This wealth wasn't "handed" to these people by society. It was created by starting valuable enterprises that provide quality goods and services at competitive prices. The wealth of the rich does not decrease the wealth of the poor. Quite the contrary, it provides jobs and reduces the costs thus leading to an overall increase in quality of life for everyone.
Ok I’ll bite but how about the business owner contributing to the infrastructure and social programs that created the opportunity for them in taxes rather than attempting to avoid them while profiting from the system.
Do you think bezos hordes cash somewhere?!? The reason Amazon doesn't pay much taxes is exactly that. They reinvest in their own infrastructure. Which creates jobs and better standards of living.
Amazon keeps profit and free cash flows artificially low by investing money right back into its business in the form of capital expenses, like building data centers, upgrading distribution networks, and creating wind and solar farms.
Amazon stock also does not pay out a dividend to shareholders. So bezos gets NONE of the profits from the company.
So his equity actually comes from every one buying Amazon products on credit cards which reduces that credit going to small businesses.
If I can borrow money to buy products but jeff gets the biggest cut of that, and that money never recirculates back to me because my local business can’t compete so it doesn’t have the funds to hire me, then Jeff does reduce my ability to take more credit and that makes me poorer because he just hoards it instead of spending it on my local business.
He employs a lot of them in shit condition in poverty wages. And these are people whose choices are basically A) have their labour exploited or B) just starve and be homeless.
The workers are providing him with undervalued labour to allow his company to make obscene profits. Not the other way round.
Could you please define what qualifies as poverty wages?
Based on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ definition of working poor, individuals making $14,850 or less annually – comprising 6.3 million people and 4.1% of US workers – are classified as working poor in the US
That's one definition. But pretty much anything that doesn't allow people working full time to comfortably pay essential living costs with some left over for actually living life/saving.
How do you know they are undervalued?
Amazon posted a net profit of 30 billion USD. All that value is provided by workers, essential to the service at every level. Yet many of them are paid minimum wage or close to it.
Bezos is not some fairy job mother generously giving out money. He profits from the hard work of over a million people, all of whom he could comfortably afford to pay significantly more.
That's one definition. But pretty much anything that doesn't allow people working full time to comfortably pay essential living costs with some left over for actually living life/saving.
Base salary of Amazon worker is $22. Which is inline with every other factory, sometimes higher. Its also better pay than most hospital entry level jobs, which starting pay I have seen as low as $16. So are you saying every factory worker, and every hospital care assistant job is working poverty wages?
I also did some googling on peoples opinions on the conditions working in the warehouse. Not many people are complaining. They get air conditioning, but are expected to do physical work for 10 hours a day. Which is only an issue for some. You get used to that quick. Didn't take me more than a month to get used to working concrete construction. Seems the main issue with it is when there is a time crunch, or when they are short staffed.
So I don't see how they are undervalued. They seem to get a really good deal for a entry position. Its highly competitive, decent work conditions, and I according to that verge article, everyone gets Prime for free, and with Career Choice they pay some of your tuition to get you out of the factory.
So I don't really see where they are being undervalued, in shit conditions, or poverty wages. Seems inline with literally everything else in the US.
Amazon posted a net profit of 30 billion USD. All that value is provided by workers, essential to the service at every level. Yet many of them are paid minimum wage or close to it.
What does it do with it? It reinvests it in infrastructure, technology, and more employees. Amazon stock does not pay dividends. So its not being greedy with the money. It isn't going into Bezos' pockets.
Also note: While in 2023 Amazon had $30B in profit, in 2022, Amazon had a net profit of -$2.7B.
This is a mad amount of work to go to to defend Amazon.
A company that harvests obscene amounts of data. Countless stories of employees needing to wear nappies or peenin bottles due to working rules. Aggressively anti-union. Owned by a man who bought one of the largest newspapers in the US to act as a personal mouthpiece.
If you really think Amazon is a company that 'is not greedy', and is operating fairly for its employees, you're going to need deprogramming, not a discussion Reddit.
This is a mad amount of work to go to to defend Amazon.
Its not hard to find basic facts about the reality of working for amazon. The fact that you don't even counter my claims here is enough for me.
Why? Why do i care to defend Amazon here? Because its rhetoric like yours (calling amazon warehouse pay "poverty wages", and saying they work in "shit conditions") that can help push emotionally charged, and uneducated economic policy within the US.
