Amazon cutting more employees in the next few weeks bringing total layoffs to over 18,000, more than any other tech company. Its CEO was paid $221 million in 2021. Amazon recently made record revenue & profit. Amazon is worth $868 billion. Founder Bezos net worth is $107 billion. sources:
wsj.com/articles/amazo…
fortune.com/2022/06/02/for…
google.com/finance/quote/…

I randomly found myself speaking on a panel with the peerless @elonmusk

*TY for having me. You have accomplished so much! Wishing you the best in ur endeavors. I💙my Tesla.

Below is some of our talk, my thoughts about it, a poll for your feedback to Mr. Musk & link 2 full audio Mr. Musk was discussing Orwell’s dystopian future. How he thinks it is happening now.

I asked him a potentially related question.

What was it like, as a visionary billionaire entrepreneur, to do the same old thing by financing your acquisition debts with savings from layoffs?

Lowe's pays a median of $24,600.

In the pandemic it has made $12.6 billion in profit and put $13 billion into stock buybacks and dividends.

If it had given the money to employees, they would make $61,100.

Overall, companies have spent 5x more on shareholders than employees. Their main competitor?

Home Depot pays a median of $27,400.

In the pandemic it made $23.7 billion in profit and put $10.3 billion into stock buybacks.

If it had given that money to employees, they would make $48,000.

Thread on how Amazon treats its workers

Context:
Amazon full-time warehouse employees make $31,200 a year. Jeff Bezos makes that every 12 seconds.

Cost to give warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave + pay bumps so they don't qualify for food stamps = 0.9% of Bezos' fortune 1. Amazon workers in Staten Island just won a vote to unionize. During the union drive, the company held 20 mandatory anti-union meetings per day and had pro-union workers arrested.
nytimes.com/2022/03/24/bus…

Compared to white people:
*Black-owned homes are devalued by 23%
*Black-owned homes' property taxes are 13% higher
*Bank fees are 2x higher for Black people
*Black people w/ no criminal record earn $10k less than white people w/ a criminal record

That's just the beginning ...
🧵 *Black college grads have 50% less wealth than white high school dropouts
*The 10 counties most audited by the IRS are 79% people of color
*The Black-white homeowner gap is bigger now than it was in the year 1900
*In the pandemic, Black-owned businesses closed at twice the rate

Remember how Representative Katie Porter used to brilliantly hold financial power to account with her whiteboard in those hearings?

The reason why that doesn't happen as much is that the Democratic leadership decided she shouldn't be on the financial services committee anymore.

Movie Review:

Don't Look UP. A new Netflix movie where a "fictional" modern America...

fails to see basic truth

becomes dominated and divided by corrupt, power hungry leaders, funded by corporations and rich donors

then launches itself with the world into doom

It's a comedy everyone: "this is supposed to be fiction, right?"

Financial harm of having a baby in the US vs. elsewhere in the world:

I received hundreds of instagram DMs about what it’s like.

I plan to read them again whenever politicians claim to care about “life”, babies, or “family values” or BS that millennials don’t want kids.

https://twitter.com/danpriceseattle/status/1468416207850201090

experiences with childbirth costs in the USA

If trick-or-treating worked like capitalism:
1 kid gets all the candy
He gives a few kids 1 M&M each and is called a generous philanthropist
Other kids ask why they're candy-less & are called lazy
He retires from Halloween & writes laws to ensure he gets unlimited candy for life "eventually they won't have any of my candy left to take and they'll come after yours"

How I learned to be a better boss:

I was a bad CEO. 7 years ago, I found a McDonald's training handbook on the desk of an employee named Rosita. Turns out she was training to become a manager there because she couldn't survive on the income I paid here. I called her to my office She was hiding the McD's handbook and thought her 2nd job would get her fired. What kind of culture had I created? Scarcity and fear.

Rosita is a college grad but was making $30k a year.

She'd leave our job at 5 and secretly work 5:30-11 every weeknight at McD's for 1.5 years.

Hilton Hotels furloughed thousands and laid off 2,100 last year. It cut employee pay 13% to $37k.

In solidarity, the CEO said he'd take $0 salary.

Except his salary makes up 7% of total pay.

With extra stock, overall he got a 161% raise to $55.9 million
latimes.com/business/story… Huge chain Choice Hotels put out a press release last year saying its CEO was taking a 20% pay cut amid hard times for employees.

But then it instituted “COVID-Response Performance Awards" - not for employees but for the CEO.

So the CEO got a total 63% raise to $11.1 million.

