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Friday 26th of April 2024

1%ers say The only way I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. Jeff Bezos, when asked what he intended to do with his personal fortune of $118 billion © 2015 Kwiple.com
Amazon.com Amazon.com Inc. picked New York City and Northern Virginia for its two new headquarters, taking advantage of some of the most-extensive incentives U.S. cities and states have ever offered, totaling $5.5 billion–more than the $5 billion the online retailer has promised to invest. Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2018  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Amazon.com It may be tempting to see the Amazon surveillance as purely a warehouse problem, and surveillance-driven variable pay as a gig problem, but employers face no legal limit to incorporating new types of variable pay into formal employment — and abuses faced by independent contractors are merging with those faced by formal employees. … Corporations may soon jettison the fixed-wage model that has been a feature of blue-collar employment for decades. Zephyr Teachout, New York Review of Books, Augsut 18, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Amazon.com Perhaps stealing a page from Amazon, which often promotes policies that would benefit it by talking about what customers want, the groups said their concerns were more about freedom of expression and a healthy culture than about themselves. New York Times, July 14, 2015, on complaints filed with the Dept. of Justice by the American Booksellers Association, the Association of Authors' Representatives, the Authors Guild and Authors United about how Amazon has damaged authors, readers, the publishing industry, and the free flow of information in the country © 2015 Kwiple.com
Amazon.com Third-party sellers are a key part of Amazon's business. A recent report by the Institute for Local  Self-Reliance, a think tank critical of Amazon, showed that the fees they pay are Amazon's fastest-growing major source of revenue:  The company pocketed $121 billion in fees from sellers in 2021, up from $60 billion in 2019, Given its market dominance, those fees are a revenue stream that Amazon could most likely turn up. The report also noted that the average seller now gives Amazon a 34 percent cut of every transaction, up from 19 percent in 2014. Moira Weigel, New York Times, April 21, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Big Brother … in their capacity to track employee performance, to speed it up, to measure it against targets, managers at Walmart and Amazon are empowered in ways that their predecessors of a century ago could only dream of. Simon Head, Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Humans Dumber © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers $20.6bn Increase in the net worth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, since the start of 2018 FT Wealth, March 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Corporate welfare Amazon's three data centers in Ohio received $82 million in tax incentives and created 120 jobs. Iowa recently awarded $200 million in tax breaks to Apple Inc. for two data centers outside Des Moines with 157 jobs promised between them. Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
E-commerce Amazon said on Wednesday that it was reviewing its website after a British television report said the online retail giant's algorithms were automatically suggesting bomb-making ingredients that were “Frequently bought together.” New York Times, September 20, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
The Frightful Five Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified … by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet … As in 2016, they are half of the world's 10 most valuable companies … Their wealth stems from their control of the inescapable digital infrastructure on which much of the rest of the economy depends – mobile phones, social networks, the web, the cloud, retail and logistics, and the data and computing power required for future breakthroughs … they have begun to set their sights on the biggest industries outside tech … on autos, health care, retail, transporation, entertainment and finance. citation Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, Jan. 5, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Discovery Inc.’s David Zaslav, at nearly $247 million, had the highest 2021 pay disclosed so far among the CEOs of S&P 500 companies who served the full year. Mr. Zaslav’s pay was nearly 3,000 times the $82,964 that the company reported paying its median worker last year, up from a multiple of 1,511 in 2018. … The second-highest paid CEO so far in the S&P 500 was Amazon.com Inc.’s Andy Jassy, who was awarded compensation valued at  nearly $213 million, narly all in retricted stock. That was nearly 6,500 times the median Amazon worker, who made $32,855 in 2021. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The largest gap between chief executive and workers in the survey was at Amazon, where this spring a union won a battle to organize a warehouse for the first time. Andrew Jassy, who took over from Jeff Bezos as Amazon’s chief executive last year, had pay that was 6,474 times that of the company's median employee. His compensation last year, $213 million, was the eighth highest, according to Equilar [a compensation consulting firm]. New York Times, June 25, 2022 [$213,000,000 divided by 6,474 means that the median income of an Amazon employee in 2021 was just short of $32,901] © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality When the largest pay rises come from billionaires who announce they want to be beneficient, that is not a sign that the system is working — it is a sign that it is not. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, October 7, 2018, on the announcement by Jeff Bezos that he would raise Amazon's minimum wage in the U.S. to $15/hour © 2018 Kwiple.com
Infrastructure How did that happen in such a short period of time? It happened because we didn't have to do any of the heavy lifting. All of the heavy-lifting infrastructure was already in place for it. There was already a telecommunication network, which became the backbone of the internet. There was already a payment system — it was called the credit card. There was already a transportation network called the US Postal Service, and Royal Mail, and Deutsche Post, all over the world, that could deliver our packages. Jeff Bezos on Amazon's success © 2021 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Being a porch pirate © 2018 Kwiple.com
Monopoly It is time to do what Teddy Roosevelt did: pick up the antitrust stick again. Elizabeth Warren © 2017 Kwiple.com
Power In today's unequal digital society, power accrues to those who already have too much of it,  fuelling popular discontent with the elites and giving rise to conspiracy theories about the omnipotence of Silicon Valley. Evgeny Morozov, Financial Times, September 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel The United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say Competition is just a click away --> © 2018 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say If a startup's app grows fast and it won't sell out to us, kill the motherfuckers by cloning its features and deterring investors --> © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality The average full-time Amazon employee made $37,930 in 2020. In order to accumulate as much money as Bezos ($172 billion) … an employee would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch (4.5 million years ago, when hominids had just started standing on two feet!). Mona Chalabi, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com