much employees get paid and increase taxes on corporations to fund a social safety net and remove loopholes. Also make any state tax incentives that a state gives a corporation to locate there taxable on the federal level.
- Seattle3503 2y ago
  I agree with this. It is societies responsibility, through their elected government, to take care of people. If we need to support people more, we raise taxes and provide more support via the government. Holding the employer as responsible leads to things like employer provided healthcare, which ties people more strongly to their employer. Weakening the ties between employee and employer makes the workforce more dynamic and mobile.
  - k8svet 2y ago
    How though? We raise corporate taxes on every corporation? We somehow target those with a certain percentage of employees on government subsidies?
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      Raise corporate taxes on every corporation based on revenue. We have a graduated system of income taxes for people, do the same for corporations. Small mom and pop companies wouldn’t see an increase. But the Amazon’s of the world would.
    - abigail95 2y ago
      Why would you want to tax the people hiring the low skilled workers rather than the ones not hiring them? Please help me understand this I genuinely don't understand that position.
not2b 2y ago
If workers need government aid to make basic ends meet, it is the employer, not the employee, that is on welfare, subsidized by taxpayers and government borrowing.
- dantheman 2y ago
  That is not correct - a person with no skills who has 10 kids will never be able to support themselves via a job. It is welfare for them.
  - astrange 2y ago
    In that case the welfare is for the kids, not for the parent. i.e. the number of kids is more important than what their head of household is earning. Welfare is mainly intended for children and the elderly because we don't want child laborers.
  - gottorf 2y ago
    A person with no skills wouldn't be able to support themselves regardless of the number of kids. And I suppose that's ultimately the problem: through a combination of technological advances, which automate much unskilled labor, and a broken incentive structure in many social welfare programs, which disincentivize investment in human capital (because of the "benefit cliff"), a larger and larger underclass of unemployable[0] people grows. [0]: meaning, the economic value of their labor output is less than the minimum cost to employ them.
  - f-securus 2y ago
    A person with no skills that works 40+ hrs a week should be earning enough to live on.
    - missedthecue 2y ago
      If you work the lowest paid job at Amazon 40+ hours per week, you literally cannot qualify for government benefits unless you have like 3+ kids and you're a single parent.
  - 2y ago
throwaway14356 2y ago
I would like to see negative income tax. You have to insert the fresh printed money into the economy some place. Why not have people work for it?
- astrange 2y ago
  We have that in the form of EITC and child tax credits. They should be better though.
- strictnein 2y ago
  Through the Earned Income Tax Credit a some low earners do experience a negative federal income tax. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/earned-income-tax-credit-eitc/ https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/earned-income...
  - throwaway14356 2y ago
    Income inequality is a big problem but this would be the only remedy I wouldn't like. Maybe do a percentage that excludes earnings beyond 500k Should we want businesses that need public money to continue to operate? I suppose one should critically examine their usefulness. If they fail 0% income tax on salary would be good enough. OT: It struck me a while back what work was involved in running a government using only paper. I guess they all found ways to burn the excessive funds over the years as the real work kinda vanished. I hear Estonia made an effort to write laws that are easy to automate simply because they didn't have money. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/1a89ed5e-en.pdf?expires=1716592717&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=E36A890D5229DBD2B2F548A1EC801BA3 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/1a89ed5e-en.pdf?expi...
devd00d 2y ago
People should take a history lesson from France. Let them eat cake.
- _ache_ 2y ago
  Can you elaborate? What did France do exactly? Apart from having a minimal (but working) welfare system. For several decades, liberal policies have been driving down the welfare system and the minimum wage. Macron is definitively trying to put a end to the french social welfare system.
  - educasean 2y ago
    I assume the original comment was calling for a revolution
  - marcusverus 2y ago
    He's suggesting that we break out the guillotines and murder the rich. That worked out great for the French, after all.
    - undersuit 2y ago
      But if you say "Let them eat cake"... you're not on the right side of the situation being proposed.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  Did you read the rest of the history book? It wound up with them not only restoring the monarchy multiple times but getting a goddamned Emperor who went all proto-Hitler and tried to conquer all of Europe!
fzeroracer 2y ago
Ultimately, the goal is to maximize worker exploitation. And to maximize exploitation, you need just enough welfare for people to survive, but not enough welfare for them to choose better jobs. For example; in this scenario if we offered individuals far stronger welfare benefits (schooling benefits, UBI etc) the odds are that very few people would be warehouse workers for Amazon. Alternatively, if we we forced companies to pay for this welfare (such as with progressive taxation based on # of individuals working and on welfare), then they would offer higher wages and with higher wages gives greater mobility. Make no mistake, this is a feature not a bug of our system. It is designed to keep the poor working in jobs that maintain their poverty.
- abigail95 2y ago
  Paying people >MPL doesn't work. The math just doesn't work. You can't hire people and pay them less than their output. If you tax Amazon more because they hire low skilled workers then the MPL of each low skill worker decrease. Does that increase or decrease the incentive to hire these people? what happens to the price of labor when demand drops? If your options are pay a worker more than they produce or pay a similar amount in tax, aggregate wages will go down, not up.
bluedino 2y ago
Don't forget that Amazon (and any other employer that applies for it) gets a $9,600 WOTC tax credit for employing a SNAP recipient (as well as veterans etc) https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/work-opportunity-tax-credit https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
lasermike026 2y ago
TAX AMAZON! TAX BEZOS! That is all.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
Surprised Dan Price keeps getting attention here. I thought he got busted for his “altruism” being a way to deflect from his women’s abuse/harassment and stealing from his brother.
Seattle3503 2y ago
A lot of comments have the assumption that it is corporations responsibility to look after people. That philosophy is how we get healthcare tied to one's employer. That approach attaches workers to their employer and makes switching jobs harder. I think it is better to see it as the government's responsibility to take care of it citizens. Medicaid, food stamps, and the negative income tax represents this approach. We don't necessarily see it as a bad thing that the government takes care of citizens. If someone is struggling, it is the governments role to step in and support that person. But it does make sense to talk about whether these programs provide sufficient support, or if our approach to taxation, which supports these programs, is fair.
- cardy31 2y ago
  Setting reasonable minimum wages would take care of citizens without a patchwork of programs being needed.
  - gruez 2y ago
    If you want the government to "take care of it citizens", what we actually need is a floor on income (eg. welfare/UBI), not a floor on wages (ie. minimum wage). Minimum wage does nothing for people who are unemployed, of which it's inevitably going to exacerbate.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      > Minimum wage does nothing for people who are unemployed, of which it's inevitably going to exacerbate. Yet more "privatize profits, socialize the costs". Minimum wage has always trailed living wage. Often by a decade plus. It's always in arrears that it is updated (and several of the last updates have been further and further apart). Businesses have been able to pay people less than liveable wages, and then when there's an attempt at parity, they scream about how unfair it will be to that untouchable and sacrosanct pillar of American society, the Small Business Owner. Except I don't recall reading anywhere that a business owner was entitled to profitability. At a certain point, if your business can't afford to keep up with living wage needs, the solution is to close your doors, not advocate for underpaying people.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Tiktaalik 2y ago
If a corporation is making strong profits and its workforce is on poverty level incomes and relying on public financial support to survive, kind of feels like it makes sense for the government to claw back those profits in higher taxation. Notion being that the corporation that is so severely under paying its work force isn't genuinely profitable and is falsely portraying itself as so.
- Noble6 2y ago
  Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state. They also offer benefits. Concluding Amazon isn’t paying enough, because a large portion of their workforce qualifies for food stamps, is the wrong conclusion.
  - Fauntleroy 2y ago
    If you knew someone working at an Amazon Warehouse position who needed to use government benefits to get by, would you consider them "well" or even "fairly" paid?
    - Fernicia 2y ago
      What is your null hypothesis here? Would they be better off if Amazon moved their warehouse to another state or country?
      - Symbiote 2y ago
        Amazon can raise prices slightly.
        pornel 2y ago
        Or Bezos can have fewer yachts?
      - Fauntleroy 2y ago
        The "hypothesis" is that you can, in fact, dislike it when people are criminally underpaid by corporations, even if it is supposedly a "good" wage.
0xbadc0de5 2y ago
Shame on Amazon for providing jobs to poor people. Best not to worry too much about it, in a few years they'll be replaced by robots.
atleastoptimal 2y ago
Here's the thing. This is going to happen to everyone, as in, no person will be valuable enough via the contribution of their labor to survive without subsidies. At the level of automation we've reached in society, low-skilled labor is worth, per hour, a very small amount. As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility. The only way around this is to let those people starve or implement UBI. There is no magical future where AI serves as a democratizing "labor enhancer" for the masses. The value-add of some random person will be 0 in nearly all cases. We will have to decouple our implicit assumption that a person's value is tied to their potential economic value.
- skhunted 2y ago
  I believe labor is worth whatever the employer can get away with. As such the value of the cheapest labor is what society allows companies to get away with. An employee's wages should be high enough to live off of and this should be enforced by having high labor standards.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rlpb 2y ago
    That's all very well for those lucky enough to be employed. In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? Eventually, that's going to be nearly everyone.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? A lot of work that's absolutely needed for our survival is still paid dogshit: think construction, cleaning, waste disposal, agriculture, fruit picking, etc. Even in developed countries with human rights, most of this work is done by what are basically modern slave workers usually from abroad on dinghy visas. Those are the jobs getting the least amount of automation. Robotics is insanely far away from reaching the speed, dexterity, cognition, perception, adaptability and cost for that to be automated at the same rock bottom prices as human slaves.
wkat4242 2y ago
Being on public healthcare is not really a shame though. It's like totally normal here in Europe :P And pretty good too. I'm glad I don't have any worry about my healthcare, the risk of insane bills, that I might lose expensive cover if I get fired (which is in itself also a lot less likely as there's no "at will" here) etc. It's just a solved problem. Yeah it costs us some taxes but it's not as insanely expensive as in the US (in fact I probably pay less tax than a US citizen pays in monthly health insurance). I think state healthcare is pretty ideal. Food stamps though, that's not cool.
- malfist 2y ago
  > Food stamps though, that's not cool. Why?
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    I view that as something that's really for people who can't take care of their basic nutritional needs. That's not normal in a civilised society. After all, food is cheap. We subsidise and socialise healthcare because the cost between people can vary extremely (it can cost between nothing and millions per year!) and it's a basic need. Food is not like that, basic food needs cost roughly the same for everyone. Of course there's $1000 a plate restaurants but those are not a basic need, you can get just as much nutrition for $5. Someone who has a job should be able to cover food and housing. Otherwise society is severely broken.
paxys 2y ago
This is a nuanced discussion that is always derailed by the usual "down with evil corporations!!" rhetoric. Let's say there are a thousand people on food stamps, getting $2000/mo from the government. A company comes along and says "we will employ all thousand people part-time for $1000/mo, and so the government now only has to pay them $1000/mo in assistance". Did the company do a good thing for society? What if the company had instead said "we will employ 500 people full-time and pay them $2000/mo, so now the government only has to take care of the remaining 500"? Is that better or worse? Or what if the company only employed a hundred people and paid them $10000/mo so they could live a good life, at the expense of the rest? If one of the employees had 8 dependents and another had none, should they both get the same salary for the same work? What if it isn't enough for raising 8 kids? Or if none of these options are palatable should the company and its warehouse not be allowed to exist at all? How does the government generate tax revenue for social services in the first place then?
- ihumanable 2y ago
  It's an interesting question. Employees have to generate more value for the employer than the employer pays the employee, otherwise the employer won't employ the employee, or they will go bankrupt. So let's say you have someone that's getting the $2000/mo from the government for assistance. Amazon hires them and pays them $1000/mo, the only way this makes sense for Amazon is if they can extract more than $1000/mo of value out of that employee. I think where the disconnect is in a lot of these conversations is how much value is being extracted. Let's say an employee earning $1000/mo generates $1500/mo of value for Amazon. Then the fact that the government has to support them to the tune of $1000/mo as well might be acceptable. Amazon gets profit, government (and the tax payers) have to spend $1000/mo less, employee gets enough money to live. Everyone is happy. Let's say an employee earning $1000/mo generates $5000/mo of value for Amazon. This scenario is a bit harder to accept, why should the tax payers have to subsidize those low wages when Amazon could pay $2000/mo and still make a healthy profit? The problem is that that figure, "how much value does an employee generate?" is hard to come by. You can get more aggregate figures https://csimarket.com/stocks/AMZN-Revenue-per-Employee.html https://csimarket.com/stocks/AMZN-Revenue-per-Employee.html which tell us that every employee generates on average $326,428 but it is harder to find details on "How much value does an amazon warehouse worker generate?" So it all hinges on how much value Amazon extracts from the worker. If it's $50/mo then I don't think anyone is picking up their pitchforks. If it's $4000/mo and they've decided that they can squeeze their workforce because the tax payer will pick up the slack and they can pocket the difference, then pitchforks come out.
Aunche 2y ago
Not sure how this economic illiterate Twitter post has nearly 100 upvotes within an hour. This is not how a subsidy works. I'm sure Amazon execs would be happy for the government to end their "subsidy", which would increase the demand for employment and downwardly pressure wages. Just because Jeff Bezo's company is primarily a retail company with lower margins than Dan Price's higher margin B2B company doesn't mean that Bezos is any more responsible for people's welfare than Dan Price is. The problem of these bad economic takes is that they make the assumption that if only these greedy companies paid employees more money, all of society's problems would be fixed. We already know that this isn't true. Americans already has the highest incomes in the world. The San Francisco residents have highest incomes in America, but continue to have the worst rates of homelessness in America. Throwing more money won't solve fundamentally broken healthcare and housing systems.
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  >The San Francisco residents have highest incomes in America, but continue to have the worst rates of homelessness in America Not true.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    Ok. One of the worst rates of homelessness in America. Big difference. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-homeless-crisis-oakland-new-report-housing-18262961.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-homeless-crisis-oa... You see even more homelessness in nearby Oakland, whose residents are still some of the wealthiest in America.
tootie 2y ago
I get the point, but this is a terrible goalpost to be using. Medicaid and SNAP have both expanded enrollment by making it easier to qualify. Being on government assistance is neither here nor there. I realize it's being used a proxy for poverty, but that's not going to be very accurate. There are multiple ways to qualify for these programs. Being a sold bread-winner for a family of 5 is a different scenario to a secondary breadwinner for a family of 2. We have enough direct data to compare their compensation levels that don't involve shaming people for needing help. Also, this guy has no citations.
simonsarris 2y ago
