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Bernie Sanders Introduces 'Stop BEZOS' Bill To Tax Amazon For Underpaying Workers (theverge.com)
A public spat between Amazon Sen. Bernie Sanders over workers' wages escalated Wednesday as the Vermont independent introduced a bill aimed at taxing big companies whose employees rely on federal benefits to make ends meet. From a report: Sanders' Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act (abbreviated "Stop BEZOS") -- along with Khanna's House of Representatives counterpart, the Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act -- would institute a 100 percent tax on government benefits that are granted to workers at large companies. The bill's text characterizes this as a "corporate welfare tax," and it would apply to corporations with 500 or more employees. If workers are receiving government aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), national school lunch and breakfast programs, Section 8 housing subsidies, or Medicaid, employers will be taxed for the total cost of those benefits. The bill applies to full-time and part-time employees, as well as independent contractors that are de facto company employees.
Good. Amazon is abusive. And they don't pay taxes. Stop the abuse, make them pay their share, both at once. https://thenextweb.com/insider...
The problem with regular taxes is that they apply to everyone, regardless of how well they treat their employees and their clients. Normally, the good actors must pay to fix problems caused by the bad.
This targets companies specifically when their policies push employees toward poverty. With the death of unions, something needs to balance corporate power to ensure workers are treated fairly.
The law should waive the penalty when an employee has a spouse who is unable to work, however, as that contributes to poverty but is not the fault of the employer---and we don't want employers to have an incentive for discriminating against people whose partners are sick/disabled.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Universal Basic Income is thought by many to be a necessary response to increasing replacement of human work by automation and A.I.
We could easily see scenarios not too far out where 50% of "able" adults are no longer required by the automated economy, because automation and AI are more cost-effective and possibly just outright more effective/high-quality than their labor.
A feature of UBI (the Universal part) is that it is supposed to apply to people whether or not they are supplementing UBI with employment income.
Can we say that the Bernie tax is the first attempt to reclaim from profitable automated industry the funds needed to support UBI?
If so, I think the incentive alignment is wrong with this tax. This tax is making it more expensive to KEEP employees, and cheaper to automated more.
A UBI-supporting tax should instead be a tax on automation-driven productivity, and should be REDUCED when more human employees are retained.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Need to do it for Walmart too.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Amazon sorting centers pay $12.50/hr to anybody who can show up and pass a drug screen, no skills required, no resume asked for. How is that exploitation? Yes, the problem is that you work at Amazon's convenience, not your own, but I don't see them as taking advantage of anyone -- nobody has a gun to their head making them work there.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Two candidates for the same job, they have equivalent experiences and qualifications for the job. Candidate one is a single worker with no children. Candidate two is a single mom with four children. The wage is a "living wage" of $15/hr. Guess which candidate is going to generate a ton of under the Sander's tax plan? That's right, the single mom with four kids. All of a sudden, it's in a companies best interest to find out if you have kids, to find out the size of your family, to find out if you are going to generate any tax liability because of who you are. When you start to tax companies because of the people they hire, they will change the way they hire the people. The end result will ALWAYS hurt those the law intended to help.
If you don't think you're being paid enough, find another job. I don't like this idea that the government is going to get into the business of micromanaging how much companies pay their employees. A minimum wage is one standard for all, but to begin taxing companies as a way of penalizing them for not paying their employees enough: hello socialism.
The problem with "just find another job" at the rock bottom of the pay scale is that any other job they find is going to put them in the same boat. You have a whole class of people that are desperate, and basically have to take whatever bend-over-and-take it paycheck they can get.
One of the big benefits of UBI would be the elimination of this class of people, so that employers can't get away with this crap any more.
I don't like government meddling, either, but I also don't like supporting social safety net programs with my taxes so that big companies can use it as a subsidy.
The mandatory acceptance of trade unions at these companies is one way of stopping this. As long as workers act as individuals they can be picked off one by one; if they can organise collectively they you can have equal forces. I know that many do not like this, but without unions you have the large forcing the small.
I think the danger here is this could be the "Don't hire poor people act". If they are punished for hiring people receiving government benefits, then they won't hire them. So this act might just wind up preventing people from being able to take jobs that allow them to get off government benefits.
And fourth, so many of their employees are claiming them that they wouldn't have enough employees left if they let them all go.
Between this and Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act, we might see some real change in the corporate monsters that are destroying the middle class right now.
That is, if either ever make it into law.....
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
That actually makes it sound like a good thing. If Amazon or the like refuses to hire "at risk" employees who might need welfare or other benefits to sustain themselves, then they will likely eliminate their hiring pool and it should result in forcing them to raise their wages.
Meanwhile for teenagers starting out, who don't need welfare or a "living wage" this wouldn't prevent them from being hired for jobs or gaining experience, etc.
It seems like an ideal solution. My only concern is whether the jobs needed are sufficiently profitable to sustain the population without redistributing the GDP. If our country can sustain a population, but if there is no work of sufficient value to redistribute the wealth generated by the nation as a whole, then this tax could destroy the marginal growth in GDP we might experience. Will it tip the scales back towards recirculating the GDP throughout the entire nation by increasing the value of labor, or will it tip the scales towards a jobless economy by making the work not worth the cost?
I'd like to think that the destruction of everything below the upper-class is somehow related to the top 1% of americans controlling 40% of the wealth. It allows a select group of americans to sway the outcome of elections and buy the loyalty of our elected "representatives".
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I am thinking that the government doesn't have to necessarily *tell* the employer who is specifically claiming benefits... they would just know that some people are. I would think that a company as big as the ones being targeted would have several employees claiming assistance.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Median wage would likely be more representative.
Why only list entertainment on consumable and transitory things? The category also includes things like food, clothing, medicine, and transportation. It also includes costs of rented things, like rented housing versus home ownership, and the cost of loans and interest.
You're right that the upper echelons have more discretion to where they put it, they have the option to put it into income-generating and growth-generating items instead of consumable. To be sure they'll still buy more consumables, but they have the option to buy things that grow. The farther down the totem pole people get, the less of that option people have. Some have a small portion on the top, like a small amount of profit generated from selling food, but selling them is a wealth-gathering exercise to those who own the business already.
And that's the crux of the cycle. If you are poor you remain poor, you cannot cross that gap, you cannot buy a home but must rent housing, you cannot buy value-generating or value-retaining things because they are too expensive, you must rent where the value goes to someone else. If you are wealthy you can buy more of those things that further generate wealth, buy another home or even buy an apartment complex to rent out, letting the wealthy capture even more in successive rounds.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
And where did the money come from to make those investments? People bought products made in previous factories, by previous laborers.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.