
Thousands of Amazon workers receive food stamps - 0xmohit
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/24/thousands-amazon-workers-receive-food-stamps-now-bernie-sanders-wants-amazon-pay-up/
======
pitaj
> Amazon spokeswoman Melanie Etches said the figures were “misleading because
> they include people who only worked for Amazon for a short period of time
> and/or who chose to work part-time,” she said in a statement. “We have
> hundreds of full-time roles available, however, some prefer part-time for
> the flexibility or other personal reasons.”

It's possible that some of these part-time people only work so much because of
the welfare gap. If they worked more, they wouldn't get food stamps, but
wouldn't make enough to both offset the cost of food and the opportunity cost
of the time they'll spend working.

A UBI would fix this issue if implemented correctly.

~~~
ljm
> If implemented correctly

Sadly the operative condition :(

I feel like businesses should never have been able to grow so large that they
can essentially make government useless. What you have now is a government
that offers welfare (as precarious as that is in the US) and a profit-driven
corporation seeing that as basically an offset of responsibility. Fuck over
your staff and let the government that hates welfare pick up the tab; be
dependent upon a job that gets far more out of you than you get out of them.

In any sane world this is a gregarious abuse of corporate responsibility. In
the more compassionate (i.e. socialist) places you do not get such a cut-
throat attitude towards profit at any cost.

And this is not big business in the US, it's the damned American Dream. You go
from rags to riches, all fame and splendour and a hell of a struggle to talk
about at the end of it. So you get every mom-and-pop shop and every other sole
trader digging for prosperity the same way: pinch every penny you can, avoid
paying your staff as much as you can, treat them as expendable, nothing is
lost in the pursuit of wealth. You work hard by making others work harder for
you.

And everyone wants it because that's what greed is.

Welfare gaps are not unique in the world, and neither is corporate
exploitation, but what you have in the US is just a smooth veneer atop the
roots of slavery; it's all money and property. You don't have to look hard to
see that the language has changed but the dynamic has not. Not for a lot of
people.

~~~
pitaj
Corporate abuse of state power is emergent from and proportional to the power
of the state in the first place. Only be reducing the power and scope of
government can we hope to make meaningful change.

The cronyists and politicians are part of a stable feedback loop to maintain
the status quo. The state socializes risks and losses while the cronies keep
the profits.

The state created limited liability and "intellectual property", giving out
monopolies and absolving those responsible of any repercussions.

~~~
throw2016
This narrative does not follow. Greed and corruption are a 2 way street, they
don't disappear because of lack of governance, if anything they become more
pronounced.

Greenspan and Co's systematic dismantling of regulations directly led to the
financial crisis, fraud and a 4 trillion bailout. At the moment corporates
lobby to get their way. Without state power and regulatory constraints they
will and do whatever they want anyway.

Just like banking fraud does not discredit the idea of banks bad governance
does not discredit the idea of governance that balances various interests and
tempers greed .

~~~
pitaj
> lack of governance

Lesser government power is not the same as lack of governance. Indeed,
government having the power to pick and choose winners and losers is
fundamentally unjust and violates the rights of the people.

> Greenspan and Co's systematic dismantling of regulations directly led to the
> financial crisis, fraud and a 4 trillion bailout.

The "deregulation" narrative makes for a good story, but it's not that true.
There are several examples of additional government intervention which played
an important role:

\- Incentives for sub-prime mortgages. The government provided incentives for
banks to provide mortgages to people who normally wouldn't have a good enough
standing. This was done in the name of helping minorities buy houses.

\- Previous bailouts. The government bailed out banks multiple times in the
past. When banks make risky loans and investments, fail, and then get bailed
out by government because they're "too big to fail", this signals to the banks
that they should keep being riskier and risker, because the government will
cover their risk.

\- Housing incentives. The mortgage rebate on income tax is a direct incentive
for people to buy expensive houses instead of renting or buying within their
means.

\- Monetary policy. The Fed unnaturally driving inflation and interest rates
distorts investment and development. This is covered extensively by Business
Cycle Theory.

~~~
throw2016
If your actions are motivated by greed then the problem is your greed and
motivation not governance, is good or bad governance forcing corporates and
businesses to act unethically? This is not a tenable position.

The myth floated by libertarians of the CRA causing the subprime crisis was
thoroughly debunked as early as 2008, yet we are in 2018 and this continues to
be repeated never mind the facts.

The crisis was a result of systematic and willful fraud by private players not
subject to the CRA. $3 out of $4 dollars of subprime loans were not made under
the CRA. [1] [2] [3]

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subp...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subprime_suspects.html)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/02/13/no-
ma...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/02/13/no-marco-rubio-
government-did-not-cause-the-housing-crisis/?utm_term=.5410b1303725)

[3] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/loans-to-low-income-
households-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/loans-to-low-income-households-
did-not-cause-the-financial-crisis/)

------
deusofnull
Food stamps are not intended as a subsidy for private industry to take
advantage of so they can underpay their workers. Yet a casual observation of
these conglomerates actions and policies clearly shows this is their strategy.

