“Amazon is a massive wrecking
machine consuming American retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind
rubble.”
DANIEL GREENFIELD
Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of
Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a
cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”
Amazon, the
multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to
the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google
combined. JOHN BINDER
Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with
the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million
contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the
Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being
marketed to federal and local police.
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic
Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a
party of Wall Street, big banks,
Amazon, and the mili tary- industrial complex.
THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WAGES WAR ON AMERICA!
"GOP estb. is using the $5 billion border-wall fight
to hide up to four blue/white-collar cheap-labor programs in
lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that salaries are too
damn high, & estb. media does not want to know."
TOP EVIL
CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA
Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON CRONIES
JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES
ExxonMobil
Halliburton BUSH CRIME FAMILY CRONIES
British American Tobacco
Dow Chemical
DuPont
Bayer
Microsoft
Google CLINTON CRONIES
Facebook OBAMA CRONIES, BIDEN CRONIES
Amazon WORKS FOR BIDEN, OR DOES HE WORK FOR JEFF BEZOS?
Walmart
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned
an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the
statesmanship of today.” THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
Graph from
the Economic Policy Institute
Decades of decaying
capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate
wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under
increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70
percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61
percent.
Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private
wealth by 2019...watch those numbers go up with Bidenomics!
While the
wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of
growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.
At the end of 2014,
millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth,
according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households
owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per
household.
By Gabriel Black The massive increase in the value of the stock market,
which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that
the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of
all wealth in the United States. Just three men— Jeff Bezos , Warren Buffet and Bill
Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last
year.
The father of US Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin just completed the most expensive purchase of a living
artist’s work in US history, spending over $91 million on a
three-foot-tall metallic sculpture. Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund
Citadel, recently dropped $238 million on a penthouse in New York
City, the most expensive US home ever purchased. And Amazon’s Jeff Bezos,
the world’s richest man, has invested $42 million in a 10,000-year
clock (BEZOS OWNS ABOUT $300 IN RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES
HE CONSIDERS HIS HOMES THESE INCLUDE $135 MILLION MANSION IN BEVERLY HILLS, A
$40 MILLION DOLLAR TOWNHOUSE IN D.C. AND $100 MILLION IN CONDOS IN NYC).
Amazon’s 25th anniversary: A conglomerate based on parasitism
and exploitation
Last
week, Amazon commemorated its 25th anniversary. From its beginnings in a garage
in Seattle, Washington, Amazon has grown into a multinational technology
conglomerate with a market capitalization of nearly one trillion dollars.
In 1994, future Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos left
his job at hedge fund D.E. Shaw to get out in front of the possibilities opened
up by the accelerating development of the internet, beginning with the modest
idea of an online bookstore. Bezos went on to become the wealthiest man on the
planet, his hoard by one estimate peaking at a record $157 billion before his
assets were divided in a divorce earlier this year. Now
considered one of the “Big Four” technology monopolies alongside Apple, Google
and Facebook, Amazon controls the largest marketplace on the Internet:
Amazon.com. The conglomerate’s reach extends from Whole Foods Market, which
Amazon purchased in 2017 for $13.4 billion, to consumer electronics such as the
Kindle reader and the voice-controlled Alexa. Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems
announced in April of this year that it will spend a decade launching 3,236
satellites into space to provide broadband internet.
Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of
Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a
cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” Using its vast flows of cash, Amazon ruthlessly
undercut its rivals, from neighborhood stores to diaper manufacturers,
accepting losses in order to drive competitors out of its way. Meanwhile,
Amazon demanded and obtained free money from state and local governments in the
form of tax breaks and other concessions.
Amazon’s annual revenues reached $233 billion in 2018, on which
the conglomerate is expected to pay zero federal income tax. To put this figure in
perspective, these revenues are nearly at the level of the annual tax revenue
of Russia, which amounted to $253.9 billion in US dollars in 2017. Amazon’s
revenues are higher than the government revenues of Turkey ($173.9 billion),
Austria ($197.8 billion), Poland ($90.8 billion) and Iran ($77.2 billion).
Nearly
half of American households now have subscriptions to Amazon Prime. The click
of a mouse on a personal computer, or the tap of a finger on a mobile device,
now sets into motion the speedy delivery of commodities from around the world,
or the instantaneous electronic transmission of a film, song or book. Behind
these deceptively simple transactions lies Amazon’s vast and complex
commercial, logistics, distribution and computing empire.
Promising
advances have indeed been made in automation and artificial intelligence. These
technological advances carry with them tremendous liberating potential for
human civilization as a whole. Heavy and repetitive toil by humans can
increasingly be mitigated by robots, and possibilities appear on the horizon
for advanced levels of coordination and integration around the world, assisted
by artificial intelligence.
But under capitalism, new advances in technology have made
possible new techniques of exploitation. Amazon has become a watchword for a
new kind of despotism in the workplace.
In
Amazon “fulfillment centers,” workers are forbidden to carry cellphones or to
talk to each other. They are searched coming in and out, and minute details of
their activity throughout the workday are tracked. Amazon specializes in
putting constant pressure on workers to move as fast as possible, with
electronic devices constantly prompting and prodding them to complete the next
task.
Workers
are instructed to compete with each other to surpass each other’s rates, which
they are admonished constitutes “fun.” Arbitrarily high rates are demanded, and
then raised, and then raised again. A worker who takes a moment to rest, to
drink water, or to go to the bathroom can be criticized for a diminished rate.
