Amazon, right along with other big players are not paying people well enough to make it.
Increasing numbers of them don't, and that costs all of us while eroding demand needed for the economy to grow and perform for all of us.
In a very real sense, failure to fund a better, more equitable, just standard of living means it won't exist at all.
Flat out, it is unacceptable to make billions while a majority are on public assistance.
There are two kinds of demand:
The kind I wrote to here is backed by available, liquid dollars. Amazon, and others, paying people effectively less than it costs them to exist and work, very sharply impacts this kind of demand. An easy example can be seen with entertainment. For most people, entertainment dollars are largely fixed. That fixed amount is very low, when few dollars are available, not dedicated to basic needs.
The other kind of demand is not backed by liquid dollars, and it's out there, growing, but not a meaningful part of any markets available to service it. That kind of demand is growing in the USA, with a clear majority of people now experiencing it.
There aren't any free lunches here. When we don't pay people enough to fund reasonable, modest lives, we are basically requiring everyone else to subsidize their labor, and that cost gets distributed nationwide.
If those people were businesses, they would have shut down by now. Since they are people, that would mean dying basically, and we prevent that with some safety net type spending and assistance.
Should those programs be a part of Amazon and others business model?
I feel they should not as that was never the intent. Those using them that way are doing all of us more harm than good too.
How is it manipulative to report on median pay for a company? This is as straightforwardly reported as possible, and not at all click-baity or manipulative. We shouldn't be afraid of basic facts that actually capture important information in an objective way. It's not a misleading number, it provides real insights into Amazon.