From the actual article: > A third of survey respondents reported using government-funded programs – primarily food stamps or Medicaid – in the last three months. It's very hard to gauge what the real numbers are from that quote. It's also hard to gauge if Amazon made these people better or worse off. But again, from the actual article: > Amazon’s median US employee was paid $45,613 in 2023, up from $41,762 the year before, the company said in a filing last month. The company says employees in warehousing and transportation are paid more than $20.50 an hour, on average. The survey, which was conducted between April and August 2023, excluded managers and skews a bit lower: Most respondents reported wages from $16 to $20 an hour. > Some 65% of workers who come to Amazon earn more than they were making at their previous employer, the survey shows. https://archive.is/J1MFq#selection-1767.0-1771.116 https://archive.is/J1MFq#selection-1767.0-1771.116
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Approximate nationwide list from 2020 produced by GAO: Walmart McDonald’s FedEx Amazon Dollar General Kroger Dollar Tree, Inc. Safeway Waffle House Burger King Goodwill Sonic https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/18/food-stamps-medicaid-mcdonalds-walmart-bernie-sanders/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/18/food-stam... https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45
mindslight 2y ago
All I see is: > Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (Strict Mode) is known to cause issues on x.com The dumpster fire rises. I love the inversion of responsibility there. I guess everyone should just use GoogleAds Chrome.
more_corn 2y ago
And Amazon pays no taxes
AlbertCory 2y ago
> according to a new survey which, conveniently, is not disclosed. How would a survey manager get that data, for ALL warehouse workers? So most likely they sampled one warehouse and relied on voluntary participation. Amazon certainly isn't going to go out of their way to help them out.
legitster 2y ago
We really need to stop treating this as such a "gotcha!" The whole idea of welfare is that it is supposed to go to people who need it - working or not. Are people on Food Stamps always going to be unemployed? No? Then are they are going to be employed somewhere? Am I supposed to be mad that these programs are working as designed? Food stamps and medicaid in particular are also explicitly tied to family need. Unless Amazon is going to start paying someone with a family of 5 more than a person with a family of 3, these criteria are always going to be malleable. (In our state, Medicaid eligibility goes up to $80k in income and up to $100k for food stamps!) As a proud taxpayer, I am happy my money is going towards working families. I would be more concerned had it not. And I am not going to pretend to be shocked that the beneficiaries work in (surprise) low-income jobs.
- adammarples 2y ago
  The food stamps are working as designed, no criticism there. It's the jobs that aren't.
  - skeaker 2y ago
    Yeah, I took the article to signal that Amazon isn't doing enough for its employees.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Agree with all that. The criticism is that this is a big, American company, one of the largest and most impactful ever, that makes lots of money and is quite profitable, and yet pays its workers low enough that they need to be subsidized with tax dollars. Your tax dollars are given to Amazon's workers, so that Amazon can continue employing them for low wages, and the money saved by paying low wages is going into the shareholder's pockets. Is that a system that you are happy with, and would be fine with continuing in perpetuity? Obviously, there isn't a silver bullet, and every potential solution has thorns, but are food stamps really meant to perpetually sustain individuals that make low wages at companies that can afford to pay them more?
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > (In our state, Medicaid eligibility goes up to $80k in income and up to $100k for food stamps!) In FL, Medicaid adult eligibility ceiling is $Ø. Also the next states over. And states past that. And more states. In FL SNAP income limits for adults are [whatever the ASCII symbol is for irrelevant]. Whatever the guidelines are, the vast majority of impoverished adults are denied. Same for next states over. And you get the idea. Folks posting from states that aren't hostile to vulnerable people are posting their healthcare/assistance figures - in a way that seems to imply their numbers could well represent America. They don't tho.
hnburnsy 2y ago
Amazon statement to Time magazine on this study... >In an emailed statement, Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly called the researchers’ methodology “deeply flawed” and said the company had tried to raise its concerns with the study’s authors but never heard back. >“It’s a survey that ignores best practices for surveying, has limited verification safeguards to confirm respondents are Amazon employees, and doesn’t prevent multiple responses from the same person,” he said. Kelly added that Amazon has increased average pay to $20.50 an hour and provides a range of benefits, including health care, dental, 401(k) and pre-paid tuition.
yonran 2y ago
It is counterproductive to shame an employer for hiring hundreds of thousands of low-income workers who would likely be on government assistance regardless of Amazon. By all means, we can regulate companies to ensure that working conditions are safe and encourage companies to provide more opportunities for advancement. But the act of hiring low-wage workers who need welfare is a good thing. What are other companies doing to employ non-college-educated workers in the bad parts of town?
nojvek 2y ago
In any economy you need consumers and producers. US economy has been trending towards fewer owners owning means of production. Which makes sense, any business marginally better than their completion keeps on growing, the delta between 1st and 2nd keeps on increasing over time. US consumer spending is strong right now. That is great for producers. If the economy goes to shit, govt can hand out stimulus and inject money into economy. Propping up demand is very easy - stimulus checks! Propping up supply is very hard - requires great infrastructure, a check on monopolies, investments that encourage innovation and competition. The fact that the young generation are so squeezed, they are not having kids is a sign that we’ve fucked up. The big have gotten too big and there isn’t enough competition to prop up supply and bring prices down. Both parties love turning on the money printer, driving up inflation. It’s the societal equivalent of global warming. A slow disaster booking the frog.
imgabe 2y ago
Instead of pumping in ever more money to feed inflation, why don’t we ask how we can make food and healthcare cheaper? Why is it “Amazon doesn’t pay enough for workers to afford healthcare” instead of “Healthcare is so exorbitantly expensive even people with relatively well paying jobs can’t afford it without government assistance”?
- abigail95 2y ago
  It's not amazon doesn't pay enough, amazon is the one paying these workers the most - else they would work somewhere else. Everyone else except amazon is to blame for not paying them enough. Why are people framing this like amazon is doing something wrong? They are the highest bidder for these low wage workers, not the lowest bidder?
ThinkBeat 2y ago
I have no idea who this guy is, but a link / source would make the X post a lot more trustworthy.
jmward01 2y ago
I think an issue here is pointing out Amazon. A corporation should take every inch of the law available to them, but no more. They are only evil if they then lobby to make things worse. Amazon workers needing assistance is not an issue with amazon, it is an issue with us ('us' being the US). We make it allowable to create a job that doesn't cover the minimums. 'part time' allows benefits to be slashed. 'gig' allows even more to be taken. Every job should have a living wage with usable health benefits and a path to retirement. Every job that doesn't do this, inevitably, is being subsidized by the tax payer and I for one don't want to pay it any more. There should be laws that heavily tax workplaces that don't meet the minimum standards in order to pay for the programs their workers are forced to use to survive.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
black_13 2y ago
[dead]
dave333 2y ago
Have govt mandated living standards - medicare for all, minimum wage. Make corps revenue neutral - they fund all the services for their employees. Govt fund unemployed including UBI. Make corp tax rate = base + misery index = base + inflation + unemployment
RecycledEle 2y ago
If you hire someone who has been on disability for more than 2 years, they still get their Medicaid for a year or two. I hope that explains most of this.
arresin 2y ago
How much tax subsidy is that for Amazon?
plutaniano 2y ago
Doesn't Amazon have to compete with welfare for workers, instead of benefiting from it? The more welfare pays, the worse a job at Amazon is in comparison, is it not? How does Amazon benefit from this?
- itslennysfault 2y ago
  The point is that they pay such low wages that their workers are still eligible for welfare when working there (despite being hugely profitable). This essentially means that tax dollars are subsidizing their profits.
  - plutaniano 2y ago
    > The point is that they pay such low wages that their workers are still eligible for welfare when working there (despite being hugely profitable) I'm not contesting this. This is a valid point. > This essentially means that tax dollars are subsidizing their profits. I don't see how this would be the case. Two scenarios: 1: - Welfare is now $0/month - Some people that could get by with welfare now can't. They start looking for jobs. - Increase in the supply of workers. - Decrease in wages. (good for amazon) 2: - Welfare is now $3k/month - Some people decide that it's no longer worth it to work. They'd rather just live off of welfare. - Decrease in the supply of workers. - Increase in wages. (bad for amazon)

