Scum of the earth.

Are there other inaccurate things in your OP? You provided zero links to support anything you claim.

And now he is increasing the cost of prime. I sure wish there was a competitor.

how did Amazon create this problem and how will them leaving solve it?

... but it has been posted here on DU before. The Seattle employees of Amazon are making such small salaries that they have to apply for food stamps.

Meanwhile Bezos gets richer every day and pays almost no taxes to the city or state. Or possibly his tax burden is far lower than the benefits he enjoys. (Same thing can be said about many large employers elsewhere in the US.)

Last edited Sat May 5, 2018, 03:46 PM - Edit history (1)

He gets paid fairly well or so he says.

Would you please post your source stating that half of Amazon employees in Seattle qualify for food stamps?

While the pathetic, slave wage is a fact for Amazon warehouse workers, to my knowledge, based on living in Seattle for 27 years, and being a tech worker myself, Amazon has no warehouses in Washington state anywhere, much less having any in Seattle.

Most, if not almost all of Amazon's Seattle are in tech, and are consequently well-paid. But because of the brutal corporate culture there, the churn rate is very high. So, Amazon pays high with generous benefits to justify extracting its pound of flesh, pushing overworked tech workers to rapid burnout. The average tech employment there is 2 years. Tech workers put up with it because it looks great on the resume. It's perceived as a small price to pay to use two years of hell as stepping stone to a much better job.

Bezos won't be happy until Amazon is 100% automated and all the workers are replaced by robots. He is the ultimate greed-monger. Makes Bill Gates look like the Archangel Gabriel in comparison.

And finally, I believe that all the Silicon Valley tech companies who have relocated to Seattle are more to blame for the Seattle inequity crisis than Amazon is. I'm a big time Bezos hater, but I still wouldn't make him and his company the scapegoat for all of Seattle's problems. There's more than enough blame to go around.

What leads you to allege the OP blamed Amazon for creating the problem?

I haven't been following, and could find nothing on Google...

Link?

Seattle is subject to more market forces than Amazon's downtown offices. It's not growing just because of 1 corporation. Homelessness is a regional and national economic crisis with multiple contributing factors.

Kneejerk ranting sure feels good, though.

Bezos' friends include Chinese investors warehousing condos? Real-Estate corporations from all over the US buying and selling apartment complexes and jacking up rents? Individual developer/builders buying small lots to put up 6-packs?

You don't like Amazon, we get it; but back your rant up with facts, not hyperbole. The homeless count in King Co. is <12K. An undeniable crisis, but you're rounding up quite a bit. Unless you're making every county in the state Amazon's responsibility.

Nothing wrong with corporations, wealth, or capitalism. It's just the fact that "the haves" don't pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes. They only get taxed when they "sell" unrealized capital gains. If they pass their shares onto their kids they pay zero tax. They can amass billions tax free. The "death tax" is nothing to a billionaire with a trust.

It isn't simply Amazon, and their friends. It's the whole system where workers pay half our nation's bills and the wealthy get the untaxed gravy. The rest is borrowed.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government

There are homeless people everywhere - and make no mistake, many of them are homeless because affordable housing is being knocked down at a terrifying rate and people are being flushed out of places they used to live in. And developers are playing the shell game of pretending they're going to include market rate (which is not affordable to many) units with their developments, but not only do they skirt that, this is all slated for down the road.

The problem is now.

Amazon may not be the only company to blame, but they are driving a lot of it. They are gobbling up downtown. You can't just add 50,000 jobs to a downtown the size of Seattle all at once. It's straining the resources of the city beyond belief. This head tax is just an attempt to get Amazon to help out. I don't think it's the most sensible approach - our City Council is dysfunctional and there are half-witted projects all over the city that may never be finished - but something has to happen if Seattle's going to retain any of its former character.

The lovely little family-oriented park beside my former apartment building is now full of tents and needles in a place where toddlers used to run through the sprinklers and kids used to skate board. There are tents on the sidewalks in Pioneer Square and under the interstate.

