Separating "why" and "why should," multinationals get subsidies and tax breaks because they negotiate with governments, have leverage, and can "walk away." (to another country)
You are actually onto something: it's a fairly common belief among economists that all subsidies and tax deductions should be eliminated.
This probably isn't politically feasible at the moment though, so for now we have to take small victories where we can get them, like getting rid of the most obviously stupid and regressive subsidies.
I'm starting to think a nation sales tax were the rate is based on the revenue of the company would be helpful in companies getting too big and powerful.
It's a win-win for politicians and corporations. Everyone else loses.
What's in it for the participating corporation? Well, money.
For the politician, it can be one or more of the following: Fulfilling campaign promises (ie, "I brought jobs here"), legal money (ie, corporation pays into campaign PAC), or illicit money (which usually requires some laundering using casinos, real-estate or cryto to secretly fund).
I guess what I meant is: I agree strongly with the comment I replied to, and also feel like this sort of action is less frequently concerned with lifting up workers than it is with punishing their bosses.
Living wage is very dependent on geography. I don't think the federal government has the tools to enforce a living wage throughout America. This however sounds like a great idea that's difficult to argue against.
> Living wage is very dependent on geography. I don't think the federal government has the tools to enforce a living wage throughout America
That makes sense, but seems like most of the political pressure to raise minimum wage is focused at the federal level.
Does the issue of raising minimum wage get traction in state- or local-level politics, and just not get widely reported (aside from Seattle and a few other cities)?
Doesn't BEZOS increase the price of labor for Amazon, reducing the number of employees they employ? IMO, this looks similar to a minimum wage law for large companies.
This is my thought process as well. Amazon may not be able to immediately automate it's workforce, but can ramp up investment for fewer kmployees with higher output over time.
McDonalds on the other hand, already has kiosks installed everywhere and simply has to decide orders can't be taken at the till anymore. There goes 50% of customer facing staff. And here comes more of the population relying on government subsidies.
Basic income is still a more viable alternative, but I have low hopes of this being taken seriously for another 10-20 years.
Efficient in terms of administration. There's already a minimum wage so simply increasing it shouldn't require a lot of new bureaucracy like this would and achieve the same effect.
Off the top of my head, this would better deal with situational differences between workers such as someone with no dependents versus someone with 5. It's a novel idea and doesn't have the baggage of minimum wage increases, nor would it need to be continually updated to deal with inflation.
If there's anyone who's been trying to do that in the past few years, it's Bernie Sanders. That's where the "$15 minimum wage" idea came from. But even most Democrats aren't on board, let alone Republicans.
I'm guessing this bill is made so that it appeals to Trump, too, who's been attacking Bezos lately. Fingers crossed it passes. Amazon has benefited from low taxes, which has catapulted it into a monopoly in several markets. Monopolies are bad for consumers, competition, and employees.
The low taxes is part of the reasons why it's been able to invest more in the company, subsidize Kindle ebooks for years (Apple has called it a price dumping tactic), it enabled it to offer free shipping with a relatively low subscription, and of course cheaper products in general compared to offline retailers.
> If there's anyone who's been trying to do that in the past few years, it's Bernie Sanders. That's where the "$15 minimum wage" idea came from.
No, it's not; Sanders was the first major national politician to jump on the grassroots Fight for $15 movement, but he didn't start it. (Heck, Black Lives Matter was involved before Sanders, but they didn't start it, either.)
My understanding is that they are moving towards it, but raising the price of human labor shift the frontier where changing to automation makes sense.
In practice, it’s a little more complicated than that because automation requires investments that are long to set-up, risky, etc. but there are reasons to believe that this suggestion, if it passes would have two effect:
- accelerate automation overall;
- convince Amazon to employ directly more of its workers (they are typically going through employment agencies at the moment) and re-think its schedules. The dirty secret of that industry is that Amazon would like people to come at certain hours but doesn’t really think beyond its operations, partially because they have an arms-length relationship with temporary workers. Agencies are all too willing to comply, and force powerless temp workers into the grinder, arguing that they are just bowing to “the market”. The layers of bureaucracy prevents Amazon from raising internally the point that shifts at reasonable hours, with breaks. This means employees can think more critically of their job, and contribute greatly to innovation.
> My understanding is that they are moving towards it, but raising the price of human labor shift the frontier where changing to automation makes sense.
Human labor is so far behind machine labor, that raising its cost by a little bit won't make much of a difference.
When it comes to manual labor, machines are so much cheaper, more efficient, cheaper, less risky (medically, legally, criminally), stable, and reliable, that there's no comparison really.
Big companies like Amazon therefore automate wherever they can already.
Based on articles about their fulfillment centers, the only jobs remaining there are those robots don't do very well right now. These will eventually disappear regardless of the passage of provocatively-titled PR-focused laws (which probably won't pass anyway in current congress).
I'm not sure I understand your second point, especially how relevant it is to the current discussion. This is about Amazon compensating employees with such minimal and pay and benefits that they must seek welfare assistance and thus effectively are paid by the taxpayer. Working conditions have nothing to do with that, although (obviously) the same weak employees (or "contractors") who receive so little pay will receive little consideration in these and other regards as well.
Working conditions are directly related to pay: they are paid less not because Amazon is going against the letter of the law on minimum wage but because the agencies providing the workforce use extortionate techniques.
