this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Antiwork
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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I was curious, so I pulled some quick numbers about Jeff Bezos.
Bezos has what I think is the biggest yacht in the world. It cost $500 million, according to the NYT. I am not intimately familiar with yacht ownership, but from 20 seconds of Googling I found a rule of thumb saying the yearly costs can be expected to be about 10% of the purchase price.
Currently, Amazon has over 1.5 million employees. That means Bezos' yacht money could have given every employee a bonus of about $333, and the maintenance cost could give everyone a permanent raise of about $33 per year.
It's a drop in the bucket.
Of course there are other ways you could slice this. According to Amazon's own PR piece from 2018, they had about 250K employees earning their minimum wage of $15/hour. That money would go a lot further if concentrated toward the lowest-earning employees.
I hate this bullshit logic of "But this one person's salary would not give everyone else very much!" Bezos is not the only one that should be making less. All of the chief officers should make less. All of the regional presidents should be making less. That money would absolutely be more than simply a drop in the bucket. I do agree that it should be concentrated to the lowest paid workers.
Just looked it up, and the regional VPs at Amazon are making an average of $190,000/yr. That's not chump-change, but it's definitely firmly in the "US" side of the "US vs THEM" equation. It also means if you cut all regional VP salaries in half, it won't amount to more than 0.1% of Bezos' typical earnings.
Even Amazon's CTO only (yeah, "only") apparently has a total comp package of about $300-500,000/yr.
Here's the list of the problem folks. And to clarify something that helps your point on the "But this one person's..." I GUARANTEE if executive compensation were capped based upon some multiple of individual compensation, they'd find the fucking money to give people raises.
If a CEO can only make 100x what workers do, that's still unreasonable, but I guarantee those guys making $20M/yr will find a way to up the average salaries of workers as close to $200k as they can manage. And if we weren't at-will employment in the US, they wouldn't be able to just do it by laying people off.
So yes, taking money from just Jeff Bezos the people in that list will have the very effect you and I want... everyone making more.
That yacht isn't the only unnecessary thing he owns and Amazon has plenty of other overpaid executives as well.
For sure.
I also would prefer for that money to be taxed to high heaven and put toward high-value social services, like, say, school meals.
I think my last comment came off with the wrong tone. To be clear: fuck yachts in general and Bezos in particular.
You seem to like math how about taking the profits and seeing if they can cover all the welfare they recieve and tax breaks.
I know Walmart can cover all the welfare it's employees recieve
I think wal mart is the biggest employer of people receiving Earned Income Credit in the US. Therefore the American taxpayer is effectively subsidizing wal marts wages expense.
I point this out to people and their response many times is to kill the EIC, rather than raise minimum wages. Infuriating and frustrating beyond belief.
Correct even if Walmart paid all the welfare they would still be profitable. So why do we not just make them pay for it
Because they have so much money from raiding there tax payers pockets that they can get away with raiding the tax payers pockets.
What we need is a 100% tax on profits until the cost of government subsidised labour is repaid. Because that portion of the "profits" is just raided directly from tax payers in the first place.
I agree there should be more tax brackets at higher rates and income levels. It's weird the personal tax rate maxes out at 37% for income around half a mil, ish. I regularly see my clients making a million, $10m, $50m+. It is hard to see that knowing we deny children lunches in school.
That's true but I'm talking about a tax on employers who pay their staff too little not on individuals.
Oh, yeah I forgot what thread this was about. Seems like it would be easier to raise minimum wage, no?
Maybe. But there is some argument that not every employee needs the same income level so pushing minimum wage up to a level that accounts for employees that need a higher income is a harder sell than some midpoint plus support for those who need extra (single parent of multiple kids supporting their household on their income Vs rich kid working weekends for extra spending money.)
You're not wrong but yacht is just symbolic of the wealth imbalance. It's hard to watch these billionaires cruise around on yachts while children in America are denied lunch in school because socialism is bad.
Bezos is a poor example as his super yacht is relatively cheap for him compare to most yacht owning CEO's (and his company has tremendously more employees than most of those CEO's companies do.) The equivalent of a yacht for Bezos would be his space rockets.
I don't get how people can misunderstand your comment so completely. Can't people read anymore or what?
Actually, I get it. It sounds like I'm arguing against the general point, which is that income inequality is fucking bullshit. And it is bullshit.
It really doesn't if one can read.