If Amazon didn't exist they would probably have a job in any one of the 1000's of small companies that no longer exist after Amazon crushed them with its questionable tax practices and insatiable appetite for customers. No denying it's super efficient, but that equates eventually to less jobs overall as well.
@@keithgriffiths9864 The high street killed itself with overpriced goods and no places to park and also the hours they are open aren’t favourable to people working full time.
Amazon have run a huge number of small companies out of business by undercutting their prices and taking a loss until the competitor loses all his customers.
This man sought to defend a company that avoids taxes, gets government subsidies, rakes in 10s of billions of profits, with horrible working conditions owned by the 2nd richest man in the world against minimum wage workers that have had to urinate in bottles on occasion and are asking for more than 35p a hour. Absolute madness
During the pandemic, Jeff Bezos made so much money that he could have given each of his 876,000 Amazon employees across the globe a $105,000 bonus and still walk away with the same outrageous fortune he had before the pandemic began.
Imagine Normal working class everyday people thinking more about the multimillion and billion companies at the end of the road than themselves. this is where we have been at for far to long
This would be a typical Brexiter type of argument. They are projecting their own envy upon others. They will argue a point until it effects them directly and then deny that they ever argued in the first place.
It’s hard to undo centuries of religious and authoritarian brainwashing that has insisted that poor people deserved to stay poor and atone for the next life to try again and rich people deserved all their money without questions of how or where this capital came from.
It's the usual "I had to experience bad conditions, so it would be unfair if the people after me did not" mentality that this echelon of people employ to every issue. It's literally just projection of envy, but to admit that to themselves would infer that they were incorrect, so instead they deflect blame elsewhere, as they have been taught to do by their representatives.
It's sad. You see this argument time and time again, especially where I am in the US. Basically people are so infatuated with the dream of being mega wealthy that they fight against their own best interest. It's so bizarre AND absurd.
America is a broken society. Huge wealth and terrible poverty. Wages for the working and middle classes are hardly higher than they were in 1976.15pc of children born in the US are born into poverty. Life expectancy is shameful.
Indeed. Its a sad thing, but it applies to small businesses also. If your argument is "I can't afford to pay a living wage" then you're not a viable business, plain and simple. The irony is people are holding up Elon Musk as some sort of inspiration, when all he is doing is throwing money he doesn't actually have (a lot are government grants) at uneconomical business models. Because whilever people are foolish enough to invest in him, he can do that, doesn't mean any of the businesses will ever be profitable. At least Jeff Bezos established a viable business, although its kinda worse seeing as it would STILL be viable even if Amazon workers were paid fairly.
@@alexatkin Throwing money at business ideas is what investors do. They don't all have to survive, if only a small fraction become viable, those make the money back for the investor. The rich keep getting richer no matter what. But Amazon should not be able to underpay their workers. They are doing what is legally not forbidden to increase shareholder profits as much as possible, which they have to do to avoid a hostile takeover. This isn't even about Bezos, it's not his decision anymore. It is the internal logic of the stock market.
leave, then they can't operate, if you are so poorly paid, get a different job or go on benefits, too many foreigners take the poorly paid jobs which makes it harder for British workers to get anything better paid and therefor the company don't have to up their wages to attract the labour, they know there are so many foreigners that will accept it as they know no different.
These people are literally holding back society from progress. All James did was use the caller’s own logic against him and the caller couldn’t handle it. He clearly thinks that some day he’ll be ultra wealthy
@@J5L5M6 the Tory’s and their voters are basically Republicans. Boris Johnson was the British version of Trump. They have GBNews now which is basically a Fox/OAN equivalent. Tory voters vote against their own interest just like Republican voters
"Without Jeff Bezos there would be no million Amazon employees" I could easily turn that around and say without the 1 million Amazon employees, Jeff Bezos wouldn't be the richest man in the world.
You missed the totally real not made up lore where Bezos is actual a high nevel necromancer and those are actually all undead. If you are wondering why they are not undead anymroe they got better.
What the caller demonstrated here isn't ignorance, or incompetence, its a lack of critical thinking. At no point did he ever just stop and examine his own beliefs and try to reason through them. If you can't present a line of logic about something you believe, maybe you should stop and think about it.