They make sure not to hit work-hour thresholds to owe employees full benefits. In some areas, they demand that employees use a work-van to get there, and they have to pay the driver absurd amounts to use that “service”.
Working conditions are so dire that the temp workers can’t offer suggestion on working conditions, conditions that would help Amazon integrate better automation in their current system, and make paying workers more comfortably more sensical.
You can’t extract work problems from their context.
> Working conditions are so dire that the temp workers can’t offer suggestion on working conditions, conditions that would help Amazon integrate better automation in their current system, and make paying workers more comfortably more sensical.
Not sure I follow.
From reading articles about it, the "working conditions" are "dire" because Amazon can press workers to work very hard (fill quotas) in large warehouses that are barely suitable for human habitation.
Both of these are related to Amazon squeezing pennies out of employees/contractors who have zero leverage.
The problem isn't that these employees can't offer "suggestions". Amazon knows very well that if it lowered quotas, allowed more breaks, and added air-conditioning to warehouses, working conditions will improve.
It doesn't do these things because these employees have zero leverage so Amazon makes more money by not offering these improvements.
Walmart is working on it. Some of the stores have bots going up and down the isles doing inventory. Next will be stocking shelves. I know a manager at one of those Walmarts. They are one of the test stores for this tech.
Amazon use some bots and are working on automating more of the warehouse jobs, IIRC.
Pretty much what I expected. When I've spoken to engineers involved in Amazon operations, they rather proudly mentioned how aggressively they are automating everything.
Their goal seem to be 100% automation, and the only remaining jobs are those that can't be automated just yet.
I don't know anything about Walmart, but given Amazon's path, they have no choice but to follow suite to stay competitive.
Yes, of course. The kicker from what I see is that every year the robot technology gets better and better. The truth is that most of these warehouse jobs are eventually going to get automated away. So that leaves the question...who will employ these workers? Our system of employee retraining (government education) isn't exactly efficient nor is is cheap.
While it's possible that some manual warehouse workers have the capacity to "retrain" to a more skilled job, the reality is that there are more than enough incentives for them to have done so already: pay, benefits, job security, status, etc.
Those who chose minimal-wage, no-benefits work in terrible conditions over much better skilled work have done so because they are either strongly deterred by the nature of skilled work or lack the capacity for it.
So the problem isn't "retraining". The problem is that the percentage of humanity that can be replaced by machines of superior intelligence is increasing.
unless you mean putting more money into AI research, which they are
still, the jury is still out on whether the laws of nature allow to build AIs that can do every job and totally replace human resources. and whether reaching that point implies you’ve just built a new sentient being that will be unionizing and campaigning for equal rights and equal pay and better silicon in no time.
AI is a big part of it, but the key linchpin for a lot of human labor in Amazon’s fulfilment centres is grabbing, the ability to hold an object, given its shape and structure. The efforts in that direction are very active (although not as much as AI in general) but slightly different. You need sensors able to understand pressure and very subtle micro-controllers able to apply exactly the right kind of pressure. You need to think about the ideal shape for a “hand”.
Another big part of Amazon-related workers is their delivery third-parties. Self-driving truck could help, but they will still need people to unload the trucks and deal with the idiosyncrasies of every location. There were plans to use autonomous hexacopters (“drones”) but I don’t think those make sense at scale and for larger items.
> The efforts in that direction are very active (although not as much as AI in general) but slightly different. You need sensors able to understand pressure and very subtle micro-controllers able to apply exactly the right kind of pressure. You need to think about the ideal shape for a “hand”.
You’re saying building a hand that can feel and sense is not really AI in general. I say that “sense” and “sentient” have the same latin root — sentire, to feel.
From what we know about intelligence and its relationship with sentience, giving something a sense of feeling implies applying artificial intelligence... and is a step towards artificial sentience IMO. It’s definitely not a step away from it. Those sensors sound like nerves to me.
Automation can be taxed. Automation IP can have its patents invalidated. Automation copyright can be revoked.
People Over Profits. Why is that such a difficult concept? Why is the "free market" so revered? Show me why it is better than the least well off living comfortably with shareholders making a lower return. If a trillion dollars isn't enough, what is?
I'm fine with taxing people to help the least well off.
I just think that responsibility should fall equally on all of us and not, as this bill does, single out particular kinds of businesses over other types of businesses.
This bill is being put forth because conservative and moderate democratic politicians won't raise the minimum wage, and this is one of the few hammers Sanders has available to him.
You can't not do anything when people are being taken advantage of and you're waiting for midterms and 2020 elections.
Disclaimer: I donate heavily to progressive candidates (and only progressive candidates).
Well, really this bill is being put forth as a political maneuver to help Sanders get votes in an upcoming presidential primary and perhaps slightly move the overton window on discussion of this topic. There is a zero percent chance that this bill will become law.
That being said, I'm generally against the minimum wage for the same reason(1) (in a way this bill is a de-facto minimum wage increase from the perspective of employers). Wal-Mart shareholders shouldn't have a greater responsibility to pay for the social safety net than Google shareholders.
1. Though to be clear I think this bill is much worse due to the complexity of the implementation. At least a minimum wage is simple.
Nothing except cost. If employees cost more than developing and implementing AI, then they will do it.