I relocated to north Florida nearly three years ago because I could no longer afford to keep a roof over my head there. When I left, none of the above was happening. At the neighborhood food bank where I began volunteering in the early 2000s, the weekly count of those served has gone from 350 to 1,500. Single family homes are being bought and razed to make way for cheaply built apartments, townhomes, and condos that cost a fortune. I could go on and on, but the city has rapidly become unlivable. The only people who will live there soon, if not already, are the wealthy and the homeless.

I was an advocate for the homeless and actively volunteered on their behalf for the entire sixteen years I lived there. I am now appalled, saddened, and disgusted by the terrible policies that have created this tragedy.

Whatever they want, they get. There was an article recently about how a tree in those horrible balls by their headquarters is being treated better than the people that are getting displaced all over town.

Plenty of blame to go around, but again, you can't just add 50,000 jobs to downtown all at once. And yeah, Pioneer Square and the tents. It's sad. You drive somewhere you haven't been in a few years, and everything has changed.

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If you represent a charitable organization and you would like to learn more about registering your organization to receive AmazonSmile donations, go to org.amazon.com .

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It's hell to work in an Amazon warehouse.

What makes an Amazon warehouse particularly hellish?

Facts please.

so liberals will love Bezos for a while.

who would pay the tax based on the number the employ in the city.

For example, it's ridiculous how Wal Mart has always rightfully got the hate it gets, yet Amazon gets a pass for the same things because it does its business on the internet. It's amazing how bamboozled people are by its mystical, magical powers of convenience. And yes, I count myself among the number who have used it, but I don't pretend Amazon is any different than any other corporation and it certainly isn't any different than Walmart when it exploits its workers and destroys economies in the same way.

And yet, cities are lining up to invite Amazon to their community.
I live just outside of Boston (which just so happens to be a top contender).
Current congestion, traffic, housing prices, public transportation are bad
enough as it is now. Amazon locating here would an unimaginable disaster.

They do more harm than good. Go screw up somewhere else.

Hate to say it.

The following data compares the current yearly local tax bill for a hypothetical company with 200 full-time employees and $100 million in taxable gross receipts in several Puget Sound-area cities:
Seattle: $429,000
Bellevue: $189,651
Bothell: $4,564
Kirkland: $21,100
Redmond: $22,400
Renton: $85,150

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2018/05/02/seattles-head-tax-could-be-big-win-for-neighboring.html?ana=e_tf&s=newsletter&ed=2018-05-03&u=ColXVN5SPzQtLHFP87ho2w07857290&t=1525392155&j=81384651

Also objection to the head tax is not limited to Amazon.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/head-tax-worries-other-seattle-tech-companies-association-leader-says/281-548321621

Because emplyees are on food stamps. How will losing their jobs help them?

To pick their packages, and displace the renters there. How would you like your property tax doubling in a couple years if you don't want to move.

Their was mass carnage created here, and Amazon and their Masters of the Universe buddies don't want to pay to help the people who's lives they are affecting negatively.

There is more to live than pennies a share.

.. from your neighborhood.

The sympathy, it fucking oozes, it really does.

Look at all them "incentives" the other cities are throwing at Amazon so they can do to their citizens what happened in Seattle. Amazon gets their taxes cut, my business doesn't. This is bullshit in the race to the bottom. Untaxed goliaths like Amazon crushing the competition, and getting corporate welfare at the same time while thousands go out of business and lay off their employees who are replaced by $15 an hour pickers in warehouses, who have to come up with $1800 a month for rent.

Larger businesses should pay more in taxes, not less. This is upside down.

But someone making 100K is taxed to death.

I am sick of this sh*t.

No one pays income tax, Washington state does not have an income tax.

He’s worried about that too. So yeah, it’s not really About the “people”.

Oops, gotta run. Just got another Prime delivery!

Can’t all just pull stakes and follow Amazon.