The workers who are deemed too slow, or who simply tire out, are replaced.
Amazon
is now the second-largest employer in the United States, and there are around
647,000 Amazon workers worldwide. Journalist John Cassidy, writing about Amazon
in The New Yorker in 2015, commented: “Behind
all the technological advances and product innovation, there is a good deal of
old-fashioned labor discipline, wage repression, and exertion of management
power.”
Over
the past week, we published an article exposing the injury of 567
workers over a two-year period at Amazon’s DFW-7 fulfillment center near Fort
Worth, Texas. In December of last year, the WSWS reported how Amazon had hired a private
detective to spy on 27-year-old worker Michelle Quinones in an effort to block
compensation for her injury.
Amazon
has appeared in the “Dirty Dozen” list maintained by the National Council for
Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) for two years in a row. The 2019
report highlights six worker deaths in seven months, 13 deaths since 2013, “a
high incidence of suicide attempts, workers urinating in bottles and workers
left without resources or income after on-the-job injuries.”
Amazon’s
techniques are merely a refined expression of conditions being imposed on
workers around the world. In March of this year, Ford Motor Company announced
the hiring of its new chief financial officer, Tim Stone, who previously served
as Amazon’s vice president of finance and the leader of the Amazon’s
acquisition of Whole Foods. Stone was hired as Ford carries out brutal
cost-cutting in the US, Europe and around the world.
There
is no shortage of opposition among Amazon workers. On social media, current and
former Amazon workers are contacting each other, looking for ways to fight
back. In Poland, where Amazon workers make around $5 per hour, Amazon walked
out of negotiations on July 2 with two unions over working conditions, setting
the stage for a strike.
To fight
for their interests, Amazon workers cannot allow their struggles to be
corralled and smothered by the pro-capitalist trade unions, which are doing
everything they can to block a fight against inequality and exploitation.
In
25 years, Amazon produced the biggest individual fortune in history, and it did
so on the backs of hundreds of thousands of workers. Amazon’s trajectory
represents an “accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of
capital.”
Not
just Bezos, but many others have enriched themselves or stand to enrich
themselves from Amazon’s rise. Wall Street has its fingers in the pie. The
Vanguard Group currently owns $55 billion of Amazon stock, BlackRock owns $45
billion and FMR owns $30 billion.
The
parasitic activities of Amazon, through which it has sought to appropriate for
itself the surplus value accumulated by other companies, have been integrated
with the financial parasitism of the American economy. Amazon’s own stock has
been buoyed ever higher as part of the speculative mania on Wall Street.
Amazon
is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and
intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA
in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last
year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s
facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and
local police.
In
2013, Bezos personally purchased, and now operates, the Washington
Post , which has been a main media voice for the Democratic Party’s
anti-Russia campaign and the overall interests of American imperialism.
The
increasing integration of Amazon with the repressive apparatus of the state,
while its tentacles stretch into every corner of society.
Amazon
must be placed under public ownership and democratic control. It must be taken
out of the hands of the financial oligarchy and transformed into a public
utility. The technology and infrastructure behind Amazon’s meteoric trajectory
and the biggest individual fortune in modern history must be turned towards the
needs and aspirations of the world’s population as a whole.
This
program can only be achieved through the mobilization of the working class on
an international scale on the basis of a fight to overthrow the capitalist
system and establish a democratically-controlled socialist economy, run on the
basis of social need, not private profit.
ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER…. Amazon’s JEFF
BEZOS PLAN FOR A NEW AMERICAN SLAVERY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/amazon-billionaire-jeff-bezos-says-fuck.html
"Amazon is a massive wrecking machine
consuming American retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble.
" --- DANIEL GREENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG
Traditional book publishers were
decimated by the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the
words of Bezos, “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”
MODERN SLAVER JEFF
BEZOS
AMAZON’S ASSAULT ON AMERICA CONTINUES
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/modern-slaver-jeff-bezos-of-amazon.html
Amazon, the multinational online
retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to
take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
"Today, each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as
750 million people, more than the total population of Latin America
and double the population of the US."
“A comprehensive new report released Sunday by the New York-based labor
rights watchdog China Labor Watch (CLW) has shed new light on the barbaric and
illegal practices that Amazon employs to boost its profits by driving down
production costs on the backs of factory workers at the company’s electronics
assembly plants in China.”
JEFF BEZOS of AMAZON
DECLARES THAT AMERICAN-BORN SLAVES ARE NOT CHEAP ENOUGH. CHINA MUST DELIVER THE
REAL SLAVE LABOR!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/hundreds-of-miserably-paid-employees-at.html
“A comprehensive new report released Sunday by the New York-based labor
rights watchdog China Labor Watch (CLW) has shed new light on the barbaric and
illegal practices that Amazon employs to boost its profits by driving down
production costs on the backs of factory workers at the company’s electronics
assembly plants in China.”
Amazon, the multinational online
retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to
take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
AMAZON’S JEFF BEZOS IS THE FACE OF MODERN SLAVERY!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-face-of-evil-jeff-bezos-assault-on.html
The gains for employees are a novel pain for the investors and employers who have been
able to hold down wages for decades because the federal government is trying to
grow the economy via cheap-labor legal immigration.
“INVESTORS”
HAVE AND WILL DESTROY THIS NATION IF IT WOULD IMPACT THE NEXT QUARTER’S
EARNINGS!
Amazon, the multinational online
retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to
take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER
"Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American
retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble. " --- DANIEL
GREENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG
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