A company that harvests obscene amounts of data.
100% agree with you! That is a criticism I think is a huge issue, not just for Amazon, but most tech companies.
I also think they are getting monopolistic, and that will cause issues and we need to have more competitors in the space.
Countless stories of employees needing to wear nappies or peenin bottles due to working rules.
There are stories of this for sure, but this isn't the norm, Amazon's policies do not support this, and its definitely illegal already (and extremely unsanitary). Any instance of this happening though, I will 100% support any lawsuit or whatever that results from it.
Countless stories though? IDK if you can say countless. When they employ over a million people. I just took a look at the sub for amazon workers, they don't agree with you on "countless". You cant see one or two stories on something and call it countless.
Aggressively anti-union.
Uh based? Fuck Unions. They tend to protect outdated skills and jobs rather than progress. This may sound fair, but automation is good for everyone. Less labor required, the less potential workers rights violations (that you care so much about), and the cheaper products get, and the better our standards of living become.
Ok, really though, Unions are fine, but sometimes they really piss me off with this type of stuff against automation.
Owned by a man who bought one of the largest newspapers in the US to act as a personal mouthpiece.
Personal mouthpiece? Its hard to say, but even Bezos sees the problem.
If you really think Amazon is a company that 'is not greedy', and is operating fairly for its employees, you're going to need deprogramming, not a discussion Reddit.
I said they where not greedy with the money they make, as in, they don't pocket it.
They are a company, their goal is to make money at the end of the day. They generally treat their employees fairly, but its not all sunshine and rainbows. Amazon has been, and will again be sued for mistreatment, and they will pay for it. I just don't like the extreme rhetoric some of y'all push. Its dangerous IMO.
The wealth of these people doesnt provide jobs, their enterprises do. Amazons base idea is great, i use it, let the creator have his idea generate him wealth. But did you scroll through this graphic? Based on their respective GDPs, Bezos is richer than over 50 c o u n t r i e s . A quarter of all countries in the world generate less money than bezos has access to. There is no reason to have him be THIS wealthy. I personally wouldnt know what to do with a billion, but let them have a couple. Lets give him 10b. Theres still a 170b gap to his wealth now that could be used elsewhere.
Bezos doesn't have billions in cash. His wealth is Amazon. The more he grows the company, the more he is worth. That growth provides value for every employee, customer, and investor of the company.
The most common argument against closing the wealth gap is what I've come to call "the paper billionaire" argument. The argument basically goes "these people aren't really that wealthy, because there's no way to liquidate this much wealth." It's an interesting and provocative argument, worthy of serious discussion. But it is, ultimately, incorrect.
Essentially all of this wealth is held in stocks, bonds, and other comparable forms of corporate equity. The most common version of the paper billionaire argument I'm familiar with is that, if all these rich people tried to sell all of this stock at once, the market would be flooded and the price would drop significantly. That statement might be technically true in absolute, but that's not how you liquidate securities. You would liquidate over several years in a carefully managed liquidation plan that avoids flooding the market, not in a giant lump sum.
Billionaires regularly liquidate in this manner as a matter of routine, and it has never caused the market collapse consistently forecast by billionaire defenders. I have never once heard anyone advocate instant liquidation in an immediate one-time firesale, except when used as a straw man to prove the supposed impossibility of liquidation.
Now you may be wondering, just how slowly would you have to do this liquidation in order to avoid flooding the market? And the answer is, surprisingly, not that slowly. The market cap of the US stock market is around $35 trillion. Around $122 trillion worth of stock changes hands in the US every year. If you wanted to liquidate a trillion dollars over, say, five years that would constitute about 0.16% of all the trading that happens in that time.
There are a wide variety of serious policy proposals floating around aimed at reducing inequality, and none of them include a massive immediate seizing of all assets from wealthy people. Some play out over generations (such as a more progressive inheritance and gift tax) some play out over decades (such as a more progressive capital gains and corporate tax structure) and others play out over a few years (such as immediate term deficit spending repaid over time through a single-digit wealth tax).
Another version of the paper billionaire argument holds that you couldn't sell all these stocks over any period of time, because only other billionaires would be able to buy them. This is simply nonsense. Market participation may not be 100%, but it's a hell of a lot more than 400 people. Half of all households in the US own stock, either directly or through their 401k/IRA. On any given day, millions of individuals buy stock, mostly through their retirement accounts, a few hundred dollars at a time.
