[sokoloff]

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO.

If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it. Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.

When you come up with a bill with an acronym "STOP BEZOS", I am pretty certain you've left the path of light and reason.

[ameister14]

>it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO.

I don't agree. It's been done before, many times, and to the benefit of the people. Look at what was done with JP Morgan, Standard Oil, Rockefeller as an individual person, multiple Railroad companies and trusts to start.

[jdpedrie]

"To the benefit of the people" and "does violence to the rule of law" are not mutually exclusive, at least in the short term.

[kanelbullar]

And yet, "does violence to the rule of law" seems quite dubious in both the case referred to in the original article, and in the above-cited context.

[Timmah]

It's no more of a travesty when "violence to the rule of law" is done against corporations than when it is committed against poor people.

Also, AMZN built their empire by exploiting interstate sales tax loopholes to undercut brick and mortar competitors. Why shouldn't their representation under the "rule of law" be proportionately undercut?

[weberc2]

> It's no more of a travesty when "violence to the rule of law" is done against corporations than when it is committed against poor people.

This seems like a rather blatant false dichotomy.

[crawfordcomeaux]

Enforcing any law inherently does violence to people. Do you wish to pedestal law above people? And if not, do you want them on equal footing?

I personally would like to work toward a culture that doesn't require law and, barring that, law that peacefully respects a person's decision to revoke consent to be governed at any moment's notice.

Blanket consent for government isn't realistic or sustainable. And even if it were, it isn't consent without being free to revoke it.

[wool_gather]

"Government" of any variety, stripped of all its pomp and circumstance, is just a set of rules for people to agree to follow so they can live next to each other without regular resort to personal violence. "Revoking your consent" to government means that you no longer want to follow those rules. It's not clear why the other people around you should accept your presence without that agreement.

Even anarchy is itself a rule about how people interact; even an anarchist group will have expected processes -- maybe they're ad-hoc, but rules nonetheless.

And I expect you think you should still be privileged to the benefits of the governed society although you refuse the agreement: easy access to goods/services, and a market for your own. Again, why should the other people make that allowance for you when you reject the group?

[olavk]

If anyone can opt out the rule of law at any point then it is the same as having no law in the first place. Which means the ones with the most weapons get to decide. Which means we are back to having a government except without any rights and protections for everybody else.

[gowld]

What wsa done to these entities, with individually-targeted laws?

Antitrust law applies to the entire economy (except Major League Baseball and a few other bad cases).

[rando444]

Your point is valid, but other than the acronym used to get people talking about the bill, Amazon is not targeted directly.

Wal-mart would actually be impacted much more than Amazon as they employ 5x the workforce, and has arguably been the larger target of such legislation considering the majority of their workforce relies on government subsides to make ends meet.

[will_brown]

>it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company.

In general what you are talking about is a Bill of Attainder and it is unconstitutional.

Notwithstanding the - not so clever - name of the Bill, it doesn’t exactly sound like anyone is being targeting so much as a legal framework is being proposed for recipients of corporate welfare to have to reimburse the government, based on corporate financials. Sure if it ONLY applies to Amazon there is a problem, but that isn’t likely.

Seems to me when you have employers like Walmart who rely on taxpayers to subsidize their employees benefits and simultaneously are the beneficiary of 20% (or $14B) in taxpayer funded food stamps annually there is a problem. Basically you have a single low paying employer who has dug a $14B taxpayer moat around any potential competition which would potentially drive up wages.

Shouldn’t lawmakers be able to look at employers as a whole and say...wow certain companies are really taking advantage and benefiting from corporate welfare and we need to take action to close the unwanted and unforeseen loopholes? I don’t think anyone is looking at Bezos and the Waltons and saying how do we target these rich people, they are saying these welfare programs are not fulfilling their intended purpose and the program needs to be re-evaluated.

[faster]

The idea of employees receiving food stamps seems like a clear case of manipulating the system. But I think there is more nuance than the 20%/$14B numbers describe.

