Bernie Sanders Picks the Wrong Kind of Fight With Amazon

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a leader of the democratic socialist movement, is introducing a bill designed to force companies to pay their workers higher wages. The bill is being touted as an attack on Amazon.com Inc. — its name is the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, which spells out “Stop BEZOS.” That would be Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, whose company just passed $1 trillion in market capitalization. Sanders’ bill, which would apply to companies with 500 or more employees, would levy a tax equal to 100 percent of certain government benefits (food stamps, housing vouchers, school lunches and Medicaid) received by any workers who earn less than $15 an hour.

To many on the left, Amazon has become a symbol of American inequality, with its owners reaping unprecedented fortunes while its workers often are eligible for means-tested government benefits like food stamps. The median annual compensation of an Amazon worker in the U.S. is $34,123 — above the U.S. median personal income, which stood at a little more than $31,000 in 2016. And since personal income also counts government benefits, the typical Amazon worker is actually probably doing even better relative to the median. So Amazon is not actually too terrible on this score. But entry-level wages of $13 an hour and poor working conditions are not a good look for a company whose warehouse jobs are increasingly regarded as the future of work, and whose search for a location for its second headquarters has local governments scrambling obsequiously to please the online retail giant.