405 points by ZuckMusk 2y ago

brk 2y ago

So they’re only one third through their optimization process?

ars 2y ago

How many non-Amazon warehouse worked are on food stamps or Medicaid? Without that comparison this title is just flame bait.

jonathankoren 2y ago
What’s the point of a job, if you can’t live on it? If you feel anger when reading that the largest and most profitable companies in the world won’t pay a living wage, the. You should be. There isn’t two side to simple greed and exploitation.
- astrange 2y ago
  "Living wage" assumes you're the head of a household, so it's a pretty incoherent idea applied to just anyone. You can live on pretty much anything as long as another member of the household can supply the rest. Minimum wage increases generally do not negatively affect employment, but if you set the minimum wage high enough to be a head of household "living wage", it certainly would make people unemployed. Or instead we could pay people welfare benefits and support them that way.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  You could just find a job to be fun. Eventually there will be jobs not worth paying people to do; subsidizing that at the government level seems fine (albeit not capitalistic) but that does require taxation (not necessarily on the higher paying jobs) to cover the shortfall.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Part of the reason for minimum wages is that by eliminating bad jobs (the ones seemingly not worth paying people for), it can save time and effort for workers who accidentally take those jobs when they could have found better ones. This is called search effects. Another related one is that it can increase your competitiveness with other countries, basically by making employers stop wasting time and think of more productive things for people to do. But the main reason they can help is that, insofar as employers are monopsonies (sole payers of wages), they often literally don't know what wages they "should" pay because they don't have any incentive to find out, and in that case setting a higher minimum wage actually causes everyone to become more employed.
- nomel 2y ago
  Why is this related to amazon though? It sounds like the blame should be fully put on the federal/local governments for the minimum wage that they've set.
  - readyman 2y ago
    The politicians are paid by the capitalists to keep minimum wages low.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Capitalists (large business owners) generally pay higher wages than the alternative, small/family business owners. Eg Walmart/Amazon have better benefits than an equivalent small business, unless you're the owner of that small business. But also, wages generally go up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N (This is "income", which is a superset of wages. I didn't link wages because those are confusing, average wages go up during recessions because the lower earning people get laid off.)
      - readyman 2y ago
        >Capitalists (large business owners) You don't know what a capitalist is and that's on you. Regardless, benefits and job security are abysmal at small businesses so even if you were right, the aggregate effect is the same. Productivity goes up and wages don't. >But also, wages generally go up Just utter nonsense. Accounting for COL, wages more often remain stagnant in the US over the past 50 years.
        astrange 2y ago
        > You don't know what a capitalist is and that's on you. Are you going to provide a definition? I think it's people who own and trade capital. > Regardless, benefits and job security are abysmal at small businesses so even if you were right You're agreeing with me and then doing "even if you were right"? Also, this is pretty much out of Marx - capitalism was better for workers than the preceding stage. Small businesses are the preceding stage. > Accounting for COL, wages more often remain stagnant in the US over the past 50 years. You said wages don't go up, which means nominal wages don't go up. If you wanted to say real wages don't go up that's a different question. And it's true because our response to the 2008 recession was bad. But not our response to the 2020 one! They're way up now! It's great. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010 Note, it's difficult for them to go too far up because of "wage-price spirals", and also generally because voters hate it when prices go up.
- ars 2y ago
  Amazon is hardly one of the "most profitable companies in the world". Also Amazon can't really raise prices without losing sales - I've already shifted many of my purchases because Amazon is too expensive. They don't really have room to raise wages without hurting the people who are buying the products. People forget that a lot - if you raise wages you also have to raise prices, which ends up hurting the exact people you are raising wages for. > What’s the point of a job, if you can’t live on it? To have more money than you had before. I feel no anger here, people are paid based on the economic value of their output. They are not paid based on their worth as humans. If you want to be paid more you need to be able to do move valuable work.
  - jonathankoren 2y ago
    > People forget that a lot - if you raise wages you also have to raise prices, which ends up hurting the exact people you are raising wages for. This is simply false. It’s false just thinking about it, and it’s false from multiple economic studies in the real world. It’s a common falsehood spread by corporations, but it’s false. First, you can’t have it both ways and say companies “can’t raise prices without losing sales” and then turn around and say, “if you raise wages, you have to raise prices” and “people are paid according to their economic value”. If all of these statements are true, then no one could ever be paid more than their starting wage, because if their pay increased, then sales would go down due to price increases. Even if a person’s perceived economic value increased, they could never be paid commiserate with their value, because that would lead to a decrease in sales. This is obviously false. Minimum wage increases simply don’t lead to price increases or unemployment or any of the sky is falling predictions typically touted. We’ve known this for over 30 years now. Of course, lest we forget, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 has been fixed since 2009, months much represents a real wage cut in 2024.
notatoad 2y ago
why does that distinction matter? are you saying it's okay for workers to be on medicaid or food stamps if they work in a warehouse, but not if they work in a different position?

sandworm101 2y ago

What percentage of non-amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps? We all love to hate Amazon, but such statistics are meaningless without context.

dangus 2y ago
No one who can hold down a job and is currently employed should need government assistance to survive. Doesn’t matter if it’s Amazon or its competitors.
- astrange 2y ago
  You need to apply marginal thinking here. They are better off with welfare benefits, which means it's a good thing that they have them. If you gave them more benefits, they would have more negotiating power and be able to become even more employed[0], and then would you complain more? [0] assuming that's what they want to do
  - RobotToaster 2y ago
    Giving benefits to employees, instead of forcing the company to pay a living wage, is effectively a subsidy for corporate profits.
    - astrange 2y ago
      No, giving money to employers is a subsidy for employers. Giving money to employees is a subsidy /against/ employers.
    - nickff 2y ago
      You seem to be assuming that if the government doesn’t give these people the money, the employer will. Why is that? Is it not also possible that the government benefits make low-wage work less appealing, thus lowering the supply, and increasing the compensation?
    - nradov 2y ago

boomboomsubban 2y ago

Here's an actual article about the survey https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-struggle-afford-140000178.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-warehouse-workers-stru...

