Bernie Sanders introduces "Stop BEZOS Act"

[Derec]

Oh dear....

The bill would make big companies that employ huge numbers of workers at low wages — like Amazon and Walmart — pay the government for the federal assistance their workers receive. [...]Thousands of Amazon workers have to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing to survive. That is what a rigged economy looks like."

A chief problem with this argument is that who receives government assistance like food stamps is greatly dependent on whether you have kids and how much.

Take food stamps. If you are a single person, you are not eligible for food stamps when you make over $15,684/a. An Amazon picker makes around $12/h. So if you pick for 25 hours per week for a year you will reach that even without any raises or bonuses or side hustles. So I don't think many (or any) single childless Amazon pickers are eligible for food stamps.
But if you have a stay-at-home wife and 3 children, you are still eligible for food stamps up to $37.4k/a. That's not a bad salary
- but why should Amazon be mandated to pay it for what is essentially an entry level job? Note that food stamp limits are not bound; rather, the limit increases linearly by $5,436 for each additional child. It's literally impossible to mandate that a company should pay everybody enough not to be on food stamps, because what if some Afghan with gazillion children or Jim Bob Duggar starts working there?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

How is it fair to force tax payers to pay so that a worker can spend their time making products for a company that gets all the profit from those products?

It is fair to force tax payers to help uphold the society that they benefit from, including ensuring that everyone have enough resources to live on. Why should that be the responsibility of the employer? Why should it be any of their business at all? All the employer should be responsible for is to pay enough to get employees to work for them so they can make as much as they can for their shareholders and for paying their taxes at ever increasing rates the more money they bring in. With UBI present, they will need to pay enough to attract employees who don't need the jobs they offer in order to survive.

it's quite fair to make the people doing more to cause wage earners to rely on public UBI should contribute more to its cost.

I see no reason not to include businesses that automate and don't pay workers anything at all in that. They are an even greater cause of people having to rely on UBI, no?

 

[Derec]

Universal basic income is what is needed.

Would it scale with number of children? Because that would give even more of an incentive for some to "fill the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed". It would also give even more incentive for mass migrants with huge families to come here.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Universal basic income is what is needed.

Would it scale with number of children? Because that would give even more of an incentive for some to "fill the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed". It would also give even more incentive for mass migrants with huge families to come here.

I do see your point. People may be encouraged to have too many children than the system can support. We would have to keep UBI to a minimal level, to encourage people to work to have some comfort and luxuries.

BTW, do you have it in your mind that immigrants are bigger takers than people born here? Because from all the data I have seen, the opposite is true.

I'm actually not much of a nationalist. I'd like to get rid of some of the lazy home born and bring in more industrious immigrants.

 

[Derec]

I do see your point. People may be encouraged to have too many children than the system can support. We would have to keep UBI to a minimal level, to encourage people to work to have some comfort and luxuries.

And also it should not incentivize irresponsible breeding. Things like federal exemptions or food stamps increase linearly. However, costs increase less than linearly because of economies of scale (per capita it's a lot cheaper cooking for 12 people than 4, you have a lot of hand-me-downs, housing for 12 people is not 3x as expensive as housing for 4 people etc.). I think all government benefits should increase support less and less for each subsequent child, and not increase at all after the fifth child.

BTW, do you have it in your mind that immigrants are bigger takers than people born here?

Some are, some aren't. It really depends.

Because from all the data I have seen, the opposite is true.

I wonder how they calculate that. Not all immigration is the same. We need smart immigration policies, and should not be haphazzardly taking everybody who shows up at the border. Or even worse, like in Europe, take everybody who gets into a dinghy anywhere off the coast of Turkey or Africa.

P.S.: I decided to delete the picture so as to not trigger certain highly triggerable people on here.

 

[Jarhyn]

Universal basic income is what is needed.

Would it scale with number of children? Because that would give even more of an incentive for some to "fill the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed". It would also give even more incentive for mass migrants with huge families to come here.

So, personally, I don't care where the people come from. What I care about is that the people have access to sufficient food, education, and shelter to become productive members of society. You would apparently rather see them become poor, uneducated, unemployable members of society because ... (Crickets).

 

[RVonse]

Frank Lloyd Wright......
“If capitalism is fair, then Unionism must be. If men have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men to capitalize their labor.”

