What if we didn’t need Amazon’s money to provide everyone who wants a job with one that pays a livable wage, makes them work fewer hours, and includes great benefits? What if then we get to determine the definition of that job so we include many things that are necessary for an orderly society that lives rich lives, but have no path to profit? Wouldn’t public service then be the job that sets the floor for wages and worker treatment? Wouldn’t the public service job then become the peg for the economy instead of Amazon’s capital?
Taxing Amazon because it is unpopular as an employer only creates an incentive for it to pay less and demand more from its employees to make sure shareholders don’t suffer. That is how capitalism works when there are few options available and we think we “need” its money to provide for employees. It still leaves the shareholders in control of wages, probably more so since employees won’t be as dependent on them and less likely to resist. The UBI then becomes a subsidy for Amazon, not the employees who still don’t have any real choice available except to work for Amazon or some company just like Amazon.
A UBI has a place in our economy and we have one already in place, Social Security, that we just need to refine to better serve the people. However, unless you have a labor peg to the economy it can never stay ahead of inflation or give the worker any more power than it has now. Whenever you tax a business you add to its cost and it “will” raise prices before decreasing shareholder value, which is the basis of its worth.
The only way to avoid this is to skip over Amazon and tax the bejebus out of Bezos, just because he has too damn much money, not to “fund” the workers or any government program. The government, not business, is the “source” of dollars and never “needs” to get them back except as inflation control. We should want Amazon to automate its shit jobs, not protect them by taxing the automation that would make it possible. We could then use the government’s power of the purse to capitalize public service jobs that offer social benefits beyond just producing profits for corporations. You don’t have to look very far in any community to find many such opportunities now going undone, or done with unpaid labor, because they offer no path to profitability.