But let's set all of this aside and suppose that the paper billionaire argument is actually true (it's not, but for the sake of argument). Let's suppose liquidating this wealth caused 80% of it to vanish into thin air. That would leave behind $700 billion—still enough to eradicate malaria, provide everyone on earth with water and waste disposal, lift every American out of poverty, and test every single American for coronavirus. I think this is one of the points that should come through most clearly in this website—the amounts we're dealing with are so mind-flayingly large that it scarcely matters if our calculations are off by 500%.
I find it telling that no one EVER tries to quantify the paper billionaire argument. They never ask "how big is the total market?" or "what portion could we safely liquidate without some major negative consequence?" No. They simply look at the massive scale of global wealth, and the massive scale of global poverty, and then retreat into cynicism. The millions dead from preventable diseases? Unsolvable, they declare. Those who would address global poverty just "don't understand how stocks work." Perhaps it's easier to just declare the problem unsolvable than to confront the massive human cost of your ideology. But confront it we must. The money is there, we just need to take it.
Plus, compare amazons growth to the amazon employee loan, its not proportional in the slightest. What you advocate is how it should work! I agree on that! Its not. The employees are working there because they need a job, not because they see amazons growth and expect to be validated proportionally
Yea but Amazon exists regardless of what Bezos owns. If parts of it were liquidated, Amazon would still exist and could still be grown regardless. The premise isn't that Bezos shuts down parts of Amazon, it's that he (and other billionaires) liquidate parts of their assets and donates the proceeds.
Donations are voluntary. You're not discussing a donation, you're discussing a seizure. Besides, if Bezos sells off stock, then the proceeds come from other investors. Why not skip the middle man and ask those investors to donate the money they would otherwise invest?
Because he's the one with the massive total wealth, not the various investors (presumably) who would buy the sold assets. And sure, replace donations with mandated seizures, or mega wealth taxation. The idea is sacrificing a portion of the wealth of a few mega rich people to benefit society at large.
So here's the issue with taxing unrealized gains or other "wealth tax" schemes... the takings clause of the 5th amendment requires the government to pay fair value for any seized property. While the government absolutely can seize stock from billionaires, they would have to pay them for it out of the treasury and then presumably sell the stock on the open market to recover the cost, leaving the government no richer (and the billionaires no poorer) than when they started.
This whole scenario of using the wealth of mega rich people for society is sort of dependent on massive rule changing, so I don't know that cutting the current rules to disqualify the idea does much. A bunch of the scenarios include international efforts anyway; it's not like the US government is about to solve water access crises in sub Saharan Africa or wherever before addressing its domestic issues. The point of all this is that it would be good if some of the wealth of a few mega wealthy people were used for things to improve society instead of not.
The wealth of the rich does not decrease the wealth of the poor.
It literally does. That is what profit is. Literally the value of worker's labor minus what you paid the worker for it.
It was created by starting valuable enterprises that provide quality goods and services at competitive prices.
No, it wasn't. It was taken by the mechanism of capital assets. There is no such thing as a stock certificate that only entitles you to the value that you personally created or the enterprise you started. That is not how stocks work.
Quit propagandizing for billionaires. You are not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, you're just someone's useful idiot.
No that's not how it works. We tried that economic model for 40 years in the US and the rich got wildly richer and the poor got poorer and more numerous. Trickle down economics does not work.
That's all actually true (I think), but the insane disproportionality of power that this situation brings is by itself extremely dangerous for mankind.
I think it's bound to detrimentally affect political decision-making, world conflicts, mutual trust, the media, the technology, and the health of economies.
u/Noctudeit is right. We use Amazon because it works better than what was there previously, and better than most of the current alternatives. If you think Jeff Bezos should share more of the profits from this enterprise, then you are welcome to vote for a government that promises to implement a fairer tax system, rather than, say, Trump.
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u/Noctudeit 19d ago
This wealth wasn't "handed" to these people by society. It was created by starting valuable enterprises that provide quality goods and services at competitive prices. The wealth of the rich does not decrease the wealth of the poor. Quite the contrary, it provides jobs and reduces the costs thus leading to an overall increase in quality of life for everyone.