Companies are sending people back to the office to "increase productivity"

As a CEO, that makes no sense.

Our company has worked remotely for 16 months. How was productivity affected? This April, we set a record for revenue. In May, we broke that again.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… The extra revenue allowed us to grow past 200 employees for the first time. Remote work opened our recruiting pool significantly: we now have workers in 24 states.

Nationwide, research shows remote work fueled 5% productivity growth since people aren’t burnt out from commuting.

How come CEOs get million-dollar bonuses for reaching their goals while workers get a pizza party? How come CEOs get more for being fired than workers get for working?

For the last two weeks, I've been secretly muted from 99.9% of twitter.

Only people who follow me see my tweets. So when you retweet me, it goes into a black hole.

I even created two dummy accounts to verify this. I have no idea why this is.

People will point out that I'm the CEO of a small payments company that competes with Square, which is led by Twitter's CEO.

I alerted Twitter multiple times to the issue and they said if I didn't like it, I could pay them to advertise.

You know what would really help me as a small business owner?

Universal health care. We spend millions on premiums that enrich insurance companies.

Went on Fox to make this case and they were flabbergasted: "Why would you want to pay more" (in taxes)? For-profit health care:

The top 18 health care CEOs make $317M/year combined

Hospital CEO pay is up 93% in a decade

3 opioid makers gave CEOs $2M+ bonuses despite billion-dollar settlements

Health care company profits grew 22% last year alone

Premiums are up 55% in a decade

6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines.

Since then our revenue tripled, we're a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought.

Always invest in people. Since our $70k min wage was announced 6 years ago today:
*Our revenue tripled
*Head count grew 70%
*Customer base doubled
*Babies had by staff grew 10x
*70% of employees paid down debt
*Homes bought by employees grew 10x
*401(k) contributions grew 155%
*Turnover dropped in half

CEO to median worker pay ratio
Ross: 1,059 to 1
Chipotle: 1,136 to 1
GameStop: 1,137 to 1
KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell: 1,413 to 1
Dick's: 1,487 to 1
Gap: 1,558 to 1
Coke 1,657 to 1
Starbucks: 1,675 to 1
McDonald's 1,939 to 1

yes, it's min wage workers responsible for price increases CEO to median worker pay ratio
Papa John's: 1,038 to 1
Kraft-Heinz: 1,034 to 1
Foot Locker: 1,013 to 1
Bed Bath & Beyond: 1,007 to 1
American Eagle: 1,003 to 1
Walmart: 983 to 1
DSW: 965 to 1
Kohl's: 923 to 1
Disney: 911 to 1

yes, it's min wage workers responsible for job losses

Thread on how Amazon treats its workers

Context:
Amazon full-time warehouse employees make $31,200 a year. Jeff Bezos makes that every 12 seconds.

Cost to give warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave + pay bumps so they don't qualify for food stamps = 0.9% of Bezos' fortune 1. Last week Amazon denied its workers' quotas are so punishing that they have to pee in bottles.

The next day, documents showed that not only do workers regularly have to urinate in bottles, they also defecate in bags, and Amazon is well aware of this
theintercept.com/2021/03/25/ama…

I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh 3 hours a day as a home-schooled kid. My parents idolized him.

5 years ago my parents called me: "Rush is about to talk about you!"

I was in the news for slashing my CEO pay to raise our min wage to $70k. I excitedly turned on his show (1/6) Rush said: "I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work, because it’s gonna fail."

I was completely devastated. My dad said he thought Rush got this one wrong. But it was a huge blow and led to a flood of hate-mail against me. (2/6)

In pandemic
Postmates sold for $2.6B
GrubHub stock douled
DoorDash founder made $3B
Uber Eats revenue up 125%

They charge restaurants 30% fees

Revenue for small restaurants we serve: down 45%. With delivery fees, they can lose money on transactions

Support restaurants directly Small restaurant revenue vs year prior
April 2020⬇️73%
May⬇️63%
June⬇️50%
July⬇️46%
Aug⬇️43%
Sep⬇️43%
Oct⬇️35%
Nov⬇️43%
Dec⬇️51%
Jan 2021⬇️45%

The "best" month, with lockdowns lifted, was still 2x worse than peak 2009 recession.

source: our Gravity Payments processing data

What they did to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is completely and utterly disgusting. Her strength is seemly endless. Incredible to see a heroine rise to a moment like that. *Seemingly*
Hey everyone, you should watch her Instagram live. Everyone should watch it. Will be civics 101 - no exceptions