In preparation for the move to a totally AI driven customer interface (which WILL happen, barring any large scale disaster), legislators needs to implement some solution to keep currency flowing to the people.
If everything except highly skilled professions are automated, there will be a hell of a lot unemployment. Off the top of my head, one potential solution I've heard is that companies should pay wages to robots and those wages will be paid as tax to the government who would redistribute the wealth as universal basic income.
We're surely decades or more from near total automation, but it's worth thinking about as a serious matter as we are living in the robot revolution.
The big problem that immediately pops up to me is: a good chunk of the examples of low wage workers are in fast-food (i.e. the McDonald's example). Just about every fast food company out there is a franchise, and I'd be very surprised if there are more than a couple of franchisees which have over 500 employees.
> Under this legislation, large employers are defined as employers who have more than 500 employees, including part
-time workers, independent contractors and franchise workers.
I'm not an expert in legalese (and this isn't the legislation itself), but the last two words imply that McDonald Corporate would be on the hook for franchisee's employee's food stamps.
I don't understand this legislation or this perspective. If it is the job of the government to provide a strong safetey net, then it shouldn't be incumbent on private employers to do so. Why should Walmart be tasked with providing a complete livelihood for its employees?
If a job is beneficially for the economy, and individual, and an employer, though not enough to keep someone out of poverty - this is precisely when government programs should fill in the gap. And I would think should be the perspective of someone who calls themselves a "Democratic Socialist."
A huge part of the problem with how healthcare and labor benefits are handled in the United States is exactly this - that they are far to tied to an individual's job. Divorcing them actually helps all parties. Most developed nations operate this way.
Naming this legislation after Bezos is petty and vindictive. It's below the office of a Senator, and a bad precedent to set to using the power of lawmaking to single out individuals.
> Why should Walmart be tasked with providing a complete livelihood for its employees?
I don't think it should; but on the other end, why would people work for Walmart if the salary it offers is not enough to survive? And why should Walmart rely on the subsidies offered by the state to integrate the shitty wages it's paying?
In other words, the employees work for you, you are the one who should pay them- subsidies are altering this balance. (Ah, and tips too, my other little obsession. Otherwise I'll bring my own waiter, thank you).
Of course the state should provide a "safety net"- which for me includes full, free, high quality medical assistance, education, and maybe some for of low rent housing. But that's about it.
Education is a tricky one. In general I tend to agree, but distributing the cost of a person's decision to get a 4 year degree in Photography, and then get a job at Starbucks they could've gotten without that degree, seems unjust and unwise. And who decides which schools lead to good outcomes? A lot of the "for profit" schools are only a little better than diploma mills.
It is up to the government, in certain political philosophy, to make sure that its citizens have a livelihood. How do those government pay for it is the object of taxation: hardly any government extract enough value from the service it provides to pay for them, so they never “pay for it”; they organise transfers.
Sanders point is that the current system is de-facto redistributive, in favour of companies who use temporary workers at a large scale and with patterns that appear to be designed to evade regulations on employee protection. Say, there are obligations that kick in when an employee works for more than 40 hours per week; employers who have thousands of employees tasked to work only 39 hours could obviously hire almost as many and be responsible for sick pay, holidays, health insurance.
You response is probably that this means the union decision was badly designed, and no one who knows anything about labor negotiations would disagree with you. It is a case of the spirit of the law versus its letter. I’m sure you want to say that this is not the company’s role to write the law. That would make their lobbyist laugh a bit, but let’s assume this is true. Sanders is precisely trying to fit one to the other. What constitutes a clear breach (and how the numbers quoted in the project are established) is probably a nightmare of analytical ad-hoc decisions, but it’s probably more honest than refusing to support financially basic human needs from people who, de-facto, work full time for you.
I can see the point, but the cheaper option for the corporation is still to pay the tax vs paying a living wage because not all employees will be using the federal support.
Hmm... This actually makes sense. And seems like it would make sense from any party's perspective... Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green... If anyone opposes this I'd love to know why.
But I don't see why Bezos in particular is singled out.
1. Haha I wish congress was as good at legislating as it was at naming.
2. The way I see it the ideological argument that will probably spring from this has no way of being settled. This bill is basically a stealth minimum wage. Economic evidence provides enough studies on both sides of the issue that everyone can fight it out, cite one or two things and go home believing exactly what they already thought.
3. Why the 500 employee minimum? I'm not sure I see the rationale behind my tax dollars subsidizing any business that doesn't pay their employees a living wage, not just the big ones.
Clever title, but "politician introduces a bill" is a leading class of non-story (because most proposed bills go nowhere). This is even more dilute that: it's an announcement that a politician will introduce a bill.
In other words, it's an announcement of an announcement, the most off-topic of offtopicness.
> and this is a politician announcing that he will introduce a bill.
While technically true at the time the linked summary was written, the bill has in fact been introduced and this is a summary of it as well a statement that it will be introduced.
Whether or not it is “evidence of some interesting new phenomenon” is, I would agree, debatable.
My first thought was that since the welfare benefits to the employee are tax free this becomes a (marginally) more effective way to “pay” your low-wage employees.
But the marginal tax rate at that part of the curve, taking into account the EITC is close enough to zero that it’s not an issue.
I like the plan, I think that it needs a slight tweak. The fine should be 200% of the subsidy, and perhaps it should only apply to workers working at least 20 hours a week.
