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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

#101

Post by gottorf »

jacobolus wrote: post #49
nomel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 grou…

> Jeff Bezos founded Amazon 30 years ago and is now worth more than $200 billion

Computing someone's net worth by multiplying the number of shares he holds by the last-traded price of that share yields a theoretical number that's only good for placing people on Forbes rich lists and as fodder for demagogues. It is not possible for him to actually convert all of his shares to $200B.

> gained about $7 billion per year on average, heavily loaded toward more recent years

If anyone could be blamed for this, blame the Fed for endless ZIRP, QE, and other asset-inflationary policies that made it so that capital had to pour into companies like AMZN.

> 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

A large group of people who are compensated for the work they do and are free to choose to work for a different employer.

> is not fundamentally all that different from a feudal peasant society divided between peasants and nobles

Is it valid to compare someone who started a company in and then benefited from a system of (mostly) voluntary exchange of goods and services to feudal lords who extracted rents from their peasants under the threat of violence?

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

#102

Post by VS1999 »

dantheman wrote: post #54
not2b wrote: post #50

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.

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.

You came up with an extreme example that virtually never happens as a counterpoint to something that is ubiquitous in modern life. This behavior is why people don't like this forum.

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

#103

Post by taeric »

ars wrote: post #10

Direct source: 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 h…

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.

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

#104

Post by cardy31 »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #100

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…

Setting reasonable minimum wages would take care of citizens without a patchwork of programs being needed.

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

#105

Post by something168581 »

decremental wrote: post #17
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…

The 51 states huh

> in the 51 states and the District of Columbia

in the 51 (states and DC)

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

massysett wrote: post #23
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.

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]

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

#108

Post by ilya_m »

notatoad wrote: post #83
gruez wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It prevents competition How does food stamps/medicaid prevent competition?

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 peo…

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?

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

#109

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mountainb wrote: post #35

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 other…

> 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.

But how is this related to the subject?

There is an article lamenting that a third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps. Now suppose that Amazon paid more taxes and correspondingly provided more funding for the food stamp program. The next week a third of Amazon warehouse workers would still be on food stamps and media outlets would still be publishing the same clickbait headline.

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

#110

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

bombcar wrote: post #39
llsf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the number that a friend working for SNAP told... 1 out 8 Americans is on food stamps.

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.) M…

> You'd be surprised, many people qualify for SNAP and may not realize it.

Also surprising is the number of people who lack food and SNAP isn't available to them.

> Most states are following [guidelines where $2,430 can get SNAP]

Most states meaning 52%? Asking because there are plenty of millions who can't get SNAP with zero income.

Source: 2008-2018 in hunger level poverty with kids. SNAP consistently denied for all but 6 mos.

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