brevitea 2y ago

... Just like Walmart. It's a shame.

astrange 2y ago
It's not, it's mostly a sign that benefits are working. Giving workers benefits /increases/ their compensation because it increases their negotiating power. This means they're earning more than they otherwise would. Not less. If it was less, that would mean benefits are bad and we should take them away!
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  It's essentially just a subsidy to large employers? So they can not pay their employees enough? Is this what these programs are intended for? I didn't understand it that way but maybe I'm wrong.
  - astrange 2y ago
    If it was a subsidy to large employers it would be paid to the employer. Those are called wage subsidies. (Health insurance in the US works like this, obviously it's not great.) These are paid to the worker though. That means it's a subsidy against the employer! It makes them worse off, not better.
  - brevhtff 2y ago
    [dead]
  - devmor 2y ago
    It is in effect a subsidy to employers, while still being a benefit to employees. As prior evidence shows, there is always someone willing to work for less, if they have to. As such, the only real solution to the issue that does not make the economic situation worse for employees is to punish corporations for paying so little that their employees need benefits from the government. Anything else only hurts the employees or provides greater subsidy to the employer.

ars 2y ago

Direct source: https://cued.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/219/2024/05/Handling-Hardship-Final_May2024.pdf https://cued.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/219/2024/05/Ha... "They were recruited into the survey using the Meta/Facebook" that's a red flag on the quality of the study. "To provide a more demographically representative picture, we reweighted survey responses using data on race and gender composition that Amazon reported to the EEOC in 2021.2" also a red flag because they already don't necessarily have a representative sample, and then are reweighting using data from a different selection criteria. The study said that 13% of workers moved into higher paying jobs within Amazon, and their numbers were removed from the study. Yah, I think I'm going to stop reading this study. Very low quality work.

taeric 2y ago
Removing those that progressed out of the pay scale feels especially odd? That should be seen as a success of employment for this, no? I'm also not a fan of focusing the headline or finding on a single company without a cohort to compare against. If anything, this would punish individual companies for hiring low income people at all. Easy to have 0% here if you just refuse to hire anyone that qualifies, after all. And that is a terrible goal. If I'm off on any of that, happy to be corrected.

blakesterz 2y ago

The numbers country wide: According to Pew [0] The numbers vary from month to month. But in April 2023, the most recent month with available figures, 41.9 million people in 22.2 million households received SNAP benefits. That translates to 12.5% of the total U.S. population. Fed says [1] 84,041,447 individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in the 51 states and the District of Columbia that reported enrollment data for January 2024. 0 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/19/what-the-data-says-about-food-stamps-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/19/what-the-... 1 https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica...

decremental 2y ago
The 51 states huh
- something168581 2y ago
  > in the 51 states and the District of Columbia in the 51 (states and DC)
  - decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
llsf 2y ago
That is the number that a friend working for SNAP told... 1 out 8 Americans is on food stamps.
- bombcar 2y ago
  You'd be surprised, many people qualify for SNAP and may not realize it. It's based on income, and handled by the states, and the income limit climbs based on number of children. Some states you can get it if you're pregnant no matter what. (It can often be a strategic thing to get if you can, because large numbers of other programs that require applications will declare you automatically qualify if you get SNAP.) Most states are following the federal guidelines of 200% of the poverty line. Four kids is $80k a year and still qualifies. Household size: monthly pre-tax income limit - 1: $2,430 - 2: $3,288 - 3: $4,144 - 4: $5,000 - 5: $5,858 - 6: $6,714 - 7: $7,570

RobotToaster 2y ago

I'm surprised it's that low.

mountainb 2y ago

This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would otherwise need to be replaced at higher rates. Should the companies shoulder more of the burden? It would be fairer and more just, but words about justice are cheap and power is expensive.

gruez 2y ago
>It prevents competition How does food stamps/medicaid prevent competition?
- notatoad 2y ago
  because small companies can't get away with paying poverty wages. amazon jobs are ubiquitous and well-known enough that people treat it as a fallback. if you can't find a better job, you go work in the amazon warehouse or as a wal-mart cashier, because they're always hiring. companies that don't operate on the same scale aren't constantly hiring, so they can't get the same benefit of being the fallback option for people and have to offer wages that are high enough to actually attract employees.
  - ilya_m 2y ago
    Is this really? If foodstamps were to suddenly disappear, would Amazon increase their wages? I doubt it. In fact, there would be _more_ desperate people scrambling for some paying jobs, which would depress wages further. Right?
  - gruez 2y ago
    > amazon jobs are ubiquitous and well-known enough that people treat it as a fallback. if you can't find a better job, you go work in the amazon warehouse or as a wal-mart cashier, because they're always hiring. I agree that larger companies are better capitalized and therefore can better withstand economic shocks than smaller companies, but how does that mean that foodstamps "prevents competition"? Foodstamps aren't tied to a specific employer, so it doesn't favor large companies over smaller one, because employees can continue to get benefits even after switching jobs.

johnea 2y ago

This is reminiscent of the incidents where walmart was instructing new hires on how to apply for food stamps...

twoodfin 2y ago
Like universities guide students on how to apply for government grants and loans? Or for that matter, professors applying for research grants? What’s the scandal?

tycho-newman 2y ago

Walmart is another such employer.

bluedino 2y ago
Very true. Companies like McDonald's and Walmart (the two employers with the most employees that qualify for food stamps) have a lot of part-time employees. Do Amazon Warehouses?
- astrange 2y ago
  Is that "McDonald's" or is it "McDonald's franchisees"?
abigail95 2y ago
Is this bad? I'm so confused by this whole thread. Can you get higher productivity by hiring these workers than Walmart? If no - then why is Walmart the bad guy for paying their employees more than any other company that would have them?

scarface_74 2y ago

Trying to balance my bleeding heart and pro capitalism free market proclivities… Let the market decide how much employees get paid and increase taxes on corporations to fund a social safety net and remove loopholes. Also make any state tax incentives that a state gives a corporation to locate there taxable on the federal level.

Seattle3503 2y ago
I agree with this. It is societies responsibility, through their elected government, to take care of people. If we need to support people more, we raise taxes and provide more support via the government. Holding the employer as responsible leads to things like employer provided healthcare, which ties people more strongly to their employer. Weakening the ties between employee and employer makes the workforce more dynamic and mobile.
- k8svet 2y ago
  How though? We raise corporate taxes on every corporation? We somehow target those with a certain percentage of employees on government subsidies?
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Raise corporate taxes on every corporation based on revenue. We have a graduated system of income taxes for people, do the same for corporations. Small mom and pop companies wouldn’t see an increase. But the Amazon’s of the world would.
  - abigail95 2y ago
    Why would you want to tax the people hiring the low skilled workers rather than the ones not hiring them? Please help me understand this I genuinely don't understand that position.

not2b 2y ago

If workers need government aid to make basic ends meet, it is the employer, not the employee, that is on welfare, subsidized by taxpayers and government borrowing.

