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

________________________

Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-s6l

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

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

GOP Food Fight: ‘Starve the Poor’

Congressional Republicans want to starve food stamp deadbeats while rewarding hard-working American farmers with a Farm Bill. That’s a noble story, but it has a few holes in it. Most “farmer” recipients of those rewards are Agribiz millionaires, and the ‘help’ they get is ‘insurance’ for artificially high prices and big profits. And those SNAP ‘deadbeats’? Most are elderly, children, or disabled; the rest are the working poor who need help to get adequate nutrition because GOP politicians routinely defeat Living Wage bills.  Further irony: Many of those low-wage workers are in the food industry. These facts don’t alter Republican plans to bring back the Victorian workhouse.

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.