It's deeper than that. What he's exhibiting is deliberate ignorance in support of self-serving bigotry. He's not thinking critically because he doesn't want to know whether his privileged convenient fictions actually hold-up or not. The difference is important because you can teach someone who hasn't done critical thinking how to do that. You can't teach people who continuously refuse to learn. You can only fight them.
well yeah. from the younger generation I've met, even those that did "well" in school haven't got the ability to work through something themselves. they are taught what to do and if they get it, that's it. christ, it's even as bad at university level. they bang on about "hard work" and all that subjective cobblers, but if it doesn't get them sweaty they think its some kind of fake. hard work is not repetitively pouring our the same sh*te day after day. it can and should be the effort that goes into appreciating something fully and figuring out how to do things more efficiently. no wonder we have the worst productivity like, ever. but that is the right wing nutjob aesthetic right back to the Nazis.
What a deluded man the caller is, I think he'll find that without people willing to graft and bring his idea into fruition, Amazon would still be just that, an idea.
That's not true. Lots of major corporations started with one man. The would wouldn't just be an idea. They just wouldn't be as large as they are today.
@@fundyden4771 And at some point he realized this is not viable and found people to pay less than the total amount of value they produced. Value difference that was added to the pocket of Bezos and Amazon
Before Thatcher, corporation tax was over 30% higher than it is now. The Jeff Bezoses of the day were just fine. People like this caller make their mind up first and then try desperately to make reality conform. It seldom does.
@@chatham43 the caller was out of his depth with JOB, anyone who listens regularly would know his wit is razor sharp and he can literally tear people to shreds til they start questioning their own opinions and arguments, it's what JOB thrives on and many listeners love this particular type of argument, people are free to call in or not call in but they do so at their own risk of being ridiculed
@@maximoo9861 job has a team feeding him through his headset,so it's not him all the time, he's just an arrogant bully,any stand up comedian will tell you the the guy with the mike always wins
@@maximoo9861 unless they say they're left wing and they don't like Keir starmer then James has a breakdown. Lost a lot of respect for JoB over the last few years.
"Own risk" he had a $400,000 gift from his parents to start the company, that would be unbelievable today, back in the 90s that is the equivalent now of over 2 million... own risk is nonsense
Reminds me of Richard Branson, rich parents bought him a business and then he pretended to export vinyl records in order to get tax refunds. After he gets caught his mother pays the tax authorities and he avoids prosecution
It's not only the money, it's the security in the back of the mind that your parents of something else will always help you if you Fxxx-up.. I've seen it with a lot of children with wealthy parent. If it succeeds it's nice, if not, not a man overboard... So wealth stays in that family, even though they maybe not even really invest.
More of the workforce in the UK need to unionise. This is the only way we can have our voices heard & stop the exploitation of workers & corporate greed.
"If a company can afford it the staff can get a payrise" but argues one of the worlds most successful companies cant afford to increase the UK's worst paid workers wages. So basically in his mind, no one is entitled to a payrise. You can bet he is only concerned about his shares.
"That's between the company and it's workers to work out" Gee that's sounds a whole lot like collective bargaining doesn't it, I wonder what mister caller thinks about that.
Can’t ask for a pay rose because of inflation otherwise everyone gets a 10% increase so £300 a day becomes £330 it’s not affordable for all companies, great caller
FFS: Paying your employees enough to survive should be the cost of doing business. If a business cannot do that, whether large or small, they shouldn't _be_ in business.
@@ChrisTheMoiler just because David disagrees with you doesn't make him a troll. Best way to get a pay rise is to vote with your feet. If Amazon employees left for better opportunities Amazon would have to pay more. Inflation doesn't dictate wages, markets do.
@@richardschofield2201 No he is a troll, did he provide any evidence or even a point? No he did not, he is a troll. You on the other are worse, you proved you lack critical thinking. PS economics is NOT a science, peole have completely conflicting ideas about it, which is the OPPOSITE of science.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
In the UK where I live there’s poor people who lease out a brand new 4x4 for like 70% of their monthly wages and the rent and food/bills taking up the rest and they act like they are millionaires online. One who lives near me calls himself a “self made man” while he works for someone else on minimum wage and spends his money on a car rental per month. Very sad society.
@@UnknownPersononGoogle where I used to live a load of people had Audis and BMWs they bought when they remortgaged their right to buy council properties 😒
Amazing that someone so dense can take the time out of their day to call into a radio show, to contradict themselves at every turn only to burrow into a hole of inability to defend a point.. did the guy smoke a bowl before calling in?