Bernie is spot on with his analysis but his solution is wrong. There is no need to fiddle with the tax structure or food stamp program. The government need simply insist that workers will no longer be exploited for profit. Furthermore, the government should encourage and help employees organize at these slave labor establishments. When workers are paid properly, there will be no reason for welfare or other tax assistance.

I thought SC Citizen United was one of the crappiest rulings ever. Nonetheless, since corporations have been proclaimed to be citizens of the US, then the US government must also insists these same corporations become responsible US citizens. Should these large corporations not be good US citizens (providing US employment) they can and should be stripped of their corporate charter, management put out of their job, with shareholders assets sold off.

All the laws are already in place to do this. It is only the political will that is lacking.

 

[Derec]

So, personally, I don't care where the people come from. What I care about is that the people have access to sufficient food, education, and shelter to become productive members of society. You would apparently rather see them become poor, uneducated, unemployable members of society because ... (Crickets).

I would rather have them not have children they can't afford. Either here or back home. And both for immigrants and non-immigrants.

 

[laughing dog]

So, personally, I don't care where the people come from. What I care about is that the people have access to sufficient food, education, and shelter to become productive members of society. You would apparently rather see them become poor, uneducated, unemployable members of society because ... (Crickets).

I would rather have them not have children they can't afford. Either here or back home. And both for immigrants and non-immigrants.

Unless you have a foolproof method for identifying people who are going to have children they cannot afford and a foolproof method of preventing them from having children, your preference is pretty much useless as a practical guide towards policy.

 

[ronburgundy]

So, personally, I don't care where the people come from. What I care about is that the people have access to sufficient food, education, and shelter to become productive members of society. You would apparently rather see them become poor, uneducated, unemployable members of society because ... (Crickets).

I would rather have them not have children they can't afford. Either here or back home. And both for immigrants and non-immigrants.

But that is not, never has been, and never will be a viable option. The inherent nature of human psychology will always make the people with the lowest economic status want more kids than people with greater economic status. Money is power in every domain, economically, socially, and politically. Those without it are largely powerless. But most humans desire children and having them is one thing the others cannot take from them. What they can take from them, and the GOP already has for many and will do for all within the next 2 years is the ability to not procreate when accidental pregnancies occur. Like all laws, richer people can buy their way out of obeying this one, so it is and will be mostly the poor who are forced by Trump and the GOP to give birth to kids they do not want.

If you were sincere in your preferences that you would be strongly opposed to any political power being given to Trump or any member of the GOP that is aggressively seeking to force poor people to have more unwanted children they cannot afford.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Universal basic income is what is needed.

Would it scale with number of children? Because that would give even more of an incentive for some to "fill the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed". It would also give even more incentive for mass migrants with huge families to come here.

Quiverfull families. That young Christian Mom with 5 kids at home, on food stamps and welfare.

 

[Jarhyn]

Universal basic income is what is needed.

Would it scale with number of children? Because that would give even more of an incentive for some to "fill the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed". It would also give even more incentive for mass migrants with huge families to come here.

Quiverfull families. That young Christian Mom with 5 kids at home, on food stamps and welfare.

Not to mention that Derec has never had kids nor apparently never talked to any real human beings that do aside from his own parents, if he even talks to them.

Children are fucking expensive, and it's not like SNAP or any other program that offsets that cost will fill the gap. With each additional child, the gap gets even harder to bridge, and regardless of what he thinks, real humans in the real world -as opposed to his ridiculous mental characterizations of them- actually tend to love their children. So all more children is going to mean for the majority of real families out there is more hardship, pain, and even deeper poverty and starvation.

 

[Derec]

Unless you have a foolproof method for identifying people who are going to have children they cannot afford and a foolproof method of preventing them from having children, your preference is pretty much useless as a practical guide towards policy.

There are certainly ways to reduce the likelihood. Why must a system be foolproof to be worthwhile?
At the very least, we should "stop digging". That means, stop subsidizing poor people to have more kids by giving them more money the more children they have.

 

[Derec]

But that is not, never has been, and never will be a viable option.

I disagree. At the very least, we should stop subsidizing this behavior. Going further, we can give people extra benefits if they agree to get snipped or go on long term birth control. Will it be perfect? No, but it will definitely reduce the problem.

