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I dont agree. It's more about the relative income from the warehouse workers to the CEO. Even if the post office has the exact same percentage of workers on f

I dont agree. It's more about the relative income from the warehouse workers to the CEO. Even if the post office has the exact same percentage of workers on food stamps, I would argue that because the postmaster general makes so much less than Amazon leadership that Amazon has the privilege and ability to do better, and still run a profitable business. It's about profit, and sharing it more equitably.

WillAdams 2y ago
The concept you are looking for is "payslope", and it should be a standard part of such conversations: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/how-one-company-levels-the-pay-slope-of-executives-and-workers/article15472738/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/h...
astrange 2y ago
Amazon is famously not very profitable, mostly because they reinvest everything in growth.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  They recently changed that, they famously reported a 30+ billion dollar profit last year.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
massysett 2y ago
If Amazon took the CEO’s salary and reduced it to zero and distributed the savings to every line employee, how much money would each line employee get?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- massysett 2y ago
  Just to come up with a ballpark, I pulled some numbers from Google. Perhaps Amazon has 700,000 warehouse workers in the United States. CEO Andy Jassy's total compensation package in 2021 was about $212 million, though it dropped to $1.3 million the next year. So $212 million divided by 700,000 is about $303 for a warehouse employee for one year. Not close to enough to get anyone off food stamps.
  - hoosieree 2y ago
    Headline says 1/3 of those 700k are on food stamps. Would an extra $900/year be enough?
    - sethammons 2y ago
      That's $40/wk - when we were that poor, that would have helped but not solved our food needs
nomel 2y ago
For anyone curious about the math: The Amazon CEO pay was $212 million in 2021. There are 700k warehouse workers. If the CEO put 99% of their pay to the warehouse workers, each would get an about $300/year, or $25/month more.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  If you asked many of them if that amount would he meaningful to them they would say yes. IFor some it's the difference between a good holiday season or not. Just because it doesn't seem like a meaningful amount to you, doesn't mean that tracks to folks who are struggling. Source - my mom just retired from the Amazon Warehouse night shift.
- jacobolus 2y ago
  Jeff Bezos founded Amazon 30 years ago and is now worth more than $200 billion. So he has personally gained about $7 billion per year on average, heavily loaded toward more recent years. If you expand consideration from just him to all of Amazon's major shareholders, top management, board members, etc., and then compare to the warehouse workers, "contractor" delivery drivers, etc., it's plain to see that a large group who does most of the work ends up begging for scraps while a small owner elite collects the lion's share of the rewards. The way the power relations work is not fundamentally all that different from a feudal peasant society divided between peasants and nobles, though thankfully it's quite a bit less physically violent.
  - astrange 2y ago
    > So he has personally gained about $7 billion per year on average, heavily loaded toward more recent years. He was paid that by Amazon investors, who basically want to give him money because he's Jeff Bezos. If the warehouse workers owned the shares, those investors would have to want to give just as much money to them, but it doesn't seem like they do. (Clearer case is Elon, who is pretty obviously super rich entirely because a lot of people want to specifically give him money. They're investor celebrities.)
  - gottorf 2y ago
taeric 2y ago
You are basically arguing that rich entities shouldn't employ low income employees, with this logic. While you can imagine this means richer people will start to do all of their low income work, that also means there are no lower income jobs. We can hope those are simply shifted up the pay scale, but it is equally as likely that the jobs just go away. Likely not full classes of jobs, mind you, but certainly there will be fewer low payed jobs than otherwise. Just as likely, you will get companies relationships structured such that these relationships are not direct. Which... by definition is adding middlemen to the equation. I'm not a huge fan of efficiency arguments, but this does seem needless bad in that realm.
- iancmceachern 2y ago
  This is reducto ad absurdum
  - taeric 2y ago
    In a real sense, so is the other argument. It is not based on any real principal. It is literally reducing the argument to the absurd difference between the richest and the poorest. I'm happy to see evidence on any studies that focus on optimal ratios of income for different people in an organization. Resting this on "relative income from the warehouse workers to the CEO" would need more than appeal to emotion. I say all of this as someone that is all for taxing rich people.