I'd say quite the opposite actually. People like him should, under the correct scrutiny given by someone like JoB, be put out there as much as possible so that the stupidity of their beliefs can be easily exposed. Much better to have someone like this defending right wing talking points than someone who is actually trained to lie and deceive effectively.
It isn't about envy it is about how the workers are treated, how they are underpayed and the man who does nothing now has so much money he can't even spend it.
Of course it is envy. Those lowly workers want to live like Bezos and never have to worry about money ever again. Who do they think they are? Imagine, if everyone were rich beyond dreams of avarice, who would do the actual work? More importantly, who would they be doing it for?
Envy would be to want something that belongs to others. The fruits of our labour are ours alone, it does not belong to executives and shareholders in the first place.
@@stephenbarden6121 he just wants people to see the deception he simply points at it and asks you to look and brexit happens to be the greatest example in modern times of deception on a mass scale
@@Craig121000 who said that? Less people were forced to work harder. Which is why they want a raise. He took back their hazard pay and changed the rules for overtime.
If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, then you can't afford to be in business. Asking people to work below poverty wages so you can own a business IS entitlement at it's finest. You are asking human beings to use their lives to subsidize your desire to own a business. Small businesses are just as culpable. If a job is worth being done. it's worth being paid enough to live. End of.
Couldn’t agree more! It’s one thing to subsidise wages for a very limited time for a start up company, but companies raking in vast (or in fact ANY) profits and paying such low wages that employees have to claim benefits is beyond disgusting.
@@woofpet and since Amazon does avoid taxes in this country why should the tax payer have to subsidize it with tax credits or universal credit payments to keep their workers heads above water 🌊?
@@markbriten6999 exactly! I don’t think ANY company, with the possible exception of start ups for a very limited time, should be paying below living wage though.
After about 3 and a half minutes I'm thinking "stop James, he's already dead!" 🤣 Please everyone give this brilliant, brilliant man 3hrs of your day 🙏🏼
He says they wouldn't have jobs if not for Bezos and shareholders. However, Bezos and the shareholders would not have billions if not for those workers. It's a mutually beneficial business arrangement. Unfortunately, it is WAAAAAY more profitable for the shareholders than it is for the ones actually doing the work.
"Without Amazon's wealth, those jobs wouldn't be there." - Yes, but the opposite is also true. It's not even a chicken and egg situation. Amazon's wealth could not possibly exist without its workers.
Disagree. The caller deserved to be shown, with respect and courtesy, why his arguments were completely wrong. He did not deserve this seven minutes of unprofessional bullying.
"I'm not twisting your words, I'm holding up a mirror. It's not my fault you don't like what you see." Single handedly the best sentences I've ever heard.
also, there would have been no Amazon if not for the employees. It's crazy how one man gets all the credit for one of the biggest companies in the world
They're 'self-made' in the same way Donald Trump was 'self-made' -- "My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars..." Didn't hurt that he inherited all of Daddy's millions after he died too.
But the government DOES subsidise Amazon. The low wage they pay employees mean that the employees can obtain benefit from Social Services to enable them to pay rent, put food on the table and even cover cost of travel to and from their place of work. Notwithstanding the fact that the low rate of tax Amazon pays into the Treasury coffers is laughable!
@@tonybullion2537 that is the "New Normal" Business Model where Mult-billion Multi-national Corporations do not pay their Staff properly, do not pay their Taxes properly, make Record Profits, and Government must keep their Workers alive... with Tax Money that they Companies don't pay ! henceforth why Governments across the Globe are running out of Funds !
@@Craig121000 yes they did amazon is a subscription service an they raised the price from 7.99 to 8.99 last month the shops on amazon arnt run owned or have set prices by amazon an can charge what they like. A simple goggle search could have saved you this public embrassment.
@@Craig121000 well troll Slayer amazon dont set them prices the studio that owns them do. Becuase amazon dont own the shops. So dang it just got worse for you when your defense shows you dont have a clue how amazon works but still felt able to pipe up.
I just don't get it, being in investor was supposed to be a risk not a guaranteed cash cow. How did we end up with a system where the shareholders became more important than the business remaining viable? Because sooner or later if you refuse to increase wages, it wont be worth people working for you any more and then the business is done for. Were already seeing this happen in the US where low waged workers decided not to bother going back after lockdown.