dantheman 2y ago
That is not correct - a person with no skills who has 10 kids will never be able to support themselves via a job. It is welfare for them.
- astrange 2y ago
  In that case the welfare is for the kids, not for the parent. i.e. the number of kids is more important than what their head of household is earning. Welfare is mainly intended for children and the elderly because we don't want child laborers.
- gottorf 2y ago
  A person with no skills wouldn't be able to support themselves regardless of the number of kids. And I suppose that's ultimately the problem: through a combination of technological advances, which automate much unskilled labor, and a broken incentive structure in many social welfare programs, which disincentivize investment in human capital (because of the "benefit cliff"), a larger and larger underclass of unemployable[0] people grows. [0]: meaning, the economic value of their labor output is less than the minimum cost to employ them.
- f-securus 2y ago
  A person with no skills that works 40+ hrs a week should be earning enough to live on.
  - missedthecue 2y ago
    If you work the lowest paid job at Amazon 40+ hours per week, you literally cannot qualify for government benefits unless you have like 3+ kids and you're a single parent.
- 2y ago

throwaway14356 2y ago

I would like to see negative income tax. You have to insert the fresh printed money into the economy some place. Why not have people work for it?

astrange 2y ago
We have that in the form of EITC and child tax credits. They should be better though.
strictnein 2y ago
Through the Earned Income Tax Credit a some low earners do experience a negative federal income tax. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/earned-income-tax-credit-eitc/ https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/earned-income...
- throwaway14356 2y ago
  Income inequality is a big problem but this would be the only remedy I wouldn't like. Maybe do a percentage that excludes earnings beyond 500k Should we want businesses that need public money to continue to operate? I suppose one should critically examine their usefulness. If they fail 0% income tax on salary would be good enough. OT: It struck me a while back what work was involved in running a government using only paper. I guess they all found ways to burn the excessive funds over the years as the real work kinda vanished. I hear Estonia made an effort to write laws that are easy to automate simply because they didn't have money. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/1a89ed5e-en.pdf?expires=1716592717&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=E36A890D5229DBD2B2F548A1EC801BA3 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/1a89ed5e-en.pdf?expi...

devd00d 2y ago

People should take a history lesson from France. Let them eat cake.

_ache_ 2y ago
Can you elaborate? What did France do exactly? Apart from having a minimal (but working) welfare system. For several decades, liberal policies have been driving down the welfare system and the minimum wage. Macron is definitively trying to put a end to the french social welfare system.
- educasean 2y ago
  I assume the original comment was calling for a revolution
- marcusverus 2y ago
  He's suggesting that we break out the guillotines and murder the rich. That worked out great for the French, after all.
  - undersuit 2y ago
    But if you say "Let them eat cake"... you're not on the right side of the situation being proposed.
Nasrudith 2y ago
Did you read the rest of the history book? It wound up with them not only restoring the monarchy multiple times but getting a goddamned Emperor who went all proto-Hitler and tried to conquer all of Europe!

fzeroracer 2y ago

Ultimately, the goal is to maximize worker exploitation. And to maximize exploitation, you need just enough welfare for people to survive, but not enough welfare for them to choose better jobs. For example; in this scenario if we offered individuals far stronger welfare benefits (schooling benefits, UBI etc) the odds are that very few people would be warehouse workers for Amazon. Alternatively, if we we forced companies to pay for this welfare (such as with progressive taxation based on # of individuals working and on welfare), then they would offer higher wages and with higher wages gives greater mobility. Make no mistake, this is a feature not a bug of our system. It is designed to keep the poor working in jobs that maintain their poverty.

abigail95 2y ago
Paying people >MPL doesn't work. The math just doesn't work. You can't hire people and pay them less than their output. If you tax Amazon more because they hire low skilled workers then the MPL of each low skill worker decrease. Does that increase or decrease the incentive to hire these people? what happens to the price of labor when demand drops? If your options are pay a worker more than they produce or pay a similar amount in tax, aggregate wages will go down, not up.

bluedino 2y ago

Don't forget that Amazon (and any other employer that applies for it) gets a $9,600 WOTC tax credit for employing a SNAP recipient (as well as veterans etc) https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/work-opportunity-tax-credit https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

lasermike026 2y ago

TAX AMAZON! TAX BEZOS! That is all.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

Surprised Dan Price keeps getting attention here. I thought he got busted for his “altruism” being a way to deflect from his women’s abuse/harassment and stealing from his brother.

Seattle3503 2y ago

A lot of comments have the assumption that it is corporations responsibility to look after people. That philosophy is how we get healthcare tied to one's employer. That approach attaches workers to their employer and makes switching jobs harder. I think it is better to see it as the government's responsibility to take care of it citizens. Medicaid, food stamps, and the negative income tax represents this approach. We don't necessarily see it as a bad thing that the government takes care of citizens. If someone is struggling, it is the governments role to step in and support that person. But it does make sense to talk about whether these programs provide sufficient support, or if our approach to taxation, which supports these programs, is fair.

cardy31 2y ago
Setting reasonable minimum wages would take care of citizens without a patchwork of programs being needed.
- gruez 2y ago
  If you want the government to "take care of it citizens", what we actually need is a floor on income (eg. welfare/UBI), not a floor on wages (ie. minimum wage). Minimum wage does nothing for people who are unemployed, of which it's inevitably going to exacerbate.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    > Minimum wage does nothing for people who are unemployed, of which it's inevitably going to exacerbate. Yet more "privatize profits, socialize the costs". Minimum wage has always trailed living wage. Often by a decade plus. It's always in arrears that it is updated (and several of the last updates have been further and further apart). Businesses have been able to pay people less than liveable wages, and then when there's an attempt at parity, they scream about how unfair it will be to that untouchable and sacrosanct pillar of American society, the Small Business Owner. Except I don't recall reading anywhere that a business owner was entitled to profitability. At a certain point, if your business can't afford to keep up with living wage needs, the solution is to close your doors, not advocate for underpaying people.

deleted 2y ago

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Tiktaalik 2y ago

If a corporation is making strong profits and its workforce is on poverty level incomes and relying on public financial support to survive, kind of feels like it makes sense for the government to claw back those profits in higher taxation. Notion being that the corporation that is so severely under paying its work force isn't genuinely profitable and is falsely portraying itself as so.

Noble6 2y ago
Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state. They also offer benefits. Concluding Amazon isn’t paying enough, because a large portion of their workforce qualifies for food stamps, is the wrong conclusion.
- Fauntleroy 2y ago
  If you knew someone working at an Amazon Warehouse position who needed to use government benefits to get by, would you consider them "well" or even "fairly" paid?
  - Fernicia 2y ago
    What is your null hypothesis here? Would they be better off if Amazon moved their warehouse to another state or country?
    - Symbiote 2y ago
      Amazon can raise prices slightly.
      - pornel 2y ago
        Or Bezos can have fewer yachts?
    - Fauntleroy 2y ago
      The "hypothesis" is that you can, in fact, dislike it when people are criminally underpaid by corporations, even if it is supposedly a "good" wage.