WillAdams 2y ago

The concept you are looking for is "payslope", and it should be a standard part of such conversations: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/how-one-company-levels-the-pay-slope-of-executives-and-workers/article15472738/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/h...

astrange 2y ago

Amazon is famously not very profitable, mostly because they reinvest everything in growth.

iancmceachern 2y ago
They recently changed that, they famously reported a 30+ billion dollar profit last year.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

massysett 2y ago

If Amazon took the CEO’s salary and reduced it to zero and distributed the savings to every line employee, how much money would each line employee get?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
massysett 2y ago
Just to come up with a ballpark, I pulled some numbers from Google. Perhaps Amazon has 700,000 warehouse workers in the United States. CEO Andy Jassy's total compensation package in 2021 was about $212 million, though it dropped to $1.3 million the next year. So $212 million divided by 700,000 is about $303 for a warehouse employee for one year. Not close to enough to get anyone off food stamps.
- hoosieree 2y ago
  Headline says 1/3 of those 700k are on food stamps. Would an extra $900/year be enough?
  - sethammons 2y ago
    That's $40/wk - when we were that poor, that would have helped but not solved our food needs

nomel 2y ago

For anyone curious about the math: The Amazon CEO pay was $212 million in 2021. There are 700k warehouse workers. If the CEO put 99% of their pay to the warehouse workers, each would get an about $300/year, or $25/month more.

iancmceachern 2y ago
If you asked many of them if that amount would he meaningful to them they would say yes. IFor some it's the difference between a good holiday season or not. Just because it doesn't seem like a meaningful amount to you, doesn't mean that tracks to folks who are struggling. Source - my mom just retired from the Amazon Warehouse night shift.
jacobolus 2y ago
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon 30 years ago and is now worth more than $200 billion. So he has personally gained about $7 billion per year on average, heavily loaded toward more recent years. If you expand consideration from just him to all of Amazon's major shareholders, top management, board members, etc., and then compare to the warehouse workers, "contractor" delivery drivers, etc., it's plain to see that a large group who does most of the work ends up begging for scraps while a small owner elite collects the lion's share of the rewards. The way the power relations work is not fundamentally all that different from a feudal peasant society divided between peasants and nobles, though thankfully it's quite a bit less physically violent.
- astrange 2y ago
  > So he has personally gained about $7 billion per year on average, heavily loaded toward more recent years. He was paid that by Amazon investors, who basically want to give him money because he's Jeff Bezos. If the warehouse workers owned the shares, those investors would have to want to give just as much money to them, but it doesn't seem like they do. (Clearer case is Elon, who is pretty obviously super rich entirely because a lot of people want to specifically give him money. They're investor celebrities.)
- gottorf 2y ago

taeric 2y ago

You are basically arguing that rich entities shouldn't employ low income employees, with this logic. While you can imagine this means richer people will start to do all of their low income work, that also means there are no lower income jobs. We can hope those are simply shifted up the pay scale, but it is equally as likely that the jobs just go away. Likely not full classes of jobs, mind you, but certainly there will be fewer low payed jobs than otherwise. Just as likely, you will get companies relationships structured such that these relationships are not direct. Which... by definition is adding middlemen to the equation. I'm not a huge fan of efficiency arguments, but this does seem needless bad in that realm.

iancmceachern 2y ago
This is reducto ad absurdum
- taeric 2y ago
  In a real sense, so is the other argument. It is not based on any real principal. It is literally reducing the argument to the absurd difference between the richest and the poorest. I'm happy to see evidence on any studies that focus on optimal ratios of income for different people in an organization. Resting this on "relative income from the warehouse workers to the CEO" would need more than appeal to emotion. I say all of this as someone that is all for taxing rich people.