It is simply common sense that a person doesn't get rich while paying living wages to its workers. You have to have "slaves" to increase your own wealth. After all, that's how the Western world became rich; with the work of millions of slaves in Australia, Europe, & North America.
The billionaires we see on the Forbes list every year didn't become multi-billionaires by caring for their fellow human beings by paying them good wages, so their fellow human being can also enjoy life. Oh, hell no !!! They became billionaires by forgoing every inch of ethics & humanity from themselves & becoming the cause of poverty in modern world by paying government-mandated minimum wages. If the government removes that wage floor, then you will see how soon those wages go down to mere pennies. Ironically enough, all those billions help them control the government, too.
Irony on top of all this is these multi-billionaire entrepreneurs are celebrated in the business community. They are invited to give talks & reinvigorate the young minds of university students. Internet is flushed with tips & tricks of doing business gleaned from these unethical & inhumane execs. Some of these famous business people include Steve Jobs (let's take the jobs out of North America & put them in Asia, & pay those workers minimum wages, which will drive them to suicides.), Jeff Bezos (well, this article pretty much lays out what he pays to his employees & how he treats them), Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey & etc.
Then, we cry foul over how bad this world has become. Well, what kind of world you were expecting when you & a majority of world population is learning how to treat their fellow human beings from multi-billionaire sharks. I am even humiliating sharks by calling these people "sharks".
Anyway, so some people will counter me by saying that well, these multi-billionaires pay higher taxes or they generously donate to charities. Well, as for the taxes, you should look into what is their real tax rate is. After all the deductions & such, it is usually far less than your average taxpayers' tax rate; these billionaires pay around 10-15% tax in US, while an average taxpayer pays around 30%.
Now, as for donating to charities, what would be a better way of doing things? Not paying a living wage & treating your employees like they are not even humans & after hoarding all that money, donating like a few percent to a charity to help a few people. Heck, those donations are also tax-deductible, & hence, there is a financial incentive to donate a little. Or, paying a living wage to your employees, so they can look after their families in a good way, & raise the standard of living of your employees & their communities. Heck, if the salaries are good enough of those employees, they will donate to charities themselves, anyway. So, charities will get their donations, but on a much larger scale & scope.
Another thing our society is looking at is more chaos in our communities in the near future. Since, these entrepreneurs can only squeeze out enough blood & sweat from their employees, now they are turning to tech to squeeze out more profits out of their operations. After robots & AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been improved or perfected over the next few more years, human employees will be laid off en masse. Why? Because robots will cost a lot less than having a human employee around.
But, hey, since these multi-billionaires achieved what every one of us want for ourselves, let's learn from them in TEDx conferences, university graduation convocations, & international conferences how much worse to treat your fellow human being, so someday I can be one of these tyrants, too.
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Some people showed up before dawn. Others spent an hour waiting on a line that stretched out the door. That was the scene ... when hundreds of job seekers converged on an Amazon hiring event in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All hoped for full-time work picking, packing & shipping orders at the online retailer’s local distribution center, a warehouse the size of 28 football fields. “I’m blessed to be here!” one smiling 23-year-old applicant told television reporters.
... On May 26th, Amazon announced 6,000 new full-time job openings at 19 of its distribution centers. Many are in communities that doled out generous tax credits & other incentives — including $10.3 million in Kenosha, Wisconsin, alone — to bring Amazon jobs to town.
So it’s a good time to ask: Are Amazon’s warehouse jobs worth lining up for? Should they be subsidized with taxpayer dollars? And what do they mean to the long-term economic health of their host communities?
On his 2013 jobs tour, President Barack Obama stopped to deliver a speech at the aforementioned Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga. The audience cheered when he called for restoring the middle class through “good jobs with good wages.” But today that same warehouse is hiring at $11.25 an hour. That’s $23,400 annually, or $850 below the poverty line for a family of four.
Hourly wages at the other warehouses listed in Amazon’s recent hiring announcement range from $11 in Jefferson, Indiana to $12.75 an hour in Robbinsville, New Jersey & Windsor, Connecticut.
Even by industry standards, those are some thin paychecks. Wal-Mart pays distribution center employees an average hourly wage of $19, said a spokesman for that company.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers has been under scrutiny since 2011, when an investigation by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper revealed what were — quite literally — sweatshop conditions. When summer temperatures exceeded 100 degrees inside the company’s Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse, managers would not open the loading bay doors for fear of theft. Instead, they hired paramedics to wait outside in ambulances, ready to extract heat-stricken employees on stretchers & in wheelchairs, the investigation found. Workers also said they were pressured to meet ever-greater production targets, a strategy colloquially known as “management by stress.”
Amazon declined to answer the newspaper’s specific questions about working conditions in the warehouse but, 8 months after the story was released, company officials announced that they’d spent $52 million to retrofit warehouses with air conditioning.