Imagine a single mom who wants to be home when her kids get home from school. She's working part time, and not making enough to feed her family. Who is responsible for her shortfall?

In a community where Walmart is a big employer, many people may work part time and one consequence of that is that more people have jobs. Walmart benefits from that but so do those employees, even when they don't make enough to eat well.

Sure, the system can obviously be manipulated. Yes, people (and company leaders) make bad choices. Who decides who pays?

[geezerjay]

I woukd also add that it's hardly reasonable or desirable to dump on employers the responsibility of providing wellfare assistance. If the people, collectively, don't want to provide that service through state institutions, why should they dump that responsibility on someone who thought it would be a good idea to creatr jobs in a town?

[larksimian]

> Who decides who pays?

In the short term elected representatives. In the long-term their voters as they re-elect them, or not, to office.

[sokoloff]

That $14B in SNAP benefits is because Walmart is a significant market share grocer and people who receive SNAP benefits buy food at Walmart with those benefits.

I'm not sure how that makes Walmart a villain in the current discussion. Target takes in about $5B revenue from sales under SNAP, Aldi about $4.5B, and Kroger just under $4B. Companies who serve SNAP recipients should be lauded not vilified, IMO. They're serving a generally underserved constituency.

[s73v3r_]

Nobody is upset that Wal-Mart sells food to SNAP beneficiaries. What people are upset over is the fact that so many of Wal-Mart's employees need to go on public assistance because the company refuses to pay them enough to live on.

Trying to pretend this is about Wal-Mart selling food, and not the wages they pay is incredibly dishonest.

[geezerjay]

> What people are upset over is the fact that so many of Wal-Mart's employees need to go on public assistance because the company refuses to pay them enough to live on.

If that's the case then I fail to see how a particular employer is responsible for that problem. I mean, if the economy is so depressed in a region that the absolute best some job seekers are able to get is a job that requires them to remain on public assistance then obviously the employer isn't to blame for the region's economy. In fact, that employer is already offering the very best jobs available in that region. Where does it make any sense to go after them instead of doing something to fix the economy and improve the lives and conditions available to those workers?

[will_brown]

I think employers like Walmart and Amazon are unique cases.

Again consider the fact that Walmart as a national grocer is able to milk the SNAP program on a national level to the tune of $14B/year.

That enables them to move into a depressed area and set up shop, even at a loss, which in turn allows them to shutter the existing market incumbent(s).

With the mom & pops gone and/or employee owned grocer now gone only Walmart is left.

It’s using tax payer funds to out compete competition, which allows Walmart to further depress wages.

It’s not like this behavior is all theoretical. In practice Walmart takes taxpayer money and turns around and lobbies congress to increase SNAP benefits so they can keep lining their pockets. Walmart takes losses in certain regions to put others out of business to become sole grocer. These losses are in part balanced and paid for by tax payer dollars at the national level.

In many ways Walmart is directly responsible for lack of competition and closed stores, and despite the desperate attempt to say that is free market...it’s not free market when 1 company is subsidized by taxpayer money and the loser isn’t.

You are right effort should be made into improving/fixing the economy and lives of workers...getting rid of corporate welfare for certain businesses is part of that.

[geezerjay]

> Again consider the fact that Walmart as a national grocer is able to milk the SNAP program on a national level to the tune of $14B/year.

Others in this thread have pointed out that "milk the SNAP" program is a very disingenuous and deceitful statement. SNAP is a wellfare program that subsidizes food purchases and both wallmart and amazon sell groceries, and somehow people like you spin the fact that supermarkets sell groceries to sound like these companies are stealing money from the government at the expense of poor people.

And even then what's your point? Either supermakets sell food to underpriviledged people or they don't, and I really doubt that anyone would advocate that poor people should be barred from supermarkets where regular people shop.

[s73v3r_]

"If that's the case then I fail to see how a particular employer is responsible for that problem."

I fail to see how they're not. Wal-Mart is entirely, 10,000% responsible for how much they pay their workers.

