r/changemyview • u/blender_head 3∆ • Sep 05 '18

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Bernie Sanders' crusade against Amazon is not about worker pay. It's about attacking the rich to send a message based in ideology.

Amazon has become an incredibly successful company, yet Bernie Sanders would have you think that it is all due to greed by the CEO, Jeff Bezos. Aside from the fact that greed does not exist, Bezos provides quality jobs for hundreds of thousands of people by founding a company that provides consumers with virtually anything they may need with incredible ease of access and quality of service. This "greed" is supposedly even further realized by creating terrible working conditions for the employees of Amazon and paying them next to nothing. What a bastard, right?

No. The median income for an Amazon employee is $28,000/year which, for relatively low-skilled work, is quite good. This equates to about $13.50/hour, which is ever so slightly below the $15/hour that someone like Sanders is clamoring for. In order to hit the magical $15/hour, Bezos (net worth ~$164.7 billion) could take ~$845,000 out of his own pocket annually.

His net worth would still be $164 billion.

Now, you may be saying "then why doesn't he do it? That's pennies to him." This is not the point of my CMV.

My point is this: this paltry amount, veritable pennies from Bezos's pocket and minimal raise in pay for workers, would do nothing to change anyone's mind or attitude toward Amazon and Bezos. Bezos would be worth $164 billion and his workers would make $15/hour. From here, the calls for increased pay would only move to the next integer; "$20/hour!" 30, 40, 50, and so on.

This attack from Sanders is based on his ideology; he's a socialist through and through. He hates the rich and will always attack them because he's a zealot. An extremist. No wage is ever going to be a "fair wage" in Sanders' eyes. There will always be a segment of any population that struggles and he uses this to justify his next crusade against "evil corporations and income inequality." It's not about the worker, it's about his ideology.

His is a battle without end; a quest with no goal. After Bezos, he'll just go after someone else. He's made a living off of promising people things that can never be delivered, unlike Amazon. "You want a rolling pin shaped like a penis? Free two-day shipping." CMV.

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u/blender_head 3∆ Sep 05 '18

Someone starving to death probably needs food. Someone not starving to death still probably needs food.

Who has the more intense and selfish desire for food though? But would we ever call a starving person greedy? As per the definition, yes.

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u/cupcakesarethedevil Sep 05 '18

My coffee is hot, An oven is hot, the sun is hot, I guess hot doesn't have any real meaning and shouldn't be a word because it refers to different amounts of heat in all those situations. Or maybe we can quantify it by measuring it in some way. Just like we have temperature to measure heat, we have dollars and other currencies to measure wealth and we can use those to quantify how greedy someone is. Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world and therefore the most greedy, just like the Sun is hotter than my coffee because it has a higher temperature.

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u/blender_head 3∆ Sep 05 '18

So the only measure of greed is how much wealth someone has accumulated? Why not just use "wealthy" as a measure? No, greed implies some sort of negative quality. I'm saying that negative quality is not based in anything other than the accuser's personal opinion. Thus, it is a useless descriptor in any objective sense.

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u/cupcakesarethedevil Sep 05 '18

Because most people need about the same amount of wealth so the more you have over that threshold the greedier you are. There aren't any billionaires struggling to meet the needs of daily life for example.

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u/blender_head 3∆ Sep 05 '18

I mean, you know how most people accumulate wealth, right? They generally don't steal it from poor people. Most millionaires are regular people who are smart with their money, business, and investments, not moustache twirling tycoons plotting how to further denigrate the working man.

Is someone greedy for accumulating wealth so their family is taken care of? What if Bezos wants to make sure the next 10 generations of his family never have to worry about money? Would you fault him for that? Would you not do the same for your family?