Do you mean workers working 20 hours a weeks total or 20 hours a week at a particular employer?
There are plenty of individuals who work multiple jobs, still get only 30-some hours, and still collect public assistance. Seems like a needless clause.
Who pays the fine if you work 3 jobs 15 hours a week each? If they are all large employers — all 3 of them?
Remember this doesn’t change anything about what the employee is paid, it’s a fine for paying an employee too little to be self sufficient. I’m not sure that makes sense if someone is only working for you one day a week, for example.
Clever alternative to raising the minimum wage by a large amount. The Libertarian in me sees a possibility that this will reduce the government's burden and (potentially) reduce social services by a teensy amount.
Surely there are detriments I haven't considered, and please do share them if any come to mind.
Excellent question. Slight tangent, but in many states (Michigan is one) there are already disproportionate worker's compensation taxes based upon the risk factors of the occupation and environment - so there is precedent for that sort of thing.
These aren't employer subsidies, and calling them such is a lie. The money doesn't go to the companies.
We have decided that there should be a minimum standard of living for people that live in the US. Paying for that decision falls on all of us, not just the companies that happen to employ those with lower paying jobs.
This is essentially a special tax on companies that happen to have business models that require low skill labor. Why should companies(1) with business models that only require high skill labor get off the hook when it comes to paying their fare share of the bill for our countries social services?
1. or more correctly those companies stockholders and employees
I agree the logic of calling market wages a "subsidy" doesn't hang together. I wonder where this idea originated; its frequent appearance in labor policy debates seems recent.
> I agree the logic of calling market wages a "subsidy" doesn't hang together.
That's not what is being called a subsidy.
Federal benefits to low-wage workers are being called a subsidy that reduces wage demands in the market. Other than EITC (which actually does act as a wage subsidy in a certain range), that's a problematic claim, too, but it's a different claim than that market wages are a subsidy.
> We have decided that there should be a minimum standard of living for people that live in the US.
We have decided no such thing. People need shelter food and clothing, these are necessities. We have decided a bare minimum of those necessities that people have a right to have. Either employers pay for these, or governments pay for these. Without them people don't have enough food to eat, don't have shelter to live, or clothing to wear.
Yes, the minimum standard that we have decided upon today includes necessities like shelter, food, and clothing plus a bit more than that. The various welfare programs provided by our federal and state governments are how that standard is met.
The problem is that we have not legally mandated that the wage that companies in America pay employees must be enough to obtain that minimum standard of living and so companies don't pay it. It's not a special tax on companies that require low skilled labor, it's a tax on companies that don't pay there low skilled labor enough to live on. I'm on the fence to whether this bill is a good idea or a bad one but to be clear this is more than just let's hit big companies in the pocket. Compare Amazon vs Costco for instance. Both require low skilled workers but Amazon, a company with a trillion dollar market cap, pays it's employees relatively peanuts for how much the company itself makes whereas Costco pays it employees so well, and provides enough perks that it is regularly cited as one of the best places to work. That's the difference here.
I'd rather think about this in the context of healthcare. It would be nice if we had healthcare for all, because it would make hiring people easier, and people could have healthcare even if they aren't employed. This Stop BEZOS Act is like mandating that employers provide healthcare. Why not give healthcare to everyone and avoid the implementation cost for every businesses?
A minimum wage well above the market rate would also be a special tax on some employers while letting others off the hook.
An employer is not your mother. Just because you go to work for someone, it does not automatically endow them with a special responsibility to make sure you can afford to live your life in the way a bunch of other people say that you should be able to.
When we (as a citizenry) get together and decide on how we want to support each other we can't just pawn off the costs of that decision on a 3rd party. We have to accept those costs ourselves.
Costco needs a lot less labor for their volume. They stock by forklift (which is why selection is limited) and customers pick and pack.
We have a serious unemployment problem that will only get worse with automation. Rather than tying survival to work, I'd rather see UBI and workers who won't take abuse because they're only working part-time for beer money.
You could argue that poverty is a negative externality of a low wage business model, and business is responsible for covering that negative cost to society. It's in line with a factory paying for the costs of controlling its own pollution. But the argument really only holds true if you have a deterministic view of people's careers - are some inevitably committed to a low wage career because of external factors? Or are they stuck in those jobs by choice?
I don't think that is a good argument because businesses don't create the poverty you are talking about. The poverty existed before the business was there unlike, say, pollution.
Maaaaaaaaayyyyybbbbbeeee. Empirical studies of this sort of effect are mixed at best.
It's telling that Sander's proposed bill would only require "large employers" to pay up here. If local businesses were all paying higher salaries already they wouldn't need this exemption in the first place.
You misparsed that sentence. The small companies offer better salaries, the large company cuts labor costs, by cutting labor costs they can compete on price, by competing on price they win market share, meaning small companies go out of business.
Of course it's a subsidy. If employees are only able to work for my company because they get food stamps, those food stamps make my business model viable. Without them, I would not be able to find employees, so either I'd have to increase salaries or go out of business.
All the companies mentioned in the document make profits way higher than the "subsidies" they receive. They could easily increase wages or pay this tax.
SNAP is not corporate welfare - in fact, it is the exact opposite! Employers have to pay their employees more because SNAP exists: since SNAP benefits decrease with more income, SNAP benefits decrease the marginal benefit to a worker for each extra hour worked. This reduces a worker's incentive to work and thus reduces the labor supply, so wages have to rise to maintain equilibrium (assuming labor demand is downward sloping).
