[Egidius]

If you pay your employees $7.25 you deserve to be made fun off at least. Jeff Bezos recently also said Amazon deserved being scrutinised. I'm not saying this is what triggered them, but sometimes you have to take a strong position in order to be listened to.

[roenxi]

It hasn't crossed a threshold into being a big deal, but singling out an individual does look like bullying and bullying isn't funny.

Jeff Bezos has to respect the law or face a series of consequences up to imprisonment. We all know he is going to respect the law like we all do. It is mean spirited to write a (potential) law that disrespects him directly. He can't really respond to that.

Sanders should have stuck to calling him names in a speech, or informally calling it the Bezos' Act. That is just discussion and fair game. This type of formal embedding is unpleasant at a deeper level to no-one's benefit. We can do without that in politics, thankyouverymuch.

[maaark]

When the individual is worth more than many nation states, I have no problem with singling them out.

[philwelch]

Most of those poor nation states are that way because they have adopted Sanders' cynical attitude about business and capitalism.

[leetcrew]

even if that person is the richest man in the world, a US senator singling out a private citizen in formal legislation is still "punching down". you really shouldn't cheer for that.

[graedus]

I'm absolutely astonished at this definition of "punching down"!

[leetcrew]

afaik, it is commonly used to refer to situations where someone makes a joke at the expense of someone less powerful than they are.

do you disagree with my understanding of the definition, or are you implying that jeff bezos is more powerful than a US senator who made a decent run for the presidency and is acting in his official capacity as such?

[graedus]

The latter. Certainly, Sanders isn't powerless, he's the most popular politician in the US. However, he's only one of one hundred senators, almost all of whom are beholden to or influenced by—to varying degrees and on varying issues—the members of "the billionaire class", as he would put it. Bezos's net worth is currently over $160 billion. Q.E.D.

In a world where wealth distribution was flatter, and the richest person alive had access to like $100 million (a lot of money!), that would be one thing. The distribution is not so flat in our world, to put it mildly. Not to be pat, but money is power, and I think it's important to grasp the orders of magnitude at play here.

[hataraku]

A senator who ran and lost a presidential election is not as powerful as the richest man on Earth, no.

[GrumpiNerd]

That's always been Bernie's style. He finds a target for hate, and gets votes by stirring up the hate.

[Ataraxy]

Won't someone please think of the poor billionares?

[drb91]

I hear that hit job of a book A Christmas Carol did unreparable damage to Mr. Scrooge’s reputation. A damn shame.

Mocking rich people for how they spend their money is a pleasant past time for humanity, not anything deplorable.

[driverdan]

> If you pay your employees $7.25...

...then you're paying the wage your employees are willing to work for. Basic economics in action.

If you're making fun of this you need to take an econ 101 class.

[maeln]

Except it doesn't work like this. Employment is not an unlimited supply, and when you have the choice between starving (yes some people do not have any money saved) and working for $7.25, you choose to work for $7.25.

Almost nobody who goes to work for a minimum wage job can afford to say "it's okay, I will find a better, high paying job later".

"Basic economy" is not an argument.

[philwelch]

And if someone is incapable of producing more than $15/hr worth of value with their labor, should they remain perpetually unemployed and dependent on welfare? Or should they earn what they can and allow for public benefits to top them up to a survivable standard of living?

[maeln]

Oh I completely agree that welfare should be there to help you to have at least a survivable standard of living.

But I don't think it is in anyway moral that a company pay their employee so less that they need public benefit to be able to survive.

[Egidius]

I believe people working in Amazons warehouses ended up in a situation they did not want to end up in the first place.

Adam Smith (writer of The Wealth of Nations, you might have heard of it) pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education to workers.

I think that when you get payed $7.25 an hour you have to work so many hours that there's no way you have spare time to educate yourself to get out of that situation.

Amazon is an example of capitalism gone a tad bit too far. The market is only self correcting to a certain point.

It's great that Amazon (not only Bezos, but all the stakeholders that agreed with this step) is acknowledging that people deserve a decent pay.

[philwelch]

Amazon provides generous education benefits to their hourly employees: https://www.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/career-choice

Which is both a good thing for workers and something that makes sense for Amazon to provide. Amazon, believe it or not, doesn't actually want to hire and deal with workers who perceive themselves as perpetually and inevitably poor. They want to hire hardworking, ambitious people who want to move on to bigger and better things. Positioning themselves as a way up for hardworking, ambitious people who haven't developed marketable skills yet puts them in a position to benefit from the labor of hardworking, ambitious people, who are generally the most valuable people to employ.

The notion of minimum wage jobs as a stopgap that allows people to support themselves just long enough to improve their future earning prospects, as you point out, doesn't make sense--unless those people have the ability to improve their future earning prospects. Amazon is one of the very few employers, then, for whom it does make sense.

Ironically, Sanders and Amazon's other critics would probably much rather that Amazon pay people just enough money to spend their entire lives working in a warehouse for minimum wage than for Amazon to provide this education benefit. That's because someone who spends a year or two working at an Amazon warehouse, takes advantage of the education benefit, and transitions into a higher earning job is not going to believe Sanders' demagoguery.

[Egidius]

I'd rather see actual numbers about the flow of Amazon employees who get promoted in stead of a website with their good intentions.

Apart from that: do not think that I care about the party you're on and which political person you're against. I live thousands of miles away from your country. I only care about the idea. And the idea of getting payed $7.25 in the US seems like a preposterous way of life.

But I don't have the illusion I'm able to change your mind overhere, so I'll stop wasting my time with it. I believe in the free market, but without certain rules (like a reasonable minimum income) people and organisations are able to take advantage in a way that gets out of balance which the free market won't ever get the chance to ever fix.

[philwelch]

I don’t think we’ll come to an agreement either; my country was settled by people who decided that enduring short term hardship for the sake of a better future was a worthwhile risk, and your country was left with those who decided to stay home and play it safe. It’s inevitable that such a stark difference in basic attitudes and motivations would lead to vast cultural and political differences.

[Egidius]

Very well put, Sir. :) Cheers

[huntie]

>willing to work for

More like have to work for. People working for minimum wage will work for whatever you pay them, because their choices are that or homelessness/dying of starvation which is no choice at all. Case in point, illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage.

[turtlecloud]

Do you really want to test the limits of Econ 101?

People are willing to work for pennies. Just look at India. If you want to turn USA into a third word country with high levels of income inequality that’s how you do it.

Have some empathy. Otherwise the peasants will revolt, and they have guns.

[GrumpiNerd]

Too bad that Bernie wants to take their guns away.

[chrisseaton]

> you deserve to be made fun of

I don't think anyone deserves to be made fun of, full stop.

Grown-up criticism is fine.

[Steltek]

Political humor, especially satire, can sometimes cut through the fog of bullshit quite clearly.

[chrisseaton]

I disagree I think it muddies the waters! A political comedian will have an agenda that they try to get across using satire, but they tell half-truths and exaggerate to make their jokes work. It's toxic, as some people don't understand the satire, or misunderstand which bits were exaggerated for comedic effect and which were based in fact.

[Steltek]

That's a trait of humans and is not limited to comedians. In fact, the lens of comedy usually focuses on a political personality stating something completely foolish with complete sincerity in an attempt to score points.

[Egidius]

I don't agree. I think satire, which this can be perceived as, is a means to achieve people to get to change their mind. Making fun of people on terms of race, age, gender, anything they cannot do anything about, is not something I agree with doing. But come on, this guy was squeezing out people who ended up in the situation where they had to work in warehouse packing boxes.

[ionised]

Not a fan of satire and parody then?