This is ridiculous.

Amazon, and the Washington Post?

And I personally know two deplorables who stopped shopping there over a year ago for that reason. Anecdotal of course but I’d bet there are others.

Being the enemy of your enemy doesn't automatically make someone your friend.

Donates hardly anything to charity when compared to other mega billionaires, he's destroying the whole retail system of our country, he works his employees like slaves(Seriously read about it), many of his warehouse employees need govt aid to make ends meet and are forced to wear tracking bracelets to make sure they keep moving throughout the day and don't take too long of bathroom breaks, etc. DESPICABLE!

The man has $110+ billion and what does he give back to the world which enabled his fortune? The worst part is you get people on the left defending this robber baron just because he trolls Trump.

Let me say that again, in capital letters so nobody misses my meaning.

I WORKED TWO YEARS FOR AMAZON. AMAZON WAS A WONDERFUL EMPLOYER. AMAZON HAS BEEN MY FAVORITE EMPLOYER.

Amazon gets highest marks for time-off policies, sick leave, maternity leave, et. al. Also highest marks for scheduling work hours around what was best for me. The morale of my co-workers was also the best of any job I've ever held. And the pay was better than prevailing wage.

I rate Amazon as the most flexible employer I've worked for, as a matter of fact I rate Amazon as the most flexible employer that I have even heard about.

My co-workers and I were very happy to be working there, there was a long line to be hired in there. We certainly weren't slaves or treated as such. My experience was exactly opposite. I found the upper management to be the fiendliest, most flexible I've known of.

It’s clear this is a thread for blame, not facts.

And thanks for sharing another side to the story. There are always two sides, and helpful to know when seeking a solution to a problem.

Or is this something that some people are saying? I mean are people talking about it? I don't know, but are you hearing things? Is it not good? Sad?

Taxes, and to all the people they crush, tough cookies.

Look at all the "incentives" other cities are going to give Amazon to move there, and create a homeless problem.

The bigger they are, the more they can profit from scale. Amazon should pay more in taxes instead of enriching hedge funds, and billionaires who own all their stock.

They will be the first trillion dollar company, and more than half their workers qualify for food stamps.

I for one am tired of being cheated by huge corporations who the government throws all the gravy to.

The age-old tactic that it is easier to exploit workers rather than streamline production always holds true. It doesn't take a crystal ball the know we are going have some interesting labor disputes in the near future.

Amazon Warehouse Employees' Message to Jeff Bezos -- We Are Not Robots
(snip)
The former employee claimed to have "clocked 15 miles a day" while working 10 and a half hour shifts, four days a week, as a "water spider," a person who supplies the people who pack products to be shipped to customers. Sometimes, the person said that Amazon would force employees to work a fifth day during the week - allegedly called "mandatory overtime."

Amazon declined to comment on record about overtime shifts.

The former worker said at least one Amazon manager is always manning the floor, ready to write up employees on an Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPad, and reprimand them if they fail to pack 120 items per hour - the alleged goal set by Amazon. If a worker does meet the goal, the former employee said a manager will instruct them to "do 140." If they don't meet the goal, they could have to work the extra fifth day.

The former employee said if workers don't take on the "mandatory overtime" shift, 10 hours can be cut from their vacation time to make up for it. Amazon declined to comment on record about this claim.

"They know exactly who you are and what you are doing at all times," the person said of managers. "Sometimes you can sit for 30 seconds and not get caught. Sometimes one minute and not get caught."

This former worker, too, claimed that employees are not allowed to sit on company time. "Caught" could mean that a manager will yell at an employee and then "write something" on their iPad that goes into his or her record, according to the person.

"You can be released at any time," the former employee said. "They won't even tell you that you're fired. One day, you just show up and your ID card doesn't swipe into the building." (snip)
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14312539/1/amazon-warehouse-employees-discuss-grueling-work.html

Its a drop in his bucket, but its more than the "not a dime" suggested