Addition: the same is true for funding something like a computer lab at a school. Lots of good PR for funding a new one but nothing for keeping an existing one funded for the next few years. Although I think it's more valuable to make sure existing infrastructure stays funded.

https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

> Aid [to Africa] is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083

Still, I'd also like to see Amazon pay its employees better...

But, no, that he won't do. Which means there's actually a hidden agenda here.

Actions speak louder than words. You can charitably argue that he needs a good therapist to help him root out subconscious bias, but you aren't going to convince me he's somehow doing a good thing here.

I was going to comment about the preschools and how that idea came from ideas solicited by the public because everyone was just assuming it was just arbitrary helicopter money exclusively for PR

The other two big issues: inadequate income and lack of affordable housing. Bezos is directly responsible for his employees lack of adequate wages, an issue he won't fix.

No, he is going to build preschools in poor neighborhoods so that poor kids can get properly educated and break the cycle of poverty 2 decades from now when they grow up.

Conveniently kicks the can down the road and does nothing to solve homelessness in the here and now, plus comes with all kinds of plausible deniability. "Just wait 2 decades! You'll see! It will help them... Eventually!"

"The beatings shall continue until morale improves." and all that.

You realize that if Bezos gave all the Amazon employees 'adequate wages' that you would then still be blaming him for inadequate housing? Or at least different people in Seattle would.

> No, he is going to build preschools in poor neighborhoods so that poor kids can get properly educated and break the cycle of poverty 2 decades from now when they grow up.

The horror. Setting up lower socioeconomic statuses for long term success.

Would it help if the article didn't masquerade this effort as a cure all?

Poor children live with enormous daily stress and chronic lack of adequate nutrition sets up permanent problems that tend to be unreasonable. Children with stunting earn less wages over the course of their lives and have many other intractable problems.

There is always some hoop to jump through for the poor as to why adequate money must come someday down the road - just not today.

A la President Clinton famously announcing that he didn't want to give a tax cut because poor people would just spend their money foolishly and he was more qualified than them to spend their money wisely.

Would it help if the article didn't masquerade this effort as a cure all?

It would help if you would drop the sarcasm and contempt and take me seriously as a subject matter expert.

You came out of the woodworks because Jeff Bezos is doing something with money and the PR engine is masquerading this as a panacea to chronic homelessness. You want the world to know that "something" isn't enough and isn't holistic enough. And I'm right here in the middle saying "huh preschools thats kind of interesting"

I know plenty of people that do things for schools, Jeff Bezos doing things for more schools (or at least on the subject of schooling) at once is nice. I support that. Its not the only thing he might do, not the only thing he has to do, or plans to do, yet it is interesting that he's being held to a separate standard solely from the announcement alone.

If he just said "yo I'm making preschools its gonna be lit", a wild Doreen Michele would have never appeared. But because it was billed as a solution to homelessness and impoverished areas, here comes college educated Doreen Michele to let everyone know its totally wrong and misguided!

Its preschools

a wild Doreen Michele would have never appeared. But because it was billed as a solution to homelessness and impoverished areas, here comes college educated Doreen Michele to let everyone know its totally wrong and misguided!

That's incredibly dismissive.

For one thing, I'm simply here a lot. I didn't "come out of the woodwork" like some lurker who normally keeps my mouth shut.

For another, I comment on lots of different subjects, not just homelessness. I'm well known for my views on homelessness, but long before that I was a homeschooling parent and Director of Community Life for The TAG Project. It isn't at all unusual for me to comment on education and related subjects.

I'm not a big fan of the idea out there that poor families are helped by good preschool education. One of my sons went to preschool and he really benefited tremendously because he had specific issues I wanted addressed. So I'm well aware that preschool can be a good thing and I would rather see more money spent on preschool than on prisons and there are studies that show that spending more on preschools reduces how much we spend on prisons.

But I would much, much, much rather see parents make enough money that they can make choices like whether or not they want one parent to be home full time. I think we really, seriously undervalue full time parents.

(Please note that I am saying parents, not mothers. I get a lot of BS off of people who like to imagine I mean only mothers should be at home with kids.)

