You could make a .org rn lmao

software engineers at the company who make up most of what drives aws who have 2-4 years of experience get about 80k of amazon stock per year (not counting 150k salary). When bezos stock increased, that 80k of stock also would increase to about 86,000. So yeah. They made about 6,000 of their stock

unless I'm misunderstanding, there is a federal minimum wage that still exists, it just sucks lol

the real issue is that i think the nature of the issue is very different. the main reason for wealth gaps really has nothing to do with things like the minimum wage, it has to do with a lot of social and societal factors. like, the minimum wage doesnt matter if you can't get a job, and the job market is increasingly outpaced by the number of people looking for them. reasons for this include (but are not limited to);
-highly centralized, homogenous job market (everyone following the same scheme of school -> college -> job)
-increasingly globalized market
-economic abuses by banks
-an economy based on arbitrary means; rise of "bullshit jobs" + jobs dependent on consumerism rather than actual production

and this is just issues w/ the job market. the entire economy is completely screwed up now then it was back then. it's like an artificial cycle rather than a real organic economy. some further reason for this;
-hyper-consumer based economy rather than production based economy
-changing social norms haven't been caught up by the economy; the workface is essentially 3x bigger than the 50s because besides of age men working, its now virtually all of age men, of age women, and past generations working as well
-massive normalization of credit & debt
-consolidation of company control and inter-governmental subsidization/support
-the above but 10x over with banks

lot more reasons but those are just some of the things off the top of my head. im not against fixing the economy or anything btw, i just think we need to have a lot more focused conversation on what the factors are rather than pointing to things which are only indicative of bigger problems

usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-10-31/taxes-werent-more-progressive-in-the-1950s

To illustrate this second point, let's consider another set of statistics. Since 1979 the Congressional Budget Office has tracked the overall share of federal income tax liability paid by the top earners. These figures include the top 1 percent and top 10 percent of all tax filers, and show a marked increase since the start of the series. For example, the top 1 percent of tax filers paid 18.4 percent of the federal income tax share in 1979. In the most recent set of figures, they paid 38.3 percent of the burden.

Tax rate is not progressive

Software engineers at amazon after 5-6 years at the company get $300,000-$400,000 a year total which includes about $150,000 of amazon stock per year. They pay their engineers well

Yeah I know engineers and executives get stock options but I don’t believe the same is true of the warehouse workers who it could help the most. If you’re making 30k a year making 4K in a single day would be life changing

one day, one of us will have a trillion dollar idea

don't hate on bezos

The problem with that is the the ultra wealthy 1% to 0.1% have gotten exponentially richer. So naturally the burden falls on anyone below them to pick up the tax slack. The top 0.1% went from owning 10% of the wealth in the 50's to 25% by 2015.

Per your source: "The data shows that, between 1950 and 1959, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average of 42.0 percent of their income in federal, state, and local taxes. Since then, the average effective tax rate of the top 1 percent has declined slightly overall."

So despite their wealth increasing by an enormous amount they pay fewer taxes.

@S

u too good for this thread

I won't deny they could afford to pay their warehouse workers better. But when people are obviously willing to do the job for their current pay, what incentive does amazon they have to increase it. If amazon paid software engineers what they do warehouse workers, literally nobody would work on software there. They would work elsewhere. But since they pay decently well for a warehouse job, people will do the job
Also people underestimate how much their stock performance depends solely on AWS, which doesn't involve warehouse workers at all, only engineers. AWS is likely worth $500 bil alone
I wouldn't want to work at amazon cause it seems like a s*** company to work at, but i get why people do

Can someone educate me on this. I don’t want to sound ignorant but why does everyone hate him.

but you're missing the point that just because there are higher tax rates doesn't mean the rich are going to pay them. They didnt do it in the 1950s and many of them have off shore tax havens right now as well or find loopholes to get out of paying certain taxes.

The rich pay the most in taxes today of anyone else. That wasn't true in the mid 1900s where the middle class paid the most.

That's tru and I think you missed my comment earlier about how the IRS has been defunded year on year and has given up trying to tax the rich. IRS need to be funded to the max so they have the resources to go after the rich and make them pay what they should, just how they do with the middle class right now.

They hate him mostly because the media pushes misleading headlines like this

That and jealousy

well idk how IRS was funded in the 50s, but clearly they werent rly going after the rich back then either since many of them jus avoided those tax rates

So let's not repeat the mistakes of yesteryear.

Jeff Bezos owns a large percent of Amazon. When the stock price of Amazon increases, the value of the company increases. So when the stock price increased 7% Monday, his net worth increased significantly along with the value of the company. Amazon is valued at 1.54 Trillion dollars. So Bezos is worth a lot, because he owns a lot of stock. People are upset that his net worth is becoming so great and think there would be a way for him to give his money to those who have less or do more with it

cmon

well yeah but the tax system is as progressive as it ever has been now. in the 1920s, the lower class paid the most in taxes. In the 50s, it was the middle class

now the top 10% pay the most by far in taxes of anyone else. This also says nothing about the fact that its so much more often that people leave the top 1% than stay there.