"I mean, if the economy is so depressed in a region that the absolute best some job seekers are able to get is a job that requires them to remain on public assistance then obviously the employer isn't to blame for the region's economy."

That employer, especially when they are one of the largest companies in the nation, is entirely to blame for how much they pay their workers.

"Where does it make any sense to go after them instead of doing something to fix the economy and improve the lives and conditions available to those workers?"

Who says you can't do both? But why on earth does it seem acceptable that the job conditions are based on how good the economy is? Why is it suddenly acceptable to treat your workers like crap if some GDP number goes down by a quarter of a point?

[dragonwriter]

> Wal-Mart is entirely, 10,000% responsible for how much they pay their workers.

Yes, but the public is largely responsible for how little of what they allocate to pay gets to employees, by way of the fact that wages are taxed higher than regular income (because payroll taxes) which in turn is taxed higher than capital gains, which in turn are taxed higher than most unearned generational wealth transfer (thanks to the generous nontaxed allowances for gifts and inheritances.)

Tax income as income and at the same overall tax level, very few WalMart employees would need public assistance and employers would have a lot less incentive to replace employees that must be purchased with supertaxed wages with minimally-tax-burdened capital investments.

Right now, the tax rate on any kind of income varies inversely with the wealth of the people who tend to have that kind of income.

[sokoloff]

> Nobody is upset that Wal-Mart sells food to SNAP beneficiaries.

Literally the post to which I replied complained about "simultaneously are the beneficiary of 20% (or $14B) in taxpayer funded food stamps annually there is a problem". It seems that someone is upset about that.

[s73v3r_]

No. They are benefitting because they are having their labor subsidized by taxpayers because they don't pay enough.

Again, pretending the reason people are upset is because they're selling food, and not because Wal-Mart is requiring you and I to subsidize their labor costs, is incredibly dishonest.

[dragonwriter]

> They are benefitting because they are having their labor subsidized by taxpayers because they don't pay enough.

That's not a labor subsidy, and if it was the simple fix would be to make employed people categorically ineligible for federal benefits—we don't do that, because we know it's not a wage subsidy, and all the hyperventilating about it being a wage subsidy is (at least on the part of public officials and other people that know anything about policy) dishonest grandstanding.

(Now, work requirements in benefit programs do make them wage subsidies, because then the threat is “work at whatever job will have you or lose public benefits in addition to the marginal benefit of pay”; that's easily solved by removing such requirements.)

[ddingus]

Look at the root cause of why. Parent comment nailed it.

[notacoward]

> In general what you are talking about is a Bill of Attainder and it is unconstitutional.

That's highly debatable. Does "attainder" as used in the constitution apply to corporations? To a large extent that depends on whether corporations are persons in the context of that prohibition, but there are other concerns as well. You're assuming that the answer to all such questions can be answered in favor of corporations, but that's hardly settled.

[briffle]

In Wisconsin, when the legislature wanted to target Milwaukee for things, without actually naming them, they would say things like "This law applies to metro areas/counties with > xxx,000 people". Things like "the state takes over some of the mental health operations because they bungled it so bad", etc.

In the next Census, Madison, WI (and/or Dane County) is expected to hit some of those same limits. All sorts of things that were never intended will start applying.

[notacoward]

As others have pointed out, the text of the bill does not target Amazon and will likely affect others more. You're complaining about a name.

On the broader point, I think it's highly debatable whether bills should target individual companies. Certainly the arguments against bills of attainder do not apply, because corporations are not people and any doctrine to the contrary is loathsome. They are already given every right that people have, in addition to being immortal and shielded from full liability. The bargain under which they are even allowed to exist has become very one-sided since the abandonment of specific time-limited charters, so allowing them to be regulated individually seems like the least we could do to even the scales.

[394549]

> If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it. Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.

Sorry, but what you're advocating for a is a barrier towards fixing these problems.

If the legislature only talks in terms of abstract situations, all of it will feel theoretical and will be far less likely to spur real action. On the other hand, if you have concrete examples of problems, that makes the problems feel real. Real problems motivate real action.