0xbadc0de5 2y ago

Shame on Amazon for providing jobs to poor people. Best not to worry too much about it, in a few years they'll be replaced by robots.

atleastoptimal 2y ago

Here's the thing. This is going to happen to everyone, as in, no person will be valuable enough via the contribution of their labor to survive without subsidies. At the level of automation we've reached in society, low-skilled labor is worth, per hour, a very small amount. As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility. The only way around this is to let those people starve or implement UBI. There is no magical future where AI serves as a democratizing "labor enhancer" for the masses. The value-add of some random person will be 0 in nearly all cases. We will have to decouple our implicit assumption that a person's value is tied to their potential economic value.

skhunted 2y ago
I believe labor is worth whatever the employer can get away with. As such the value of the cheapest labor is what society allows companies to get away with. An employee's wages should be high enough to live off of and this should be enforced by having high labor standards.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rlpb 2y ago
  That's all very well for those lucky enough to be employed. In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? Eventually, that's going to be nearly everyone.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? A lot of work that's absolutely needed for our survival is still paid dogshit: think construction, cleaning, waste disposal, agriculture, fruit picking, etc. Even in developed countries with human rights, most of this work is done by what are basically modern slave workers usually from abroad on dinghy visas. Those are the jobs getting the least amount of automation. Robotics is insanely far away from reaching the speed, dexterity, cognition, perception, adaptability and cost for that to be automated at the same rock bottom prices as human slaves.

wkat4242 2y ago

Being on public healthcare is not really a shame though. It's like totally normal here in Europe :P And pretty good too. I'm glad I don't have any worry about my healthcare, the risk of insane bills, that I might lose expensive cover if I get fired (which is in itself also a lot less likely as there's no "at will" here) etc. It's just a solved problem. Yeah it costs us some taxes but it's not as insanely expensive as in the US (in fact I probably pay less tax than a US citizen pays in monthly health insurance). I think state healthcare is pretty ideal. Food stamps though, that's not cool.

malfist 2y ago
> Food stamps though, that's not cool. Why?
- wkat4242 2y ago
  I view that as something that's really for people who can't take care of their basic nutritional needs. That's not normal in a civilised society. After all, food is cheap. We subsidise and socialise healthcare because the cost between people can vary extremely (it can cost between nothing and millions per year!) and it's a basic need. Food is not like that, basic food needs cost roughly the same for everyone. Of course there's $1000 a plate restaurants but those are not a basic need, you can get just as much nutrition for $5. Someone who has a job should be able to cover food and housing. Otherwise society is severely broken.

paxys 2y ago

This is a nuanced discussion that is always derailed by the usual "down with evil corporations!!" rhetoric. Let's say there are a thousand people on food stamps, getting $2000/mo from the government. A company comes along and says "we will employ all thousand people part-time for $1000/mo, and so the government now only has to pay them $1000/mo in assistance". Did the company do a good thing for society? What if the company had instead said "we will employ 500 people full-time and pay them $2000/mo, so now the government only has to take care of the remaining 500"? Is that better or worse? Or what if the company only employed a hundred people and paid them $10000/mo so they could live a good life, at the expense of the rest? If one of the employees had 8 dependents and another had none, should they both get the same salary for the same work? What if it isn't enough for raising 8 kids? Or if none of these options are palatable should the company and its warehouse not be allowed to exist at all? How does the government generate tax revenue for social services in the first place then?

ihumanable 2y ago
It's an interesting question. Employees have to generate more value for the employer than the employer pays the employee, otherwise the employer won't employ the employee, or they will go bankrupt. So let's say you have someone that's getting the $2000/mo from the government for assistance. Amazon hires them and pays them $1000/mo, the only way this makes sense for Amazon is if they can extract more than $1000/mo of value out of that employee. I think where the disconnect is in a lot of these conversations is how much value is being extracted. Let's say an employee earning $1000/mo generates $1500/mo of value for Amazon. Then the fact that the government has to support them to the tune of $1000/mo as well might be acceptable. Amazon gets profit, government (and the tax payers) have to spend $1000/mo less, employee gets enough money to live. Everyone is happy. Let's say an employee earning $1000/mo generates $5000/mo of value for Amazon. This scenario is a bit harder to accept, why should the tax payers have to subsidize those low wages when Amazon could pay $2000/mo and still make a healthy profit? The problem is that that figure, "how much value does an employee generate?" is hard to come by. You can get more aggregate figures https://csimarket.com/stocks/AMZN-Revenue-per-Employee.html https://csimarket.com/stocks/AMZN-Revenue-per-Employee.html which tell us that every employee generates on average $326,428 but it is harder to find details on "How much value does an amazon warehouse worker generate?" So it all hinges on how much value Amazon extracts from the worker. If it's $50/mo then I don't think anyone is picking up their pitchforks. If it's $4000/mo and they've decided that they can squeeze their workforce because the tax payer will pick up the slack and they can pocket the difference, then pitchforks come out.

Aunche 2y ago

Not sure how this economic illiterate Twitter post has nearly 100 upvotes within an hour. This is not how a subsidy works. I'm sure Amazon execs would be happy for the government to end their "subsidy", which would increase the demand for employment and downwardly pressure wages. Just because Jeff Bezo's company is primarily a retail company with lower margins than Dan Price's higher margin B2B company doesn't mean that Bezos is any more responsible for people's welfare than Dan Price is. The problem of these bad economic takes is that they make the assumption that if only these greedy companies paid employees more money, all of society's problems would be fixed. We already know that this isn't true. Americans already has the highest incomes in the world. The San Francisco residents have highest incomes in America, but continue to have the worst rates of homelessness in America. Throwing more money won't solve fundamentally broken healthcare and housing systems.

etc-hosts 2y ago
>The San Francisco residents have highest incomes in America, but continue to have the worst rates of homelessness in America Not true.
- Aunche 2y ago
  Ok. One of the worst rates of homelessness in America. Big difference. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-homeless-crisis-oakland-new-report-housing-18262961.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-homeless-crisis-oa... You see even more homelessness in nearby Oakland, whose residents are still some of the wealthiest in America.

tootie 2y ago

I get the point, but this is a terrible goalpost to be using. Medicaid and SNAP have both expanded enrollment by making it easier to qualify. Being on government assistance is neither here nor there. I realize it's being used a proxy for poverty, but that's not going to be very accurate. There are multiple ways to qualify for these programs. Being a sold bread-winner for a family of 5 is a different scenario to a secondary breadwinner for a family of 2. We have enough direct data to compare their compensation levels that don't involve shaming people for needing help. Also, this guy has no citations.

simonsarris 2y ago

From the actual article: > A third of survey respondents reported using government-funded programs – primarily food stamps or Medicaid – in the last three months. It's very hard to gauge what the real numbers are from that quote. It's also hard to gauge if Amazon made these people better or worse off. But again, from the actual article: > Amazon’s median US employee was paid $45,613 in 2023, up from $41,762 the year before, the company said in a filing last month. The company says employees in warehousing and transportation are paid more than $20.50 an hour, on average. The survey, which was conducted between April and August 2023, excluded managers and skews a bit lower: Most respondents reported wages from $16 to $20 an hour. > Some 65% of workers who come to Amazon earn more than they were making at their previous employer, the survey shows. https://archive.is/J1MFq#selection-1767.0-1771.116 https://archive.is/J1MFq#selection-1767.0-1771.116

