I agree wholeheartedly, MDCato. I too have been a CEO. I also think the CEOs of Target and Dicks should be cashiered for their Social Justice misuse of their positions that have lost value for their stockholders.
Grey_Whiskers, as a matter of fact, Amazon does provide health care for its employees starting on their first day of work include part-time employees, something easily discovered with a simple Duck, Duck, Go search, as do the VAST MAJORITY of major corporations in the US.
In fact, almost 60% of the population in the US is covered by private health insurance provided by their employers, that portion who are working. One company I managed until retirement, a small one with only 14-15 employees, which found the company provided health plan became completely unaffordable (the cost quintupled, and the co-pays and deductibles useless for their employees) when ObamaCare went into effect, now provides an additional stipend each month that covers the minimum cost of an Obamacare Health Insurance policy for each employee who is not covered by a spouses’ employee provided corporate insurance. As a small corporation, they also pay up to $5000, per employee, of each employee’s student loan payments who has one each year. So, to put it mildly, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about in this area.
Facts should not be played fast and loose to make political points. Bezos has enough bad ideas without blaming him for something he is not doing.
I am more concerned about when his Amazon retail Ponzi scheme business will finally come crashing down. Bezos essentially took the low markup business model of quick-turnover groceries which turnover generates profits and applied it to all retail products. His basic idea was that it would work so long as he can operate on the float of money flowing through it, generating very little profits from actual sales, but generate profits from money earned on the money itself as it passes through on the delay between receiving it from retail buyers and paying suppliers. Volume is king. Move enough money and that delay can generate lots of money, even at low interest rates, so long as interest is high. . . Or, alternately one is doing instant institutional trades on the stock exchange using very fast computerized algorithms which is very likely.
Although, I think I lately have noticed Amazon prices have slowly started being increased toward normal retail. That would essentially solve the problem, moving Amazon into a normal retail mode, taking it away from paying Peter what Paul paid, to keep the money flowing. . . and eventually moving Amazon into a normal business model.
I know, I know, you can argue he doesn't (business case) *owe* them this. But it is absurd to pretend he couldn't afford it.
Amazon's moat is *convenience*, and *product selection* not price.
On various other discussion boards, one can find people complaining that Amazon vastly overcharges for some items. This might be to glitches in their algorithms, or it might be a feature of certain "revenue optimization" algorithms: i.e. to maximize overall profit, tighten the price down on items with high elasticity, and charge through the nose for specific hard-to-find products. Case in point, I was looking for a shelf for my refrigerator recently, and I found it on other sites at prices between $95 - $110. Amazon wanted ~$240.
The other element is there are rumors that certain govt. agencies are helping funding Amazon behind the scenes for intelligence purposes -- matching buying patterns of certain items if you catch my drift.
And to your point of Amazon and how long it can last, two other points.
One is that they are facing severe competition from Wally World. Bricks and Mortar, but with the footprint of stores all over the country, and their emphasis on price and logistics for their own purposes, a number of people are saying they've found WalMart delivers more reliably than Amazon; and often has better prices.
And let's not forget postage from China being subsidized by the US Postal Service, which President Trump has spoken of putting a halt to.
Another example, in a different vein, might be Sears Holding Company. People wondered why Sears, with its catalog and ordering system, didn't head off Amazon at the pass years ago, just by putting their catalog online.
Eddie Lampert has been bleeding the company dry for years and years, selling off key brand names like Craftsman. I still haven't figured out what he gets out of it.
I agree, salesman or clerk at Sears, doesn't sound great for trying to support a family; but not everyone has a college degree or Master's. And people forget that back in the 1960s, it wasn't unheard of to have a husband as primary breadwinner, and supporting a family on one income. Due to a gazillion factors, that's now very difficult to do.
That being said, corporate raiders who suck all the life out of a company, for their own short term profit, are execrable.
There's a difference between redeploying the assets of a failing company (e.g. Maytag getting gobbled up by Whirlpool).
But forcing wholesale changes, to take advantage of arbitrage, while forcing others to bear the (unacknowledged) externalities, is both traitorous and (should be) criminal.
(*) Re-reading the article now, I see it only covers 1900 workers, which is far fewer than the commentaries on it let me to think. So he *is* doing it, but not enough for Amazon to be a dispositive example. (1900 is so small he could trivially afford it; but by the same token, 1900 is not enough that entire states are devastated by it.)