Amazon’s Low-Paid Employees Need Food Stamps

“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will soon introduce legislation that would require large employers such as Amazon, Walmart and McDonald’s to fully cover the cost of food stamps, public housing, Medicaid and other federal assistance received by their employees. The goal, he says, is to force corporations to pay a living wage and curb about $150 billion in taxpayer dollars that go to funding federal assistance programs for low-wage workers each year.”

— “Thousands of Amazon workers receive food stamps. Now Bernie Sanders wants the company to pay up.” Abha Bhattarai, Washington Post

Think about that on Labor Day Weekend.

More:

“Amazon urges employees to tell Bernie Sanders how much they love working there,” Summer Meza, The Week

“Amazon gets huge subsidies to provide good jobs—but it’s a top employer of SNAP recipients in at least five states,”  H. Claire Brown, New Food Economy

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Park Avenue Food Drive for Walmart Workers

On this Thankgiving holiday, many low-paid Walmart employees held food drives — for each other. They typically make under $25,000 a year, have no medical benefits, and many must use food stamps. Activists thought Walmart owner Alice Walton might want to pitch in, so they put a giant food drive bin outside her $25 million Park Avenue condo.

Robert Reich has some background:

Bible-Quoting GOP Hypocrite

Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher (R, TN-8) wants to cut $4 billion from the SNAP food subsidy program for the poor. He says God wants the poor to go hungry too, and backs that up by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10:  “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

This Tennessee congressman from the Gospel-singing family knows all about taking money you haven’t worked for. He’s one of the largest recipients of USDA farm subsidies in Tennessee history, grabbing $3.48 million in taxpayer cash from 1999 to 2012. The average SNAP recipient in Mr. Fincher’s home state gets $132.20 in food aid a month.

GOP Congressman: God Wants the Poor to Starve

Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher (R, TN-8) wants to cut $4 billion from the SNAP food subsidy program for the poor. Since Mr. Fincher’s political party crashed the economy, 47 million people — one in seven Americans — get this meager food aid, but the Congressman wants them to go hungry. He thinks God does, too, and backs up that assertion by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10:  “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

Given the record of this obstructive do-nothing Congress, it really sounds like the Bible wants us to shut down dining services in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Romney: ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor’

“I’m not concerned about the very poor,” Millionaire Mitt Romney told CNN, “we have a safety net there.”

Mr. Romney tried to explain this away: “But we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.” That’s, um, rich, coming from a party that wants to cut food stamps and Medicaid and a candidate who would shrink the social safety net to the size of a Gucci bag just when we need it most.

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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