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Approximate nationwide list from 2020 produced by GAO: Walmart McDonald’s FedEx Amazon Dollar General Kroger Dollar Tree, Inc. Safeway Waffle House Burger King Goodwill Sonic https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/18/food-stamps-medicaid-mcdonalds-walmart-bernie-sanders/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/18/food-stam... https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45

mindslight 2y ago

All I see is: > Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (Strict Mode) is known to cause issues on x.com The dumpster fire rises. I love the inversion of responsibility there. I guess everyone should just use GoogleAds Chrome.

more_corn 2y ago

And Amazon pays no taxes

AlbertCory 2y ago

> according to a new survey which, conveniently, is not disclosed. How would a survey manager get that data, for ALL warehouse workers? So most likely they sampled one warehouse and relied on voluntary participation. Amazon certainly isn't going to go out of their way to help them out.

legitster 2y ago

We really need to stop treating this as such a "gotcha!" The whole idea of welfare is that it is supposed to go to people who need it - working or not. Are people on Food Stamps always going to be unemployed? No? Then are they are going to be employed somewhere? Am I supposed to be mad that these programs are working as designed? Food stamps and medicaid in particular are also explicitly tied to family need. Unless Amazon is going to start paying someone with a family of 5 more than a person with a family of 3, these criteria are always going to be malleable. (In our state, Medicaid eligibility goes up to $80k in income and up to $100k for food stamps!) As a proud taxpayer, I am happy my money is going towards working families. I would be more concerned had it not. And I am not going to pretend to be shocked that the beneficiaries work in (surprise) low-income jobs.

adammarples 2y ago
The food stamps are working as designed, no criticism there. It's the jobs that aren't.
- skeaker 2y ago
  Yeah, I took the article to signal that Amazon isn't doing enough for its employees.
Vegenoid 2y ago
Agree with all that. The criticism is that this is a big, American company, one of the largest and most impactful ever, that makes lots of money and is quite profitable, and yet pays its workers low enough that they need to be subsidized with tax dollars. Your tax dollars are given to Amazon's workers, so that Amazon can continue employing them for low wages, and the money saved by paying low wages is going into the shareholder's pockets. Is that a system that you are happy with, and would be fine with continuing in perpetuity? Obviously, there isn't a silver bullet, and every potential solution has thorns, but are food stamps really meant to perpetually sustain individuals that make low wages at companies that can afford to pay them more?
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> (In our state, Medicaid eligibility goes up to $80k in income and up to $100k for food stamps!) In FL, Medicaid adult eligibility ceiling is $Ø. Also the next states over. And states past that. And more states. In FL SNAP income limits for adults are [whatever the ASCII symbol is for irrelevant]. Whatever the guidelines are, the vast majority of impoverished adults are denied. Same for next states over. And you get the idea. Folks posting from states that aren't hostile to vulnerable people are posting their healthcare/assistance figures - in a way that seems to imply their numbers could well represent America. They don't tho.

hnburnsy 2y ago

Amazon statement to Time magazine on this study... >In an emailed statement, Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly called the researchers’ methodology “deeply flawed” and said the company had tried to raise its concerns with the study’s authors but never heard back. >“It’s a survey that ignores best practices for surveying, has limited verification safeguards to confirm respondents are Amazon employees, and doesn’t prevent multiple responses from the same person,” he said. Kelly added that Amazon has increased average pay to $20.50 an hour and provides a range of benefits, including health care, dental, 401(k) and pre-paid tuition.

yonran 2y ago

It is counterproductive to shame an employer for hiring hundreds of thousands of low-income workers who would likely be on government assistance regardless of Amazon. By all means, we can regulate companies to ensure that working conditions are safe and encourage companies to provide more opportunities for advancement. But the act of hiring low-wage workers who need welfare is a good thing. What are other companies doing to employ non-college-educated workers in the bad parts of town?

nojvek 2y ago

In any economy you need consumers and producers. US economy has been trending towards fewer owners owning means of production. Which makes sense, any business marginally better than their completion keeps on growing, the delta between 1st and 2nd keeps on increasing over time. US consumer spending is strong right now. That is great for producers. If the economy goes to shit, govt can hand out stimulus and inject money into economy. Propping up demand is very easy - stimulus checks! Propping up supply is very hard - requires great infrastructure, a check on monopolies, investments that encourage innovation and competition. The fact that the young generation are so squeezed, they are not having kids is a sign that we’ve fucked up. The big have gotten too big and there isn’t enough competition to prop up supply and bring prices down. Both parties love turning on the money printer, driving up inflation. It’s the societal equivalent of global warming. A slow disaster booking the frog.

imgabe 2y ago

Instead of pumping in ever more money to feed inflation, why don’t we ask how we can make food and healthcare cheaper? Why is it “Amazon doesn’t pay enough for workers to afford healthcare” instead of “Healthcare is so exorbitantly expensive even people with relatively well paying jobs can’t afford it without government assistance”?

abigail95 2y ago
It's not amazon doesn't pay enough, amazon is the one paying these workers the most - else they would work somewhere else. Everyone else except amazon is to blame for not paying them enough. Why are people framing this like amazon is doing something wrong? They are the highest bidder for these low wage workers, not the lowest bidder?

ThinkBeat 2y ago

I have no idea who this guy is, but a link / source would make the X post a lot more trustworthy.

jmward01 2y ago

I think an issue here is pointing out Amazon. A corporation should take every inch of the law available to them, but no more. They are only evil if they then lobby to make things worse. Amazon workers needing assistance is not an issue with amazon, it is an issue with us ('us' being the US). We make it allowable to create a job that doesn't cover the minimums. 'part time' allows benefits to be slashed. 'gig' allows even more to be taken. Every job should have a living wage with usable health benefits and a path to retirement. Every job that doesn't do this, inevitably, is being subsidized by the tax payer and I for one don't want to pay it any more. There should be laws that heavily tax workplaces that don't meet the minimum standards in order to pay for the programs their workers are forced to use to survive.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

black_13 2y ago

[dead]

dave333 2y ago

Have govt mandated living standards - medicare for all, minimum wage. Make corps revenue neutral - they fund all the services for their employees. Govt fund unemployed including UBI. Make corp tax rate = base + misery index = base + inflation + unemployment

RecycledEle 2y ago

If you hire someone who has been on disability for more than 2 years, they still get their Medicaid for a year or two. I hope that explains most of this.

arresin 2y ago

How much tax subsidy is that for Amazon?

plutaniano 2y ago

Doesn't Amazon have to compete with welfare for workers, instead of benefiting from it? The more welfare pays, the worse a job at Amazon is in comparison, is it not? How does Amazon benefit from this?

itslennysfault 2y ago
The point is that they pay such low wages that their workers are still eligible for welfare when working there (despite being hugely profitable). This essentially means that tax dollars are subsidizing their profits.
- plutaniano 2y ago
  > The point is that they pay such low wages that their workers are still eligible for welfare when working there (despite being hugely profitable) I'm not contesting this. This is a valid point. > This essentially means that tax dollars are subsidizing their profits. I don't see how this would be the case. Two scenarios: 1: - Welfare is now $0/month - Some people that could get by with welfare now can't. They start looking for jobs. - Increase in the supply of workers. - Decrease in wages. (good for amazon) 2: - Welfare is now $3k/month - Some people decide that it's no longer worth it to work. They'd rather just live off of welfare. - Decrease in the supply of workers. - Increase in wages. (bad for amazon)