Another way of looking at it is SNAP gives workers a better alternative to working - not working - so it raises workers' reservation wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_wage
If it were not for SNAP, you'd actually be able to hire more workers at a cheaper price because the alternative to working
- not working - would no longer be as attractive.
(Posted this comment top-level on a dupe, deleted it there and reposting here.)
Companies will seek more automation and less human workers if the cost of compliance and employing humans reduces profit.
Take Amazon for example, if a living wage bill is passed, what is to say that they do not move towards a 100% robotic workforce in their warehouses in a few years?
You know they are already doing that, right? That is the singular purpose of Amazon Robotics. They think they'll have a fully robotic warehouse workforce in the next ten years.
There have been books like The End of Work in 1995 that have talked about this. The big question is, what will become of the majority of the worlds population when this happens on a massive scale?
Very interesting idea on the service, that will never pass. Anyone with a vested interest in a large company, (e.g. almost everyone in congress) will have every incentive to see this thing die as quickly as possible. Also I'm not even sure it's a good idea to begin with. Color me intrigued though
I am little disappointed with Sanders that he has failed to build a real movement. I like a lot of the things he does but he is pretty much alone. Compared to the way Trump has bent the Republicans to his will it's disappointing.
This is a nice stunt but nobody in Congress will have the balls to vote for it.
He didn't use that momentum to make a real impact. Now the democrats look as clueless as they looked in 2016. They still don't have a real value proposition other than not being Trump. They can't just stay being the party for the upper middle class without appealing to blue collar workers. Say what you want about Obama but at least he had a message.
Maybe Sanders never aspired to be a national leader and that should be respected but it's still disappointing.
> He didn't use that momentum to make a real impact.
Sanders has used his platform to continue to advocate for Medicare For All, for a $15/hr minimum wage (a concession he was able to get for Disneyland employees), for renewable energy, for justice reform, for immigration reform. What else would you suggest he do? He has been more positively impactful than any politician currently in office except perhaps Senator Warren.
> Now the democrats look as clueless as they looked in 2016. They still don't have a real value proposition other than not being Trump.
Medicare For All, a $15 hour minimum wage, fully funded public schools and universities, justice reform, immigration reform, paid family and sick leave (not an exhaustive list) is not a value proposition?
Democrats clueless? Progressive candidates continue to win in elections at every level. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is crushing it. As long as the Clintons, Biden, and other moderates keep to themselves, we'll be fine.
Sure, but the signs are positive [1] [2] [3]. A government shutdown [4], more Trump tweets [5], a Kavanaugh confirmation [6], still lots of foot guns for Republicans between now and November.
I'm curious what the macroeconomic effect would be. Is this just shifting public costs to private companies? Workers actual compensation wouldn't change since they would lose government benefits as their wages increase.
For all those that assert gov't is inefficient, and that businesses are better at optimization, then shifting equivalent public costs to private company scope should be an economic win.
My first thought is Bezos has probably dispatched aggressive lobbyists to try to kill this bill.
America will only continue to become more corporately corrupt until we have a Congress with enough backbone to PERMANENTLY BAN all forms of lobbying and limit congressional term limits immediately.
The American dream isn't to monopolize the entire country with 3 or 4 mega corporations. CALL YOUR SENATORS.
I would surprised if this bill passes both houses of congress and then is signed by trump. Nothing that helps poor/middle class Americans would be of any interest to the right wing crony capitalists in this country.
For as much as the Democrats have been screaming about a need to return to civility naming the act after a private citizen, richest man or not, is too funny.
Compared to - say - the legislation resulting from the sub-prime crisis - in which powerful individuals at the head of national and global banking systems (and governments) almost ended the world as we know it.
Anyways, of course the actual brief doesn't actually reference how much Amazon employees are currently being subsidized (vs referenceing Walmart's $6.2b), because this isn't about the dollars and cents, it's about rushing something through on the back of bad press and Trump's tweetstorms.
The government grows unto itself, shoot first, aim later.
> For as much as the Democrats have been screaming about a need to return to civility
Democrats have not generally been screaming about a need to return to civility, they've been screaming about a need to return to estsblished substantive and procedural norms.
Republicans have been demanding civility as a means of deflecting the increasingly strenuous objections on those issues.
(besides the obvious political grandstanding timing of it)
Simply put, no. It is not the responsibility of employers to ensure that any job they offer provides sufficient compensation to an employee to live where they want.
Government actions have done far more damage and kept more people in poor financial straights than lack of pay. From the over zealous war on drugs to fund the politically powerful police and sheriff unions to the expense of the public employee pension systems which have driven up the cost of local government services, fees, and licensing, all at the cost of helping those in need.
>Government actions have done far more damage and kept more people in poor financial straights than lack of pay. From the over zealous war on drugs to fund the politically powerful police and sheriff unions
I'm not disagreeing with your premise completely, but conflating policies that are genuinely meant to help the working poor and policies that are specifically meant to harm people (the war on drugs being an excellent example) is dishonest and unhelpful.
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[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_tax
This probably isn't politically feasible at the moment though, so for now we have to take small victories where we can get them, like getting rid of the most obviously stupid and regressive subsidies.
