Another $6 billion for Bezos overnight
Amazon reports record profit in final quarter of 2017
By Will Morrow
3 February 2018
Amazon’s
global profit reached $1.9 billion for the final quarter of 2017, an increase
of more than 150 percent from just a year earlier, according to the company’s
financial earnings report released Thursday. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos’
personal wealth has increased more than $17 billion in the past month. This
compares to the average monthly wage of an Amazon warehouse worker as the
weight of an elephant compares to an ant.
This
transnational corporation is a world behemoth with market capitalization of
almost $700 billion. Total revenue was $60.5 billion for the quarter and $177.9
billion for the year, up from $137 billion in 2016. The report was celebrated
with a rally on Wall Street, sending the share price up by 6.2 percent in
after-hours trading Thursday. Despite the largest one-day Wall Street sell-off
since 2008 on Friday, Amazon’s shares closed up by 2.9 percent from the
previous day, at $1,431.
Amazon
reported that more than a third of its record profit, or $789 million, was the
outcome of the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion corporate tax cut for the
financial oligarchy, passed in December with insincere and muted opposition
from the Democratic Party, which supported slashing the corporate tax rate,
differing with Republicans only over size of the cut.
Bezos, who
owns a roughly 16 percent stake of company shares, saw his personal wealth rise
by $6.5 billion overnight Thursday as a result of the stock market rally,
cementing his place as the world’s richest individual. According to Forbes,
Bezos is now worth $118.8 billion, more than $20 billion ahead of Microsoft
founder Bill Gates.
Amazon’s
enormous profits and the grotesque enrichment of Bezos himself are based upon
the brutal exploitation of the company’s global workforce, which by the end
2017 numbered more than 550,000 workers, spanning the United States, Europe,
Africa, Asia and Australia.
A typical
Amazon “picker” in the United States earns approximately $12 an hour, barely
above the official poverty line for a family of three. A packing worker for
Amazon in India typically earns just over $233 a month.
To make what
Bezos earned as he slept on Thursday night, the average American Amazon
warehouse employee would have to work without pause for approximately 60,000
years. A packing worker in India would have to work for just under 12 years to
make what Bezos made each minute of 2017.
The word
“Amazon” has itself become synonymous with a perfected and onerous system of
exploitation involving the continuous monitoring of employees’ performance and
work-rate. The average warehouse worker walks more than 10 miles per shift
across giant warehouses, some of them the size of more than 25 football fields.
Workers’ locations are tracked throughout their shift via electronic trackers
to tell whether they stop to take a break, and the company receives regular
updates informing them of whether workers are falling behind their quota.
The
company’s bumper fourth quarter was on the back of unprecedented holiday season
sales. Amazon captured almost half of total e-commerce holiday sales, and
revenue from the Amazon Prime membership subscription service, which offers
benefits including faster delivery times, increased by 49 percent in the
quarter, to $3.2 billion. Four million people signed up to Prime in the course
of one week.
This
increase in holiday demand translated to even more onerous conditions for
workers, who were under enormous pressure to meet the higher quotas. On
December 14, a full-time Amazon worker in Sacramento, California who vomited
blood during his shift had to be hospitalized, and died the following day.
Amazon’s
record profit highlights the social irrationality of the global capitalist
system. Society’s wealth, the product of the collective labour of billions of
working people around the world, is monopolised in the hands of a tiny
oligarchy.
When Bezos’
wealth first surpassed $100 billion in November 2017, the WSWS wrote:
“The UN
estimates that it would cost $30 billion to solve world hunger by providing 862
million people with food for a year. The World Health Organization claims just
$11 billion is needed to halve the number of people without access to clean
water. Another UN study found that $26 billion would provide education to every
child that does not receive one.
“The
Guttmacher Institute estimates that with $13 billion, free maternal and
prenatal care could be provided for every mother in the developing world. It
would cost $11 billion to house each of the 150,000 people who are homeless on
a given night in the US. The cost of preventing 4 million malaria deaths would
be $6 billion each year.
“The total
cost for these essential changes would be roughly $97 billion.”
Half of the
now more than $20 billion that would be left over could also be used to fully
repair Puerto Rico’s crumbling electricity grid.
Amazon’s
revenue for the quarter also received a boost from the operations of fresh food
supermarket Whole Foods, which Amazon purchased in August, 2017 for $13
billion. Earlier this month, Amazon announced a restricted opening of the first
“Amazon Go” food retail store in Seattle, which will employ no cashiers at all,
using apps on customers’ smartphones to process all purchases.
Significantly,
the largest driver of Amazon’s profit came from Amazon Web Service (AWS), the
company’s cloud platform, which accounted for more than 60 percent of total
profits. AWS accounted for 8.5 percent of Amazon revenues in 2017, up from 5
percent in 2014.
The growing
weight of AWS operations within Amazon reflects the complete integration of the
company into the American capitalist state and its intelligence apparatus. Last
November, AWS announced that it was constructing a new “Secret Region” to host
government data, the outcome of Amazon’s 2013 deal worth $600 million to build
a private computing cloud for all 17 US intelligence agencies. Amazon’s growth
reflects the integration of the intelligence agencies with the technology and
social media corporations, including Facebook and Alphabet, the owner of
Google. These corporations are actively collaborating to censor the Internet to
prevent workers and young people from reading the World Socialist Web Site and
other anti-war and left-wing organizations and publications.
The growth
of Amazon’s wealth and power is the product of the exploitation of Amazon
workers worldwide. The only solution is the socialist solution: to expropriate
the wealth of their corporate management and place the companies under the
democratic control of the workers themselves to be organized not for profit but
to meet human need.
