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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

#311

Post by calibas »

Noble6 wrote: post #155
Tiktaalik wrote: post #113

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.

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.

> Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, so that's not saying much.

Going by state minimum wage, your statement is incorrect. According to Google the average Amazon warehouse worker in California makes $17-18 an hour. California minimum wage is $16 per hour.

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

#312

Post by parineum »

locococo wrote: post #284
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that how the market should work? Economically depressed area has people in need of jobs, companies should come in and satisfy that demand, making the place less economically depressed and eventually raising the cost of labor. No point to put an Amazon warehouse in Seattle’s south lake Union neighborhood, for example.

it's not how it works if there is a monopoly. E.g amazon is the only employer. I think this is where the local and federal governments should step in. If someone is working for 40 hours and needs foods stamps then the companies should be required to reimburse the government. It's a disgrace for society to take advantage of people like that.

Do amazon workers not require house, food, entertainment, etc.? Amazon isn't the only employer anywhere. Those people want and need services.

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

#313

Post by parineum »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #212
pas wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worth of labor is not the worth of product/service. Amazon picks the places where it can hire extremely cheap labor, because usually they are the only game in town. (monopsony market for labor.) it happened without automation and happens with automation too. of course it's on society to help those who are stuck in these unfortunately places.

> monopsony market for labor Yes, when the inelastic aggregate supply of labor (expressed as an explicit work quota or expressed as an implicit work quota equal to cost of living divided by wages) exceeds the demand for labor, capitalism turns what should be a happy situation (let's all work a bit less!) into a horror show where working hard for scraps is a privilege and rotting in unemployment is the norm.

Which system works better?

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

#314

Post by adamomada »

mptest wrote: post #234
jimbokun wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try surviving in the world before those systems existed.

This is not a helpful mindset. Because things were worse before, we should ignore how they are still not faultless?

Isn’t perfect the enemy of good? It’s better, but not better enough until it’s faultless?

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

#315

Post by quickthrowman »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #280
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just have the government stop having laws that constrain competition, so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps, and then at lower prices people buy more products and services, increasing the demand for labor and decreasing the cost of living.

I think the US should seek both capitalistic and socialistic policies simultaneously, but this would require a revolution that may [not be possible / very difficult] to achieve from within the US political system because its "operating system" is tainted by lobbyists for the billionaires. i. Restore corporate tax rates to historically high levels ii. Increase capital gains tax significantly iii. Tax speculation-deriv…

> i. Restore corporate tax rates to historically high levels

My gut feeling is that this would increase inflation, but I could be wrong.

> iv. Gradually curtail subsidies on field corn, currently occupying 5% of America's land (~100 million acres)

I would much rather the US spend $2.2B on corn subsidies so that we have food security in the event of a global catastrophe. I’d prefer eating nothing but corn flour/meal for years than starving to death.

> v. Shrink defense spending by half

As a (biased) US citizen, I would prefer keeping American Hegemony around, and that doesn’t happen without the massive military overspending the US does.

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

#316

Post by imgabe »

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”?

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

#317

Post by tremon »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #257
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

This itself is a fallacy derived from the Keynesian crowd. There isn't unlimited demand for labor and never was. In the real world at microeconomic and local levels, labor demand is absolutely limited to discrete job posting and people who are already employed. This number is ultimately countable and finite. There are not infinite jobs available.

Things don't have to be mathematically infinite for them to be practically infinite.

> labor demand is absolutely limited to discrete job posting

Only for a very limited definition of labor. How many children post job offers for rearing them, for example?

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

#318

Post by etc-hosts »

Aunche wrote: post #149

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 t…

>The San Francisco residents have highest incomes in America, but continue to have the worst rates of homelessness in America

Not true.

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

#319

Post by adamomada »

coffeecloud wrote: post #288
atleastoptimal wrote: post #129

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…

I'm not sure what you consider low-skilled - but have you tried to hire someone to build or fix anything recently? Labor jobs seem to demand a huge price right now - and I don't think anyone is predicting robots that can tile a backsplash, install a 240v outlet, or even dig a trench for a sewer line anywhere in the near future. Let alone have the cost of owning and operating such a robot be more cost effective than p…

I’m not sure if it’s what you meant but have you ever tried to build or fix anything recently? It’s the opposite of low-skilled and I’d bet the majority of supposedly high-skilled workers wouldn’t have a hope of completing a job even satisfactorily.

Imho labour rates are going up because they are for people who are actually doing real, scientific-definition-of-work while other people collect ridiculous paycheques for chatting on Zoom

Sorry if I sound bitter but I implore anyone to give it a shot themselves before they complain about paying for real labour.

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

#320

Post by skeaker »

adammarples wrote: post #258
legitster wrote: post #244

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 A…

The food stamps are working as designed, no criticism there. It's the jobs that aren't.

Yeah, I took the article to signal that Amazon isn't doing enough for its employees.
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