~~~
pasbesoin
"Corporate welfare" is a real thing.

Something to keep in mind, the next time -- and every time -- a politician or
partisan goes on about the "travesty" of (personal) welfare from an "economic"
perspective.

And, this "corporate welfare" takes on many and many overlapping forms. For
example, _many_ children in this country (the U.S.) have health insurance,
health care, and dental care through Medicaid and government programs.

A lot of their parents are working.

Personally, I don't begrudge this -- not to those children -- in the least.
Good health is the foundation of a good life. That also means a productive
life that contributes to our shared society.

But, those jobs aren't paying those parents what it takes to support their
families. Something that is arguably necessary for those people to be able to
continue to work them.

(And many of those parents, themselves, do _not_ have health care coverage.
Which, among many other things, also keeps them more vulnerable as a
population.)

It's getting hard for me to _avoid_ using Amazon for some things. Local stores
no longer carry them. And it sure is convenient (well, price/marketing
manipulation and increasingly rough and unreliable shipping aside).

But it feels like we are being funneled into an increasingly inescapable form
of this social abuse, at the same time.

~~~
deusofnull
Agreed it certainly does feel like we are on the highway to some kind of neo-
feudalism. My words, not yours, of course. It does frustrate me to no end when
these Free Market right-libertarians hark on about personal responsibility and
demonize welfare. Like, do they realize the amount of public funding, safety
nets, government contracts, and subsidies the private "free" market relies on?
Then they have the audacity to call out poor folks asking to be able to go to
the doctor, or reliably eat 3 meals a day every day. The cogitative dissonance
is real as hell.

------
sizzzzlerz
Throw in recent stories about working conditions in Amazon's warehouse (making
worker's pee into bottles because they won't let them leave work to use the
bathrooms) is making Bezos' seem like a bit of a prick. Put another way,
underpaying workers so that they have to use taxpayer-funded food stamps
finances Jeff's dicking around with rockets.

------
dsfyu404ed
I'm on the "less government is best government" side of things and I'm having
a hard time finding anything that's fundamentally wrong about the bill
described in this article. Kind of funny how it takes an independent senator
to propose a bill that has a purpose of reducing government waste.

~~~
mynameishere
Funny how people react differently to things. I read the description and
thought it was of almost unparalleled stupidity. "Government invents XYZ
welfare policy, and all large employers are 100 percent on the hook--
especially those who would dare employ people with few skills." Brazenly
foolish.

 _I 'm on the "less government is best government" side of things_

You are most certainly not, and I don't think you should pretend to be so for
the rhetorical advantage it might bring.

------
cperciva
What would happen under this proposal if someone receiving food stamps works 5
hours/week at Amazon and 10 hours/week at Walmart? Do they both pay the tax?

~~~
m-p-3
I guess they'd split the cost between those two in proportion of the hours
worked.

------
cartercole
The the requirements for food stamp eligibility should be changed?

~~~
kevin_b_er
It means they are so underpaid they need food stamps. It means the taxpayer is
subsidizing Amazon. It just another example of corporate welfare at the
expense of the public.

~~~
pitaj
These people could be just _not working at all_ , in which case they would be
more of a tax burden.

What policy rules would you put in place that would stop "the taxpayer is
subsidizing Amazon" while not hurting these employees?

~~~
lutorm
You mean Amazon would get by without any employees at all?

------
adventured
This is not a failure, it's a success story that is being incorrectly twisted
to attack BigCorp (because everyone hates BigCorp).

Following this crazy logic, the US may never move to a universal healthcare
system, because then the workers will be receiving a 100% tax payer subsidy on
healthcare.

In just about every other developed nation on earth, if you make very low
wages you qualify for welfare state subsidies and programs. Your healthcare
for example is entirely paid for by the welfare state if you make low wages,
as you're not contributing very much back in and are absolutely not covering
your cost on the system.

Why is it that when it comes to the US, these stories are bandied about as
horrible corporate abuses, when in fact they're a success story from the
continued expansion of the US social safety net?

Who is overwhelmingly paying for the SNAP program in the US? The rich, they
pay an extraordinary share of the cost of these programs (the top 20% pay 87%
of all income taxes). The US has one of the most progressive tax systems. Why
would having the rich pay for worker SNAP benefits be a problem in any
scenario - are we now trying to save the rich money on their taxes?

When someone earns the minimum wage in the UK, Spain, Canada, France etc do
you think they're actually covering all of their own expenses? They're not.
Those workers are all receiving welfare state benefits that subsidize the low
pay from the corporations that employ them.

If you give these workers a boost via earned income tax credits for example (a
vastly superior approach to increasing the minimum wage), you're doing the
same exact thing you'd be doing with increased SNAP benefits.

~~~
mgkimsal
> In just about every other developed nation on earth... Your healthcare for
> example is entirely paid for by the welfare state if you make low wages...

In just about every other developer nation on earth, your access to basic
healthcare is not dependent on your income or employment status at all.