In my own interviews with dozens of Amazon warehouse workers, I’ve heard reports of repetitive stress injuries, pain & exhaustion. (Some called themselves “Amazombies.” Others said they tried to think of the job as a free fitness program.)
Those issues relate to job quality. What about job quantity?
On the same day Amazon announced 6,000 new hires, teams from around the globe competed in the first-ever “Amazon Picking Challenge” in Seattle. Their goal? Build robots that can “pick” shelved items — in this case, the objects ranged from rubber ducks to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – with enough dexterity to someday replace human hands. (Amazon already has some 15,000 Kiva robots that transport shelves of merchandise to human “pickers,” but the act of picking has proved much harder to automate.)
Amazon maintains a very low headcount for its sales volume, which rose to $89 billion last year. Amazon creates just 17 jobs for every $10 million in sales, according to figures in its annual report. Compare that with traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, which create jobs at more than twice that rate: 42 positions for each $10 million in sales, according to an analysis of census data by the non-profit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
“From a regional perspective, this is clearly not a path to greater employment & more economic activity,” said Stacy Mitchell, the organization’s director. “Your particular community may come out a bit ahead in terms of job numbers, but it comes at the expense of your neighbors.”
She & other community development advocates worry that, with its low-cost merchandise & expanding same-day delivery service, Amazon will eviscerate smaller businesses that put more of their earnings into hiring workers. (The company is already famous for pursuing massive growth while accepting razor-thin profit margins.) Amazon already has an edge over traditional brick-and-mortar retailers in the 25 states where it pays no sales tax. And local governments have also strengthened its advantage, lavishing Amazon with more than $430 million in tax credits & other incentives since 2000, according to Subsidy Tracker, a database created by the economic watchdog Good Jobs First.
Tossing out tax incentives for Amazon jobs might be good short-term politics, but when it comes to lasting employment, let the buyer beware. In 1999, the city of Coffeyville, Kansas showered Amazon with more than $4 million in infrastructure improvements & cash incentives for a 1 million-square-foot distribution center. Soon Amazon was one of the area’s largest employers. But its sales strategy kept changing. Since same-day shipping requires distribution hubs that are closer to urban centers, Amazon grew out of Coffeyville. Executives announced in October that the warehouse would shut down.
Jim Falkner, then Coffeyville’s mayor, created a Facebook page pleading for help. “Please leave suggestions concerning the Amazon job-loss recovery effort,” he wrote. 5 days later, he added, “Amazon is the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to unemployment in the community.”
The billionaires we see on the Forbes list every year didn't become multi-billionaires by caring for their fellow human beings by paying them good wages, so their fellow human being can also enjoy life. Oh, hell no !!! They became billionaires by forgoing every inch of ethics & humanity from themselves & becoming the cause of poverty in modern world by paying government-mandated minimum wages. If the government removes that wage floor, then you will see how soon those wages go down to mere pennies. Ironically enough, all those billions help them control the government, too.
Irony on top of all this is these multi-billionaire entrepreneurs are celebrated in the business community. They are invited to give talks & reinvigorate the young minds of university students. Internet is flushed with tips & tricks of doing business gleaned from these unethical & inhumane execs. Some of these famous business people include Steve Jobs (let's take the jobs out of North America & put them in Asia, & pay those workers minimum wages, which will drive them to suicides.), Jeff Bezos (well, this article pretty much lays out what he pays to his employees & how he treats them), Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey & etc.
Then, we cry foul over how bad this world has become. Well, what kind of world you were expecting when you & a majority of world population is learning how to treat their fellow human beings from multi-billionaire sharks. I am even humiliating sharks by calling these people "sharks".
Anyway, so some people will counter me by saying that well, these multi-billionaires pay higher taxes or they generously donate to charities. Well, as for the taxes, you should look into what is their real tax rate is. After all the deductions & such, it is usually far less than your average taxpayers' tax rate; these billionaires pay around 10-15% tax in US, while an average taxpayer pays around 30%.
Now, as for donating to charities, what would be a better way of doing things? Not paying a living wage & treating your employees like they are not even humans & after hoarding all that money, donating like a few percent to a charity to help a few people. Heck, those donations are also tax-deductible, & hence, there is a financial incentive to donate a little. Or, paying a living wage to your employees, so they can look after their families in a good way, & raise the standard of living of your employees & their communities. Heck, if the salaries are good enough of those employees, they will donate to charities themselves, anyway. So, charities will get their donations, but on a much larger scale & scope.
Another thing our society is looking at is more chaos in our communities in the near future. Since, these entrepreneurs can only squeeze out enough blood & sweat from their employees, now they are turning to tech to squeeze out more profits out of their operations. After robots & AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been improved or perfected over the next few more years, human employees will be laid off en masse. Why? Because robots will cost a lot less than having a human employee around.