Maine Bakery Fined $95,000 for H-2B Violations
By Preston Huennekens
CIS Immigration Blog, January 31, 2018
. . .
Owner Mary Breen said that her business "sometimes has trouble finding seasonal workers" and attempted to use the H-2B visa program to hire temporary foreign workers.
DOL stated that she advertised positions for counter attendants that paid between $8.79 to $9.09 an hour. She then subsequently hired foreign workers at $10-$13 an hour. DOL stated that "American workers might have taken the jobs if the actual rates had been properly advertised."
Bread and Roses Bakery Inc. committed other H-2B violations as well. Although they advertised the positions as counter attendants, nine foreign workers were subsequently used as bakers and were paid below the prevailing wage. In addition, the bakery paid no overtime to 45 employees and refused to reimburse the H-2B workers for visa expenses normally covered by employers. Unrelated to the H-2B violations, the bakery violated hourly work restrictions for an employee under the age of 18.
https://cis.org/Huennekens/Maine-Bakery-Fined-95000-H2B-Violations
THE TRUMP AMNESTY TO LEGALIZE MEXICO’S LOOTING AND KEEP WAGES FOR LEGALS DEPRESSED
The draft amnesty will also serve as complete proof in November that Trump’s voters’ wrongly placed their trust in his August 2016 promise to block any amnesty: (SEE LINK).
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-trump-amnesty-to-legalize-mexicos.html
"But the taxpayers’ costs also act as a $26 billion stimulus for business which will provide the migrants with medical services, apartments, entertainment, food, and transport. The continued inflow of the 4 million chain-migrants, however, is a vastly greater benefit for business and burden for American workers." NEIL MUNRO
*
But the business community will have little reason to defend Trump, partly because they have gotten their double-shot of tax cuts and cheap labor. In fact, the legislation does not sunset the amnesty, meaning it can be quietly expanded with a few legal tweaks that can be attached to any of the myriad obscure bills annually passed by Congress.
By Preston Huennekens
CIS Immigration Blog, January 31, 2018
. . .
Owner Mary Breen said that her business "sometimes has trouble finding seasonal workers" and attempted to use the H-2B visa program to hire temporary foreign workers.
DOL stated that she advertised positions for counter attendants that paid between $8.79 to $9.09 an hour. She then subsequently hired foreign workers at $10-$13 an hour. DOL stated that "American workers might have taken the jobs if the actual rates had been properly advertised."
Bread and Roses Bakery Inc. committed other H-2B violations as well. Although they advertised the positions as counter attendants, nine foreign workers were subsequently used as bakers and were paid below the prevailing wage. In addition, the bakery paid no overtime to 45 employees and refused to reimburse the H-2B workers for visa expenses normally covered by employers. Unrelated to the H-2B violations, the bakery violated hourly work restrictions for an employee under the age of 18.
https://cis.org/Huennekens/Maine-Bakery-Fined-95000-H2B-Violations
JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
Here’s how it breaks down; will make you want to be an illegal!
AMERICA'S JOBS, HOMELESS AND HOUSING CRISIS WILL END ALONG WITH THE LA RAZA CRIME TIDAL WAVE WHEN WE PUSH MEXICO BACK OVER OUR BORDERS AND THE PRO-AMNESTY BILLIONAIRES OVER A CLIFF!
154,430,000: U.S. Hits Record Employment in January; But Record 95,665,000 Not in Labor Force
154,430,000: U.S. Hits Record Employment in January; But Record 95,665,000 Not in Labor Force
By Susan Jones | February 2, 2018 | 8:42 AM EST
(CNSNews.com) - The new year is off to a strong start on the employment front.
The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that a record 154,430,000 people were employed in January, a gain of 309,000 from December.
The number of employed Americans has broken seven records since Donald Trump took office.
The nation’s unemployment rate remained at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent for a fourth straight month in January, but the number of Americans not in the labor force also set a new record at 95,665,000 – the fourth such record since Trump took office.
In January, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 256,780,000. Of those, 161,115,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.
The 161,115,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.7 percent of the 256,780,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population.
The 161,115,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.7 percent of the 256,780,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population.
The labor force participation rate has been stuck at 62.7 percent for four straight months.
Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall told Congress last week that the nation's labor supply is growing slowly because of the aging population.
In other positive news, wages are rising: In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 9 cents to $26.74, following an 11-cent gain in December. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 75 cents, or 2.9 percent.
And the economy added a strong 200,000 jobs last month. After revisions for the December and November jobs-added totals, job gains have averaged 192,000 over the last 3 months.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Blacks increased to 7.7 percent in January, up from last month's record low of 6.8 percent; and the rate for Whites edged down to 3.5 percent. The jobless rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.6 percent), teenagers (13.9 percent), Asians (3.0 percent), and Hispanics (5.0 percent) showed little change.
Trump expects ‘numbers that get even better’
Trump expects ‘numbers that get even better’
“Already since the election, we've created 2.4 million jobs,” President Trump told Republicans gathered in West Virginia on Thursday.
“That's unthinkable. And that doesn't include all of the things that are happening. You're going to see numbers that get even better.
“The stock market has added more than $8 trillion in new wealth. Unemployment claims are at a 45-year low, which is something. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.
“The stock market has added more than $8 trillion in new wealth. Unemployment claims are at a 45-year low, which is something. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.
African-American and Hispanic unemployment have both reached the lowest levels ever recorded. That's something very, very special.”
Trump noted that upon hearing that news at the State of the Union speech, “There was zero movement from the Democrats. They sat there stone cold, no smile, no applause. You would've thought that on that one, they would've sort of at least clapped a little bit.
“Which tells you perhaps they'd rather see us not do well than see our country do great, and that's not good. That's not good.”
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