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.

Comments

Re:Good

[XXongo]

...and, even better yet, they'll hit Walmart as well. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
https://qz.com/695763/a-web-of-terror-insecurity-and-a-high-level-of-vulnerability-hm-gap-and-walmart-are-accused-of-hundreds-of-acts-of-worker-abuse/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart

Re:Good

[Oswald McWeany]

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...

Amazon is taking hits from the left and the right here. Amazon doesn't have a fan in the current white house either. They don't have many allies in DC.

Re:Don't we have a free market system?

[Anonymous Coward]

If these companies are profitable enough to earn billions for their shareholders, then they need to pick up the tab for the public benefits they are abusing by underpaying their employees.

Re:Don't we have a free market system?

[dunkelfalke]

Oh, that can be applied in so many ways.
Like, for example, "don't like this kind of laws, find another country".

How did Bernie Sanders become wealthy?

[jfdavis668]

Can someone explain to me how this guy went from being a school teacher and carpenter to mayor to senator, and somehow became wealthy along the way? He has to have some money to buy that home complex on Grand Isle.

Will it help?

[Roger W Moore]

I applaud the aims but I can't help thinking that it might end up with employees claiming benefits getting fired by the company and the rest ending up getting crap pay and being too afraid to claim any benefits for fear of being fired. Isn't the better way to do this to set a living minimum wage?

Re:Will it help?

[Linsaran]

I mean, ideally setting a living minimum wage would be ideal; but this particular bill might be more palatable to the right. The concern that people would get fired is probably overblown. For one thing it'd probably be a protected clause like how you can't fire someone because of their race or ethnicity. Second if people need benefits they're going to claim them regardless; people need to eat and have a home. Thirdly chances are the government isn't going to be so granular as to tell big corporations which employees are claiming benefits, they just get a tax bill for the totals.

Re:Will it help?

[mysidia]

might end up with employees claiming benefits getting fired by the company

If the bill doesn't address it, then my suggestion would be: Tax on benefits does not end with termination --- If an employee receiving government benefits is terminated, then the employer continues paying Tax for all government benefits that employee receives - Including any unemployment benefits or increase in SNAP or other program benefits caused by unemployment - for the earlier of 4 years, or until that employee is hired and maintains jobs for a total of at least 2000 hours of work with new employers, at which time the last year's "Benefits tax" amounts paid on that person's benefits by both their new and previous employers will be credited or refunded to their previous employer.

Re:Will it help?

[apoc.famine]

Yes. And where did that wealth come from? From investments in businesses and the stock market. Both of which have been doing excellent due to record profits from businesses. And why do they have record profits? Because their labor costs are shrinking.

These bills don't immediately fix the problem at the top, but they do provide a bit of a safety valve on the wealth concentration pipeline.

Re:Will it help?

[Solandri]

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

That's mostly a self-created problem. The top 1% only makes about 19% of the income. That they're able to leverage that to attain 40% of the wealth (integral of income minus expenses over time) tells you that (1) the 1% are more likely to spend their income on things that retain or grow in value, rather than disposable or transitory things like entertainment, and (2) the 99% are willing to pay exorbitant interest rates to borrow money from the 1% (that interest becomes income for the 1%). I call it self-created because this is something the 99% can solve on their own. They don't have to spend as much of their income on things which quickly or immediately lose value. And they can put off major purchases for some years while they save up money, rather than take out a loan to buy it right now.

The bigger concern should probably be that the bottom 60% also makes about 19% of total income. That is, the income of the top 1% just about equals the income of the bottom 60%. That is, for those income valuations to be correct, an individual in the top 1% has to be 60x as producitve as someone in the bottom 60%. I'm a fiscal conservative, and that sounds pretty hard to believe. Unlike spending, the bottom 60% aren't really in control of their income. Making it much more likely that the problem as that they're simply being underpaid.

Re:Will it help?

[shaitand]

I couldn't. People who don't need those benefits won't take employment at these wages, people taking employment at these wages by definition are going to require these benefits.

The only exception I can think of are retirees who can work a certain number of hours a week without losing benefits but they amount they earn is docked from their benefits now anyway.

Sanders

[fyngyrz]

This is a ploy to extract donations from his base for his next reelection run. And that's all it is.

I hope it works. AFAIC, Bernie Sanders would make (and would have made) a much better president than either Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump. Ideally, both houses of congress would change hands as well, so he could actually get some things done. It's well past time for a pendulum swing, IMHO.

My cynical side says that people, despite recognizing that congress as a whole is dysfunctional, will still vote the same congress-critters right back in, just as they have been doing pretty much most of the time. Round and round we go.

Re:Good

[Anne Thwacks]

As a true /.ian, I have not read TFA, but my understanding is that people (generically) are being paid piddling wages by a bunch of filthy rich scum. Amazon is a (good) example, but hardly the only ones. This is similar to slavery - which did not always involve grotesque amounts of violence.

How to address this is not a new problem. It was a major talking point throughout the 18th and 19th century in the UK. It is hard to improve the lot of the poor without ending up creating more poor, etc.

Several people have in the past, and I myself have promoted the concept that, where a company pays so little that any one of its employees are on benefits, it should be illegal to pay dividends to the shareholders. As things stand (at least here in the UK) we have a situation where companies who behave well, and employees whose situation is OK, are (heavily) taxed to fund their unscrupulous competitors. As a fat capitalist (waistline to prove it), I strongly disapprove of this situation. This should be dealt with by the legislation which also deals with the kind of asset stripper who buys a company, pays his cronies huge sums, and bankrupts the company owing millions to the supply chain (laws exist, but are not enforced). This is called trading illegally, but unfortunately does not appear to result in long jail terms, unlike other forms of armed robbery and "obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception".

The proposal described above is a different solution to (effectively) the same problem, and unless you are the greediest type scum, it is hard to find a case against something of this type being done. Even if you are filthy rich sum, you might want to do something, as the alternative could involve the loss of your own life.

To know what will happen if nothing is done, you might want to Google "the French Revolution" - however, organisations such as ISIS and Boko Haram, and, indeed Trump voters, will give you a basic idea of the consequences of serious abuse of large numbers of poor people.

Warren Buffet already answered your question

[rsilvergun]

I forget where, so forgive the paraphrasing and lack of citation, but it boiled down to: "Just because you tax me doesn't mean I'm going to stop making money, so go ahead and tax me". He also pointed out that he pays less taxes than his $70k/yr secretary.

Re:Consequences of Predatory Taxes

[viperidaenz]

The low paid workers in these big companies are warehouse workers at Amazon and checkout operators at Target. Can't really shift those jobs overseas.
If they shift the costs on to the consumer, that's increasing their prices compared to smaller companies.
Replacing humans with robots isn't going too well, and Amazon have been trying to do this in their warehouses for years.
If they could get away with hiring fewer staff, why haven't they done it already?

Re:Good

[liquid_schwartz]

And they are a scam in every case. Free money for the mom, children still often go without. Until this money has accountability don't expect good outcomes.