I've thought long and hard about a lot of subjects that happen to intersect here and even studied some of them formally.

I'm also medically handicapped and I happen to spend more time on HN on days when I am short of sleep or not feeling so hot, like today. That is a much, much bigger factor in me leaving multiple comments in this discussion (as well as others) than the topic per se.

Though I will say this comment is evidence that your opening line is probably not entirely disingenuous. You are taking me seriously enough to apparently view me as some kind of threat (to what? I have no clue) and thus feel some need to try to shoot me down personally.

Glad to hear more about your background in this area though

Jeff Bezos says his action was guided by something akin to a public comment period. Not sure how anyone would have known that in advance but maybe thats something you can contribute to in the future, or push for more billionaires and well funded organizations to take suggestions from the public

Crazy thought but are we incentivizing this behavior?

I haven’t seen any math on this, but if I pay workers more I still pay the same tax rate on profits and profits will be lower.

OTOH if I pay them less, profits are higher, my stock goes up. I donate stock to my charitable fund and get a personal tax break.

"...even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/wealth-phi...

Here's part 1:

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-45-the-not-so...

And here's part 2:

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so...

While Bezos' wealth has skyrocketed in the last year, the portion of that wealth that actually came out of the Amazon ledgers was under $2 million in 2017. [1]

Since it is the responsibility of the company to compensate employees, at most Bezos' cut is taking $2 million out of the pie, which divided across the several hundred thousand Amazon employees would give each worker less than $20 per year. Not exactly life changing.

Regardless of whether or not Amazon should pay employees more, basing that argument on the CEO's capitol gains on long-standing investments is ridiculous.

[1] https://www1.salary.com/Jeffrey-P-Bezos-Salary-Bonus-Stock-O...

As another said, "color me unimpressed". He could double that and still be the richest man alive. He could triple that. He could quadruple that...

EDIT: For comparison, 50k USD is approximately 65k CAD, which makes higher than the median starting salary for a mechanical/electrical engineer in Canada. I would be surprised if they are paying their lowest-paid employees that much.

If you work full-time and you do a good job, then you should earn a wage that you can live on.

Should Amazon workers only barely be able to afford rent and food. Should they have $0 left over after rent+groceries? $1? What amount is reasonable, vs what amount becomes excessive? What if they have a child? Or an elderly parent? Or student loans?

> but it has now extended to so many other things that I wouldn't really call necessities.

What ridiculous lavish spending do you think Amazon warehouse workers are capable of buying with their (on average ~$12/hr) wages?

The general argument is that a living wage should cover life. All people are entitled to enough money that they can pay for rent, pay for food, pay for healthcare, pay for basic transportation, and have some amount of discretionary money to spend anyway they want (like say, raising a family, or continuing their education, or having a hobby, or volunteering for a cause their passionate about, or whatever)

  breathable air
  drinkable water
  nutritious food
  safe shelter
  quiet and dark sleeping area
  secure property storage
  equal access to the commons
  basic education
  job skills education
  scientific/analytic education
  access to communication
  access to markets
  personal mobility
  medical care
  social contact
  family formation
  social organization
  political influence
   .------------------------------
  <  this is where I draw my line
   '------------------------------
  mercantile education
  philosophical education
  luxury goods
  psychological individuation
  independent exploration or introspection
  artistic and aesthetic pursuits
  finding a meaning in life
  spiritual enlightenment
  Veblen goods

Can you not assign blame to someone abusing a broken system? Surely you can. They are still abusing the system.

If I use roads or public parks, or my social security, does that mean that my employer never paid me enough, then?

And we already have a concept that covers this. It is called the minimum wage. It makes no sense to talk about government services that people are using when you should instead just raise the minimum wage.

These people needed government support, and Bezos is giving them a job, so now they need less government support than they did before. Bezos is helping to give money to people who would have otherwise been totally on welfare.

Destroying jobs is a good thing. It means that Amazon can pass on the savings to consumers. I know that Amazon is disliked in Seattle & the bay area, but if you go around the rest of the country, people love amazon.

Democracy is not working? Whats the alternative.

Is a business owner that only requires part-time work supposed to hire full-time workers for some arbitrary reason all of a sudden?

Alas.