The inherent nature of human psychology will always make the people with the lowest economic status want more kids than people with greater economic status.

Why do you think that's part of "inherent nature of human psychology"?

Money is power in every domain, economically, socially, and politically. Those without it are largely powerless. But most humans desire children and having them is one thing the others cannot take from them.

The "others" are not only not "taking it away from them", they are forced to subsidize it via taxes.

What they can take from them, and the GOP already has for many and will do for all within the next 2 years is the ability to not procreate when accidental pregnancies occur.

I disagree with GOP on that, of course. I am all in favor of things like real sex ed, contraceptives, and most abortions. I even think abortion should be paid by insurance, incl. Medicaid.

If you were sincere in your preferences that you would be strongly opposed to any political power being given to Trump or any member of the GOP that is aggressively seeking to force poor people to have more unwanted children they cannot afford.

I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I voted for Obama twice. Now, Democrats do annoy me to no end as well, but I say pox on both their houses.

- - - Updated - - -

SQuiverfull families. That young Christian Mom with 5 kids at home, on food stamps and welfare.

Since I am not a Christian, much less Evangelical, do not quite get the point of that example. I do not agree with quiverfulls either, obviously.

 

[Derec]

Not to mention that Derec has never had kids nor apparently never talked to any real human beings that do aside from his own parents, if he even talks to them.

Just because I disagree with you does not mean I don't talk to real human beings, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Children are fucking expensive,

The expense of children is highly variable. Don't assume that everybody spends as much on their children as the typical middle class family in the burbs. It's certainly possible to spend less on a child than the combined benefits of SNAP, WIC, federal dependent exemption, child tax credit, EITC, and myriad other programs, not to mention state ones like PeachCare. And note, the benefits for each child stay the same, but marginal expenses are actually less. The more children you have, the more you profit!

and it's not like SNAP or any other program that offsets that cost will fill the gap.

Maybe not individually, but cumulatively, why not?

With each additional child, the gap gets even harder to bridge,

Why? Marginal costs actually goes down for each additional child.

and regardless of what he thinks, real humans in the real world -as opposed to his ridiculous mental characterizations of them- actually tend to love their children.

That does not contradict the idea that they are playing the system.

So all more children is going to mean for the majority of real families out there is more hardship, pain, and even deeper poverty and starvation.

If that were the case, why do they keep filling up the bloody world ...?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is the issue that Derec has pointed out with family size. It's not the company's fault that people have more kids than they can afford, they shouldn't be penalized for something beyond their control.

However, there are other issues here:

1) This is meant to punish the big companies, exempt the small ones. Beyond being unacceptable it's not going to happen anyway--if you make more at Amazon then the small companies aren't going to be able to hire entry level jobs. The eternal leftist obsession with policies that chop off the path into the workforce.

2) Think the problems with Amazon pushing for maximum performance will get better when they're forced to overpay for the work? That's just a formula for worker abuse.

 

[Trausti]

Amazon has patented a system that would put workers in a cage, on top of a robot

 

[Jarhyn]

Just because I disagree with you does not mean I don't talk to real human beings, whatever that is supposed to mean.


The expense of children is highly variable. Don't assume that everybody spends as much on their children as the typical middle class family in the burbs. It's certainly possible to spend less on a child than the combined benefits of SNAP, WIC, federal dependent exemption, child tax credit, EITC, and myriad other programs, not to mention state ones like PeachCare. And note, the benefits for each child stay the same, but marginal expenses are actually less. The more children you have, the more you profit!

and it's not like SNAP or any other program that offsets that cost will fill the gap.

Maybe not individually, but cumulatively, why not?

With each additional child, the gap gets even harder to bridge,

Why? Marginal costs actually goes down for each additional child.

and regardless of what he thinks, real humans in the real world -as opposed to his ridiculous mental characterizations of them- actually tend to love their children.

That does not contradict the idea that they are playing the system.

So all more children is going to mean for the majority of real families out there is more hardship, pain, and even deeper poverty and starvation.

If that were the case, why do they keep filling up the bloody world ...?

