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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

#371

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #370
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't unlimited demand for labor and never was Correct. But we're nowhere close to it. To the extent labor is a limiting factor on growth, it's in its lack of adequate supply. > In the real world at microeconomic and local levels, labor demand is absolutely limited to discrete job posting and people who are already employed You're describing edge cases, e.g. mining towns and war zones. In enterprises, it's an open…

Ah, no. There are absurd numbers of job reqs that don't provide livable wages, lowball workers compared to industry brackets, or require skillsets that are niche or unrealistic.

> absurd numbers of job reqs that don't provide livable wages, lowball workers compared to industry brackets, or require skillsets that are niche or unrealistic

Sure? How does that even remotely advance your argument?

I've seen people asking hundreds of dollars for a specialty pineapple, that doesn't mean we're running out of pineapples.

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

#372

Post by frumper »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #201
frumper wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't the case for most of the country. Page 5 of the following link shows it by state. https://www.clasp.org/sites/default/files/publications/2018/...

> That isn't the case for most of the country. Most is a figure above 50%. As far as reports indicate poor folks have access to SNAP, it's true in some states and mostly a lie in others. My fingers are kind of tired from debunking SNAP myths today. My other posts here will have to do.

I responded to the asset limit statement. 30+ states do not one have, it’s well over 50% of the country including 9/10 of the most populous states.

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

#373

Post by ihumanable »

paxys wrote: post #137

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…

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 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.

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

#374

Post by sangnoir »

vkou wrote: post #364
carlosjobim wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still fundamental logic that the masses need to be able to afford your goods if you produce mass market goods. Or are you going to stockpile them?

> It's still fundamental logic that the masses need to be able to afford your goods if you produce mass market goods. It's fundamental logic that unless your company provides something close to 100% of the employment market (as in, you are a complete monopolist on all economic activity), you are better off paying your workers as little as possible. Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. Let some other…

> Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. Let some other sap pay theirs well.

Other companies notice your "brilliant" strategy and start adopting it, and now your sales are in terminal decline as your customer base is impoverished. Short-term thinking is the Achilles heel of modern capitalism. Unless of course the new economy is automated companies trading with other automated companies; maximizing shareholder value as the human race withers away. This reminds me a short story of a damaged ambulatory AI space-suit carrying an injured and dying/dead astronaut over the surface of a desolate planet to get to "civilization" thousands of miles away.

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

#375

Post by monero-xmr »

vaidhy wrote: post #200
monero-xmr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would say that developed western nations, including the USA, have done a pretty good job of providing subsidies and benefits for low skilled workers, so they can get on the lowest rung of the totem pole and contribute to society without starving. We specifically have food stamps, the EITC, welfare, child tax credit, housing vouchers, and so on specifically so they can provide valuable labor to society (and mini…

and I would assume you would agree that these benefits be expanded as needed and cover a larger population if necessary, right? In fact, it would correct if everyone gets these living expenses taken care of, right?

No I don’t want to give free housing to rich people. I support means tested benefits. The goal is to make people self sufficient, not dependent on the government handout for life.

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

#377

Post by jimbokun »

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?

The comment I replied to made no constructive suggestions.

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

#378

Post by FireBeyond »

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…

> the US political system because its "operating system" is tainted by lobbyists for the billionaires.

It's "tainted" by lobbyists in the same way a Superfund site is a bit "dirty".

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

#379

Post by mecha_ghidorah »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #253
Rinzler89 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there's definitely downsides to that since there's no free lunch, but maybe our society should focus on providing affordable essentials for most (education, housing, healthcare, etc), instead of gleiing at the though of getting a new games console for only $199 and that GDP went up by 2%, while food, rent and medical went up by 10%. Optimizing our society for excessive consumerism and the eternal "line must go…

The poor spend a higher percentage of their income on imports than the rich do.

The poor definitionally spend a higher percentage of their income on just about everything because their income is significantly smaller

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

#380

Post by undersuit »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #177
undersuit wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue progressive taxes are less complex than your proposed flat tax because you can load all the expenses on the high brackets who won't miss a meal if you set the value too high instead of trying to pick a single value that works for everyone.

To begin with, that isn't what "complex" means. Having to track every income source to every citizen in order to impose differential marginal rates is always going to be more complex than not doing that. We nominally do it so people who make more money pay higher effective tax rates -- but a flat tax with a UBI does the same thing. If everybody paid a 30% marginal rate and everybody got a $12,000 UBI then the effecti…

>Having to track every income source to every citizen in order to impose differential marginal rates is always going to be more complex than not doing that.

It's the same exact load as tracking everyone's income source to impose a flat tax. Taxing income is the same "tracking load" whether the tax system is progressive, flat, or regressive.

>That's a progressive tax system.

No it's a flat system with a $12k UBI. The effective tax rate of a millionaire and a billionaire is the same in your system because it's flat.

>but making them uniformly the same is certainly not going to result in something less progressive than we have now.

A million of income would pay 29.64%, a billion of income 29.99%. That's literally less progressive than those incomes would pay today.

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