In September of 2017, the New York Times reported that Amazon “employed 300,000 people globally by its 20th year as a public company, the fastest any American company has reached that mark.” This stat came to mind while contemplating Annie Lowrey's recent effort to cast Jeff Bezos's immense wealth in a negative light. While she takes care to acknowledge some of Bezos's herculean achievements, Lowrey contends that Bezos didn't build an amazing corporation staffed by the wildly talented as much as policy failure, taxpayer generosity and worker exploitation combined to make Amazon great.
If Lowrey is to be believed, Amazon corralled its workforce through intimidation, near-indentured servitude, and poverty-inducing thrift, only to leave the bill for employees who endure pay that is below the U.S.'s “living wage” to taxpayers in the form of “policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” Bezos's supposed parsimony is the driver of Amazon's sweatshop-style conditions for workers who, according to Lowrey, suffer a pay gap relative to Amazon executives that is “shocking.” Apparently Amazon's employees aren't as shocked. As of this writing, there's no evidence that those in the company's employ are trailed by the gun-toting on the way in to work each day.
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