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

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

#41

Post by iancmceachern »

nomel wrote: post #31
iancmceachern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#42

Post by nomel »

jonathankoren wrote: post #21
ars wrote: post #3

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

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.

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.

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

#43

Post by astrange »

ketralnis wrote: post #32
astrange wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It's incrementally better for them to be making $20 instead of $10, sure. But it's worse for the world for that to be footed by the tax payer instead of by the trillion dollar company that they work for. In effect the tax payers are lining Amazon's pockets.

The tax payers are /taking money from/ Amazon, because giving the workers money means that Amazon has to pay them more money to compete.

You can set a minimum wage too if you want, and it usually has positive effects in practice, but these two things are not opposed to each other.

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

#44

Post by ars »

jonathankoren wrote: post #21
ars wrote: post #3

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

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.

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.

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

#45

Post by adamwk »

blakesterz wrote: post #11

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 da…

60% of those people were not employed, unlike the Amazon workers workers

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

#46

Post by iancmceachern »

astrange wrote: post #22
iancmceachern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

They recently changed that, they famously reported a 30+ billion dollar profit last year.

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

#47

Post by scarface_74 »

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.

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

#48

Post by readyman »

nomel wrote: post #42
jonathankoren wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The politicians are paid by the capitalists to keep minimum wages low.

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

#49

Post by jacobolus »

nomel wrote: post #31
iancmceachern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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