What's in it for the participating corporation? Well, money.
For the politician, it can be one or more of the following: Fulfilling campaign promises (ie, "I brought jobs here"), legal money (ie, corporation pays into campaign PAC), or illicit money (which usually requires some laundering using casinos, real-estate or cryto to secretly fund).
That makes sense, but seems like most of the political pressure to raise minimum wage is focused at the federal level.
Does the issue of raising minimum wage get traction in state- or local-level politics, and just not get widely reported (aside from Seattle and a few other cities)?
So yes state level changes get a lot of attention, but there's also lots of people impacted by the federal level.
McDonalds on the other hand, already has kiosks installed everywhere and simply has to decide orders can't be taken at the till anymore. There goes 50% of customer facing staff. And here comes more of the population relying on government subsidies.
Basic income is still a more viable alternative, but I have low hopes of this being taken seriously for another 10-20 years.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/15
I'm guessing this bill is made so that it appeals to Trump, too, who's been attacking Bezos lately. Fingers crossed it passes. Amazon has benefited from low taxes, which has catapulted it into a monopoly in several markets. Monopolies are bad for consumers, competition, and employees.
The low taxes is part of the reasons why it's been able to invest more in the company, subsidize Kindle ebooks for years (Apple has called it a price dumping tactic), it enabled it to offer free shipping with a relatively low subscription, and of course cheaper products in general compared to offline retailers.
No, it's not; Sanders was the first major national politician to jump on the grassroots Fight for $15 movement, but he didn't start it. (Heck, Black Lives Matter was involved before Sanders, but they didn't start it, either.)
In practice, it’s a little more complicated than that because automation requires investments that are long to set-up, risky, etc. but there are reasons to believe that this suggestion, if it passes would have two effect:
- accelerate automation overall;
- convince Amazon to employ directly more of its workers (they are typically going through employment agencies at the moment) and re-think its schedules. The dirty secret of that industry is that Amazon would like people to come at certain hours but doesn’t really think beyond its operations, partially because they have an arms-length relationship with temporary workers. Agencies are all too willing to comply, and force powerless temp workers into the grinder, arguing that they are just bowing to “the market”. The layers of bureaucracy prevents Amazon from raising internally the point that shifts at reasonable hours, with breaks. This means employees can think more critically of their job, and contribute greatly to innovation.
Human labor is so far behind machine labor, that raising its cost by a little bit won't make much of a difference.
When it comes to manual labor, machines are so much cheaper, more efficient, cheaper, less risky (medically, legally, criminally), stable, and reliable, that there's no comparison really.
Big companies like Amazon therefore automate wherever they can already.
Based on articles about their fulfillment centers, the only jobs remaining there are those robots don't do very well right now. These will eventually disappear regardless of the passage of provocatively-titled PR-focused laws (which probably won't pass anyway in current congress).
I'm not sure I understand your second point, especially how relevant it is to the current discussion. This is about Amazon compensating employees with such minimal and pay and benefits that they must seek welfare assistance and thus effectively are paid by the taxpayer. Working conditions have nothing to do with that, although (obviously) the same weak employees (or "contractors") who receive so little pay will receive little consideration in these and other regards as well.
They make sure not to hit work-hour thresholds to owe employees full benefits. In some areas, they demand that employees use a work-van to get there, and they have to pay the driver absurd amounts to use that “service”.
Working conditions are so dire that the temp workers can’t offer suggestion on working conditions, conditions that would help Amazon integrate better automation in their current system, and make paying workers more comfortably more sensical.
You can’t extract work problems from their context.
Not sure I follow.
From reading articles about it, the "working conditions" are "dire" because Amazon can press workers to work very hard (fill quotas) in large warehouses that are barely suitable for human habitation.
Both of these are related to Amazon squeezing pennies out of employees/contractors who have zero leverage.
The problem isn't that these employees can't offer "suggestions". Amazon knows very well that if it lowered quotas, allowed more breaks, and added air-conditioning to warehouses, working conditions will improve.
It doesn't do these things because these employees have zero leverage so Amazon makes more money by not offering these improvements.
The fundamental problem is that unskilled labor is very low value, and as automation increases, will get even lower.
Amazon use some bots and are working on automating more of the warehouse jobs, IIRC.
Unrelated: I like your username! :-)
Their goal seem to be 100% automation, and the only remaining jobs are those that can't be automated just yet.
I don't know anything about Walmart, but given Amazon's path, they have no choice but to follow suite to stay competitive.
Unrelated: thanks!
While it's possible that some manual warehouse workers have the capacity to "retrain" to a more skilled job, the reality is that there are more than enough incentives for them to have done so already: pay, benefits, job security, status, etc.
Those who chose minimal-wage, no-benefits work in terrible conditions over much better skilled work have done so because they are either strongly deterred by the nature of skilled work or lack the capacity for it.
So the problem isn't "retraining". The problem is that the percentage of humanity that can be replaced by machines of superior intelligence is increasing.
unless you mean putting more money into AI research, which they are
still, the jury is still out on whether the laws of nature allow to build AIs that can do every job and totally replace human resources. and whether reaching that point implies you’ve just built a new sentient being that will be unionizing and campaigning for equal rights and equal pay and better silicon in no time.