But, hey, since these multi-billionaires achieved what every one of us want for ourselves, let's learn from them in TEDx conferences, university graduation convocations, & international conferences how much worse to treat your fellow human being, so someday I can be one of these tyrants, too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some people showed up before dawn. Others spent an hour waiting on a line that stretched out the door. That was the scene ... when hundreds of job seekers converged on an Amazon hiring event in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All hoped for full-time work picking, packing & shipping orders at the online retailer’s local distribution center, a warehouse the size of 28 football fields. “I’m blessed to be here!” one smiling 23-year-old applicant told television reporters.
... On May 26th, Amazon announced 6,000 new full-time job openings at 19 of its distribution centers. Many are in communities that doled out generous tax credits & other incentives — including $10.3 million in Kenosha, Wisconsin, alone — to bring Amazon jobs to town.
So it’s a good time to ask: Are Amazon’s warehouse jobs worth lining up for? Should they be subsidized with taxpayer dollars? And what do they mean to the long-term economic health of their host communities?
On his 2013 jobs tour, President Barack Obama stopped to deliver a speech at the aforementioned Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga. The audience cheered when he called for restoring the middle class through “good jobs with good wages.” But today that same warehouse is hiring at $11.25 an hour. That’s $23,400 annually, or $850 below the poverty line for a family of four.
Hourly wages at the other warehouses listed in Amazon’s recent hiring announcement range from $11 in Jefferson, Indiana to $12.75 an hour in Robbinsville, New Jersey & Windsor, Connecticut.
Even by industry standards, those are some thin paychecks. Wal-Mart pays distribution center employees an average hourly wage of $19, said a spokesman for that company.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers has been under scrutiny since 2011, when an investigation by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper revealed what were — quite literally — sweatshop conditions. When summer temperatures exceeded 100 degrees inside the company’s Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse, managers would not open the loading bay doors for fear of theft. Instead, they hired paramedics to wait outside in ambulances, ready to extract heat-stricken employees on stretchers & in wheelchairs, the investigation found. Workers also said they were pressured to meet ever-greater production targets, a strategy colloquially known as “management by stress.”
Amazon declined to answer the newspaper’s specific questions about working conditions in the warehouse but, 8 months after the story was released, company officials announced that they’d spent $52 million to retrofit warehouses with air conditioning.
In my own interviews with dozens of Amazon warehouse workers, I’ve heard reports of repetitive stress injuries, pain & exhaustion. (Some called themselves “Amazombies.” Others said they tried to think of the job as a free fitness program.)
Those issues relate to job quality. What about job quantity?
On the same day Amazon announced 6,000 new hires, teams from around the globe competed in the first-ever “Amazon Picking Challenge” in Seattle. Their goal? Build robots that can “pick” shelved items — in this case, the objects ranged from rubber ducks to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – with enough dexterity to someday replace human hands. (Amazon already has some 15,000 Kiva robots that transport shelves of merchandise to human “pickers,” but the act of picking has proved much harder to automate.)
Amazon maintains a very low headcount for its sales volume, which rose to $89 billion last year. Amazon creates just 17 jobs for every $10 million in sales, according to figures in its annual report. Compare that with traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, which create jobs at more than twice that rate: 42 positions for each $10 million in sales, according to an analysis of census data by the non-profit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
“From a regional perspective, this is clearly not a path to greater employment & more economic activity,” said Stacy Mitchell, the organization’s director. “Your particular community may come out a bit ahead in terms of job numbers, but it comes at the expense of your neighbors.”
She & other community development advocates worry that, with its low-cost merchandise & expanding same-day delivery service, Amazon will eviscerate smaller businesses that put more of their earnings into hiring workers. (The company is already famous for pursuing massive growth while accepting razor-thin profit margins.) Amazon already has an edge over traditional brick-and-mortar retailers in the 25 states where it pays no sales tax. And local governments have also strengthened its advantage, lavishing Amazon with more than $430 million in tax credits & other incentives since 2000, according to Subsidy Tracker, a database created by the economic watchdog Good Jobs First.
Tossing out tax incentives for Amazon jobs might be good short-term politics, but when it comes to lasting employment, let the buyer beware. In 1999, the city of Coffeyville, Kansas showered Amazon with more than $4 million in infrastructure improvements & cash incentives for a 1 million-square-foot distribution center. Soon Amazon was one of the area’s largest employers. But its sales strategy kept changing. Since same-day shipping requires distribution hubs that are closer to urban centers, Amazon grew out of Coffeyville. Executives announced in October that the warehouse would shut down.
Jim Falkner, then Coffeyville’s mayor, created a Facebook page pleading for help. “Please leave suggestions concerning the Amazon job-loss recovery effort,” he wrote. 5 days later, he added, “Amazon is the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to unemployment in the community.”
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