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Bernie Sanders introduces 'Stop BEZOS' bill to tax Amazon for underpaying workers
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) have introduced a bill that would tax companies like Amazon and Walmart for the cost of employees' food stamps and other public assistance. Sanders' Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act (abbreviated "Stop BEZOS") . . . 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.
Sanders announced his plans for the proposal last month. He emphasized today that "this discussion is not just about Amazon and [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos." But as the bill's name would suggest, he's been particularly critical of Amazon and Bezos who became the richest person in the world (and modern history) last year. "The taxpayers in this country should not be subsidizing a guy who's worth $150 billion, whose wealth is increasing by $260 million every single day," [ . . . rest omitted . . . ]
Food stamps, School Lunch, Medicaid, great . . . but what about employees who must shop at Walmart?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by slinches on Thursday September 06 2018, @05:52AM (6 children)
Or instead of incurring any of the added costs, they can just fire the people on government assistance programs.
Why keep Jim around when he costs you twice as much in payroll and taxes as Jane? If the difference in quality of the work between different employees was valuable enough to make up that extra value, then it would make more sense to offer higher pay to attract more skilled employees and the job wouldn't be near minimum wage in the first place.
All this bill would do is cost people in the most vulnerable positions employment opportunities.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:24PM (5 children)
That only works if Jane is earning enough, or her family is earning enough combined, to be excluded from gov't assistance. Once the business narrows its labor pool to such workers, it might find that it can't stock shelves and staff registers, in which case, people will just stop shopping there.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:56PM (4 children)
Or they pay more for the work than it's worth causing the company to shut down that portion because it can't maintain a profit. Or it drives more automation and the business continues to succeed, but the jobs are gone.
In the long run, no scenario plays out well for the workers on government assistance with this bill.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 06 2018, @10:31PM (1 child)
Yeah its easy to keep hyper-focus on those lazy uneducated dumb fucks, but the real issue is the exportation of good jobs up and down the social hierarchy. Accountants and MDs face offshoring now, just as programmers have for some time, and of course it has been happening to those in blue collar work for even longer. It is always easier to condemn and blame than to address the real issue, which another poster mentioned elsewhere: what is an economy for?
If an economy is for making a very few people insanely rich and turning everyone else into slaves or serfs, then we're doing fine. If an economy is for providing an environment in which people can thrive, ours is doing a bad job. I'm reminded of the great interview Charlie Rose did with Sir James Goldsmith (capitalist shark if there ever was one) who discusses some of the reasons behind economic systems, such as serving as a basis for safe and orderly society. Anyway, it's worth it if only to see the Clinton hack saying how great those 90s free trade agreements were going to work out for everyone (she's still doing fine today -- a professor or something): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmOkaKh3-s [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:19AM
Particularly, since helping them is allegedly the whole point of the proposed law.
Funny how Sanders's proposal helps that. But I suppose that massively increasing the cost of employing the poorest people in the US will somehow make things better. It's remarkable how people claim to care about a problem and then propose ways to make that problem worse.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday September 07 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
Then the work wasn't all that essential, was it?
I keep hearing this argument...but nobody ever seems to be willing to explain what is so virtuous about doing busywork jobs that could just as easily be done by a machine. Let the machines do the things that they do best, and take the money that is saved and use it to pay these unemployed workers to paint or make YouTube videos or care for their children or whatever the hell else they think our society actually needs. Personally, I have no interest in any economic ideas that rely on people being paid a pittance to spend all day LARPing as a restocking bot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 09 2018, @12:23AM
It means you're trying to be something other than a problem and making the world better for other people. And as already noted, if that work weren't more valuable to the employer than automating it, they wouldn't have paid in the first place.