Another big part of Amazon-related workers is their delivery third-parties. Self-driving truck could help, but they will still need people to unload the trucks and deal with the idiosyncrasies of every location. There were plans to use autonomous hexacopters (“drones”) but I don’t think those make sense at scale and for larger items.
You’re saying building a hand that can feel and sense is not really AI in general. I say that “sense” and “sentient” have the same latin root — sentire, to feel.
From what we know about intelligence and its relationship with sentience, giving something a sense of feeling implies applying artificial intelligence... and is a step towards artificial sentience IMO. It’s definitely not a step away from it. Those sensors sound like nerves to me.
Robots for a higher minimum wage!
https://imgur.com/a/PchOOgZ
People Over Profits. Why is that such a difficult concept? Why is the "free market" so revered? Show me why it is better than the least well off living comfortably with shareholders making a lower return. If a trillion dollars isn't enough, what is?
Don't prevent companies from getting rid of their human workforce - redistribute wages "paid" to robots to humans.
I just think that responsibility should fall equally on all of us and not, as this bill does, single out particular kinds of businesses over other types of businesses.
You can't not do anything when people are being taken advantage of and you're waiting for midterms and 2020 elections.
Disclaimer: I donate heavily to progressive candidates (and only progressive candidates).
That being said, I'm generally against the minimum wage for the same reason(1) (in a way this bill is a de-facto minimum wage increase from the perspective of employers). Wal-Mart shareholders shouldn't have a greater responsibility to pay for the social safety net than Google shareholders.
1. Though to be clear I think this bill is much worse due to the complexity of the implementation. At least a minimum wage is simple.
In preparation for the move to a totally AI driven customer interface (which WILL happen, barring any large scale disaster), legislators needs to implement some solution to keep currency flowing to the people.
If everything except highly skilled professions are automated, there will be a hell of a lot unemployment. Off the top of my head, one potential solution I've heard is that companies should pay wages to robots and those wages will be paid as tax to the government who would redistribute the wealth as universal basic income.
We're surely decades or more from near total automation, but it's worth thinking about as a serious matter as we are living in the robot revolution.
> Under this legislation, large employers are defined as employers who have more than 500 employees, including part -time workers, independent contractors and franchise workers.
I'm not an expert in legalese (and this isn't the legislation itself), but the last two words imply that McDonald Corporate would be on the hook for franchisee's employee's food stamps.
If a job is beneficially for the economy, and individual, and an employer, though not enough to keep someone out of poverty - this is precisely when government programs should fill in the gap. And I would think should be the perspective of someone who calls themselves a "Democratic Socialist."
A huge part of the problem with how healthcare and labor benefits are handled in the United States is exactly this - that they are far to tied to an individual's job. Divorcing them actually helps all parties. Most developed nations operate this way.
Naming this legislation after Bezos is petty and vindictive. It's below the office of a Senator, and a bad precedent to set to using the power of lawmaking to single out individuals.
I don't think it should; but on the other end, why would people work for Walmart if the salary it offers is not enough to survive? And why should Walmart rely on the subsidies offered by the state to integrate the shitty wages it's paying?
In other words, the employees work for you, you are the one who should pay them- subsidies are altering this balance. (Ah, and tips too, my other little obsession. Otherwise I'll bring my own waiter, thank you).
Of course the state should provide a "safety net"- which for me includes full, free, high quality medical assistance, education, and maybe some for of low rent housing. But that's about it.
Sanders point is that the current system is de-facto redistributive, in favour of companies who use temporary workers at a large scale and with patterns that appear to be designed to evade regulations on employee protection. Say, there are obligations that kick in when an employee works for more than 40 hours per week; employers who have thousands of employees tasked to work only 39 hours could obviously hire almost as many and be responsible for sick pay, holidays, health insurance.
You response is probably that this means the union decision was badly designed, and no one who knows anything about labor negotiations would disagree with you. It is a case of the spirit of the law versus its letter. I’m sure you want to say that this is not the company’s role to write the law. That would make their lobbyist laugh a bit, but let’s assume this is true. Sanders is precisely trying to fit one to the other. What constitutes a clear breach (and how the numbers quoted in the project are established) is probably a nightmare of analytical ad-hoc decisions, but it’s probably more honest than refusing to support financially basic human needs from people who, de-facto, work full time for you.
But I don't see why Bezos in particular is singled out.
2. The way I see it the ideological argument that will probably spring from this has no way of being settled. This bill is basically a stealth minimum wage. Economic evidence provides enough studies on both sides of the issue that everyone can fight it out, cite one or two things and go home believing exactly what they already thought.
3. Why the 500 employee minimum? I'm not sure I see the rationale behind my tax dollars subsidizing any business that doesn't pay their employees a living wage, not just the big ones.
In other words, it's an announcement of an announcement, the most off-topic of offtopicness.
While technically true at the time the linked summary was written, the bill has in fact been introduced and this is a summary of it as well a statement that it will be introduced.
Whether or not it is “evidence of some interesting new phenomenon” is, I would agree, debatable.
…But then how would the employer's tax department know how much to pay in the proposed tax?
But the marginal tax rate at that part of the curve, taking into account the EITC is close enough to zero that it’s not an issue.
I like the plan, I think that it needs a slight tweak. The fine should be 200% of the subsidy, and perhaps it should only apply to workers working at least 20 hours a week.
There are plenty of individuals who work multiple jobs, still get only 30-some hours, and still collect public assistance. Seems like a needless clause.