Playing the system HOW?!? You act as if you actually believe you will somehow actually get some benefit if those children aren't receiving an education, food, or shelter. You know what happens when kids don't get the things that money is for? They become poor, unemployed criminals. Because the thing is, those kids WILL grow up, and they WILL seek a niche to fill for their own survival, and absent food, shelter, and education, there aren't really many above-board options.

The correct course for all children is to ensure that they get food, shelter, and education. How is this beyond you? If their parents can't pay, then someone has to, or else we end up with more poor , unemployed criminals.

 

[phands]

Amazon Is Worth $1 Trillion. Its Workers Are on Food Stamps.

Sanders has a point....

Amazon just hit a $1 trillion valuation, but some of its workers feel poorer than ever.
Jeff Bezos’s tech giant is the second U.S. company to be worth thirteen-digits on the stock market, following Apple, which hit $1 trillion in August. That’s all well and good for Bezos, whose net worth exceeds $150 billion. But workers at the growing network of Amazon-owned companies say they aren’t seeing the money and Senator Bernie Sanders rolled out a new bill that would penalize Amazon for leaving workers dependent on public assistance. The next day, The Wall Street Journal reported that employees at Whole Foods, a grocery chain recently acquired by Amazon, were seeking to unionize. This is on top of criticism from academics, who say Amazon’s size has warped the economy.
Amazon’s come a long way from its origins as an online bookseller founded in 1994. Through a series of expansions and mergers, the company now functions as an all-encompassing digital marketplace, a Netflix competitor, a gadget manufacturer, a web services provider, and, since 2017 and its purchase of Whole Foods, a high-end grocery chain.
But while Amazon expands, Whole Foods staff say they’re facing layoffs.
“In the last three years we have experienced layoffs, job consolidations, reduced labor budgets, poor wage growth, and constantly being asked to do more with less resources and now with less compensation,” Whole Foods workers in a pro-union group wrote in a letter to colleagues, which was shared with The Daily Beast.
The letter took aim at Amazon CEO Bezos, describing “majority of his workers” as living “paycheck to paycheck.”
Prior to the Amazon acquisition, all full-time Whole Foods workers received company stock options. But after the merger, only store managers and executives received the options, the workers claimed in their letter. “The clandestine nature of Amazon offering stock options to Store Leadership without informing TMs [team members] is beyond problematic,” the group wrote. “It is insulting and unethical.”

Sometimes paycheck-to-paycheck isn’t enough for Amazon employees. Two years after Amazon opened fulfilment centers in Ohio in 2015, approximately one in ten of its Ohio employees appeared to be receiving public assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits program, The Daily Beast previously reported. SNAP benefits are available to individuals and families living below the poverty line.

Workers at Amazon fulfillment centers elsewhere have complained of dangerously hot facilities and impossible deadlines that left employees peeing into garbage cans and water bottles to avoid taking bathroom breaks. White-collar Amazon workers complained of a similar ethos at their desk jobs. In a 2015 New York Times report, corporate employees complained of punishing workloads and saw “nearly every person” crying at their desk, 80-hour work weeks, and a competitive work environment that encouraged employees to sabotage their colleagues.
An April report by the nonprofit news outlet New Food Economy surveyed five states and found that Amazon ranked among the top 20 companies with SNAP-dependent workers in four of those states. Meanwhile, since 2014, Ohio has given the company more than $125 million in tax breaks and cash grants in exchange for opening new facilities.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/amazon-is-worth-dollar1-trillion-its-workers-are-on-food-stamps

 

[Derec]

Playing the system HOW?!? You act as if you actually believe you will somehow actually get some benefit if those children aren't receiving an education, food, or shelter. You know what happens when kids don't get the things that money is for? They become poor, unemployed criminals. Because the thing is, those kids WILL grow up, and they WILL seek a niche to fill for their own survival, and absent food, shelter, and education, there aren't really many above-board options.

The correct course for all children is to ensure that they get food, shelter, and education. How is this beyond you? If their parents can't pay, then someone has to, or else we end up with more poor , unemployed criminals.

What I want is for people to not have all these children they can't afford. By making public assistance so heavily dependent on having children, and increasing that assistance with number of children, there is a perverse incentive for poor people to have child after child.

If you incentivize some behavior, you get more of it. Paying people to have more children is like positive reinforcement in operant conditioning.