Not an Amazon Problem
<i>In fact, life for the US working class these days is shitty, and it’s not by accident, it’s by design. It was called the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal consensus, and it was wrapped up with lots of high-flying rhetoric about this freedom and that dynamism and those flexibilities, but you don’t have to be that cynical to see it as good old-fashioned class war. It’s obvious who’s winning.</i><p>Yes. Back in the 1970s, the working class was winning. Working class wages were going up 3x faster than CEO wages. The average employee at an auto factory could afford a house, a car, a non-working wife, a college education for his kids, and a good retirement.<p>That had to stop. So a plan was put together by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.[1] This is the actual memo.[2] It's worth reading. Before this, businesses did not lobby much, except over narrow issues. This got the U.S. Chamber of Commmerce into lobbying for business vs labor on a broad front, with funding from big companies.<p>It worked. Near total victory over union power in the private sector has been achieved in the US. The 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, and the minimum wage have been made ineffective. Funded retirement plans are history. "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." became national policy. Marketed as "individual rights" and "opportunity", of course.<p>[1] <a href="https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/" rel="nofollow">https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arm...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://d1uu3oy1fdfoio.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Lewis-Powell-Memo.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://d1uu3oy1fdfoio.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/201...</a>