Remember this doesn’t change anything about what the employee is paid, it’s a fine for paying an employee too little to be self sufficient. I’m not sure that makes sense if someone is only working for you one day a week, for example.
Surely there are detriments I haven't considered, and please do share them if any come to mind.
Why should companies that employ lower skill workers pay higher taxes than those that employ higher skilled workers?
We have decided that there should be a minimum standard of living for people that live in the US. Paying for that decision falls on all of us, not just the companies that happen to employ those with lower paying jobs.
This is essentially a special tax on companies that happen to have business models that require low skill labor. Why should companies(1) with business models that only require high skill labor get off the hook when it comes to paying their fare share of the bill for our countries social services?
1. or more correctly those companies stockholders and employees
That's not what is being called a subsidy.
Federal benefits to low-wage workers are being called a subsidy that reduces wage demands in the market. Other than EITC (which actually does act as a wage subsidy in a certain range), that's a problematic claim, too, but it's a different claim than that market wages are a subsidy.
We have decided no such thing. People need shelter food and clothing, these are necessities. We have decided a bare minimum of those necessities that people have a right to have. Either employers pay for these, or governments pay for these. Without them people don't have enough food to eat, don't have shelter to live, or clothing to wear.
An employer is not your mother. Just because you go to work for someone, it does not automatically endow them with a special responsibility to make sure you can afford to live your life in the way a bunch of other people say that you should be able to.
When we (as a citizenry) get together and decide on how we want to support each other we can't just pawn off the costs of that decision on a 3rd party. We have to accept those costs ourselves.
We have a serious unemployment problem that will only get worse with automation. Rather than tying survival to work, I'd rather see UBI and workers who won't take abuse because they're only working part-time for beer money.
It's telling that Sander's proposed bill would only require "large employers" to pay up here. If local businesses were all paying higher salaries already they wouldn't need this exemption in the first place.
Wait, what?
All the companies mentioned in the document make profits way higher than the "subsidies" they receive. They could easily increase wages or pay this tax.
Another way of looking at it is SNAP gives workers a better alternative to working - not working - so it raises workers' reservation wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_wage
If it were not for SNAP, you'd actually be able to hire more workers at a cheaper price because the alternative to working - not working - would no longer be as attractive.
(Posted this comment top-level on a dupe, deleted it there and reposting here.)
Take Amazon for example, if a living wage bill is passed, what is to say that they do not move towards a 100% robotic workforce in their warehouses in a few years?
This is a nice stunt but nobody in Congress will have the balls to vote for it.
Maybe Sanders never aspired to be a national leader and that should be respected but it's still disappointing.
Sanders has used his platform to continue to advocate for Medicare For All, for a $15/hr minimum wage (a concession he was able to get for Disneyland employees), for renewable energy, for justice reform, for immigration reform. What else would you suggest he do? He has been more positively impactful than any politician currently in office except perhaps Senator Warren.
> Now the democrats look as clueless as they looked in 2016. They still don't have a real value proposition other than not being Trump.
Medicare For All, a $15 hour minimum wage, fully funded public schools and universities, justice reform, immigration reform, paid family and sick leave (not an exhaustive list) is not a value proposition?
Democrats clueless? Progressive candidates continue to win in elections at every level. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is crushing it. As long as the Clintons, Biden, and other moderates keep to themselves, we'll be fine.
They are winning primaries so far. That's different from being elected.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/9/4/17818204/midterm-2018-polls-gen... (New 2018 midterm poll has Democrats up 14 points on Republicans)
[2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/democrats-surgi... (With the Midterms Two Months Away, Democrats Are Surging in the Polls)
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/04/politics/midterm-polls-democr... (Democrats have double-digit advantage in midterm elections, polls show)
[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/trump-does-not-want-governme...
[5] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/04/s...
America will only continue to become more corporately corrupt until we have a Congress with enough backbone to PERMANENTLY BAN all forms of lobbying and limit congressional term limits immediately.
The American dream isn't to monopolize the entire country with 3 or 4 mega corporations. CALL YOUR SENATORS.
Compared to - say - the legislation resulting from the sub-prime crisis - in which powerful individuals at the head of national and global banking systems (and governments) almost ended the world as we know it.
Anyways, of course the actual brief doesn't actually reference how much Amazon employees are currently being subsidized (vs referenceing Walmart's $6.2b), because this isn't about the dollars and cents, it's about rushing something through on the back of bad press and Trump's tweetstorms.
The government grows unto itself, shoot first, aim later.
Democrats have not generally been screaming about a need to return to civility, they've been screaming about a need to return to estsblished substantive and procedural norms.
Republicans have been demanding civility as a means of deflecting the increasingly strenuous objections on those issues.
Simply put, no. It is not the responsibility of employers to ensure that any job they offer provides sufficient compensation to an employee to live where they want.
Government actions have done far more damage and kept more people in poor financial straights than lack of pay. From the over zealous war on drugs to fund the politically powerful police and sheriff unions to the expense of the public employee pension systems which have driven up the cost of local government services, fees, and licensing, all at the cost of helping those in need.
I'm not disagreeing with your premise completely, but conflating policies that are genuinely meant to help the working poor and policies that are specifically meant to harm people (the war on drugs being an excellent example) is dishonest and unhelpful.