Rest assured, whatever bill Sanders writes will target the broad problem at all companies, because he's forbidden from writing a law that would only target Amazon explicitly.

[downrightmike]

Trust busting was all the rage back with Teddy Roosevelt and Taft against standard oil

[sandworm101]

That is the theory. The reality is that at these scales a great many laws target only a single company. To target the leader in a given industry all a legislature need do is put a lower cap on enforcement: only companies beyond X number of employees need comply. At the other end, local governments certainly provide special legal treatment to individual companies (zoning/tax incentives etc). So while I agree it isn't a good idea, I'm not naive enough to say that every law targeting a specific company is delusional.

[dragonwriter]

> If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it.

That's exactly what the STOP BEZOS bill does, Amazon isn't uniquely effected by it.

[zaroth]

The bill is not targeted at Amazon and, for example, Walmart could be hit even harder.

Even good bills need public support and public support needs good marketing. Don’t confuse what’s on the label with what’s inside the tin.

[LarryDarrell]

It's not for no reason HQ2 will be in the Washington DC area.

[toss1]

Generally good in concept that companies should pay enough that a full time job puts people above the poverty line and above eligibility for govt benefits -- anything less means that the companies themselves are effectively freeloading on govt welfare (externalizing their costs to the govt, which makes it tolerable to work at these companies)

Much easier solution is to simply increase minimum wage as required, and probably set it at the locale level (more in the urban/high-cost areas and less in the rural/low-cost areas).

Such specific targeting simply invites companies to game the system.

[didibus]

Ya, I'm not sure why we're nit just talking about raising the minimum wage. I suspect they're worried it would hurt small mom and pop shops who also rely on paying their employees below the poverty line.

[la6470]

While all political parties are sheding alligator tears over this why are they not coming together to Raise the minimum wage?

[geezerjay]

Minimum wage is simply a constraint that prohibits the creation of some jobs that are available to the most vulnerable members of society in economically depressed regions.

Therefore, making lower-paying jobs illegal just because their salary falls below an arbitrary threshold only stops or hinders those jobs from being created, at the expense of higher unemployment rates.

I'm sure people working on shitty minimum wage jobs would not stay in the same minimum wage job if there were better higher-paying alternatives available to them. If they have no better alternatives than those jobs I don't understand how eliminating them by arbitrarily raising the minimum legal salary limit would leave them better off.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.

>When you come up with a bill with an acronym "STOP BEZOS", I am pretty certain you've left the path of light and reason.

Except that the content of the bill is quite broad and definitely doesn't "torture a combination of such factors" to target Amazon. It will impact Amazon but it will also impact all of Amazon's competitors too, and companies completely outside of the sector. The dubiousness of your 'path of light and reason' aside, it seems quite irrational to decry a bill for its name and not its content.

[amyjess]

I agree with you, but the name of the bill could provide Amazon with a legal case to try and get the law struck down as a bill of attainder. The bill has good intentions, but Sanders shot himself in the foot with the execution.

Of course, that's purely hypothetical. There's no way this bill is going to pass, not with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress.

[newshorts]

Is it the job or someone with power to help, to try and help, when it’s clear the normal regulating authorities will do nothing?

I’m sure Trump isn’t keen on any government agency regulating amazon.

Besides, it’s just a political stunt. This bill will never be passed, it’s just calling attention to the problem.

[souterrain]

I wonder if the direct nod to Bezos is an attempt to gain favor with a wing of the President's base who already have a target on the Amazon CEO, a long shot to combine forces from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

[mc32]

I think Gov Cuomo is right. That whilr progressives had an explosion of light and a fervent base, they don’t represent the majority of the Dem party and will not own the party if they stray into Chavista territory too far.

Many of their candidates lost to moderate dems because most dems are not so different from moderate repubs on most issues, save a few. In any case, they are not willing to go too far from orthodoxy.

Now, in general i agree these cos. should pay their contract and temps better, but I’d rather he use other tactics.