@@alexatkin "I just don't get it, being in investor was supposed to be a risk not a guaranteed cash cow." - Its not a guaranteed cash cow, Amazon didnt exist a few decades ago and faces global competition..
@@alexatkin Nah, if people leave their posts there's always a workforce desperate enough or coercible enough to replace them. Prisoners, foreign children, refugees... depends on the deal that can be done with the incoming government. To what lengths do you think our latest Thatcher wannabe is going to go to show she's tough on unions? Amazon is going to be fine in the current political environment.
Did you know their are amazon warehouses with over 100% employee turnover rates a year due to the terrible conditions, some places in America are running out of people to employ as almost everyone available for the job has quit, yet this guy is still here.
I really don't understand putting up Amazon as some paragon. Do you know how many bookstores alone were put out of business by Amazon? How many people lost their book stores because Amazon took over the majority of book sales?
Your comment is ludicrous. Capitalism/free market has no moral obligation to be fair. It's sink or swim. If bigger businesses take the market share and you go under, so be it. That's how the free market works.
@@bobsmithy9024 Except that Amazon failed to make profit for years. If we had actual free markets/capitalism then Amazon would have failed. Loss leading is not and should not be tolerated in a free market
@@bobsmithy9024 so your saying that free Market Capitalism will inevitably result in monopolies, that can then pay poverty wages because the workers cant seek employments elsewhere, because all the small competing businesses went under? sounds like a stable society to me
1. If your company cannot pay fair wages, your company should not be in business at all. 2. The employer does not "give" a job, the employee gives his work power to the employer. 3. There cannot be an company without a workforce, but there can be a company without shareholders. If you think otherwise and keep defending companys and the ultra rich, go to Wikipedia and read what the meaning of "stockholm syndrom" is.
That laugh from James actually seemed like pure joy. Not seen him smile even close to that in a number of years. Although I'm tired of this argument that a business cannot afford to pay people a living wage. If your business relies on exploitation of those who make the wealth for the business then your business should fail.
@@raymondo162 Firstly, the discussion was about Amazon so why he’s talking about small employers struggling if wages rise I have no idea. Secondly, there are plenty of other huge corporations employing people in the UK. They may not be at Amazon’s level, but McDonalds, Tesco etc are hardly small fry.
I am in Unite and they provide protection to employees from all backgrounds and circumstances. They gave me support when I was in a job that the employer said they didn't recognise Unions. However that doesn't matter. If you have a case the Union will back you 100%. Unite have backed me in the past and come through for me. In my opinion. It will benefit all working people to be in a Union going forward. No matter the industry we need to protect each other in the UK. Peace and Respect toi all
He literally said the tax payer should subsidise the wages paid by private companies & the same tax payer should not try to negotiate a pay rise but quit. All power to the corporates. The scary part is he doesn't even understand what Corporatocracy is & how he has argued for it.
Amazon paid fewer taxes in Europe than I did last year! i paid for the infrastructure that allowed Besos to be the richest man in the world ! something is WRONG!
Yes….we did not invent Amazon. We let a US company destroy the tax paying high street. The US Government will not let us tax their companies. They will come down hard if we try to tax amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. When we where top dog….we took our foreign made profits back here…and taxed them here . Thatcher is responsible starting this. She wanted a quick fix for unemployment and didn’t care if our future was full of untaxable foreign companies.
Correct. Very few rich companies and people acknowledge the benefits of being part of the society that enabled their wealth generation much less show one iota of gratitude. They peddle the myth of the self-made entrepreneur. No one on this planet is self-made, no one.
What the caller doesn't seem to comprehend is that the system is broken. The breaks up until now have always been visited upon the lowest paid and vulnerable. Due to rising inflation the just about managing are taking some serious licks, this class of people are significant in number. The scales have gone too far off the charts for the working majority to accept the status quo.
I love when people who don't work in the sweatshops advocate for the company owners who do not pay taxes, pay their employees fairly or care about anything other than profit margins. This guy had no idea what he was talking about...the sad part is he probably doesn't make much more and still doesn't get it.
@@RossKempOnYourMum01 Well if he is a small business owner he can look forward to Amazon pricing him out to undermind him and buy his business dirt cheap.
If you make a call to LBC with the intention of making a name for yourself by giving "that James O'Brien something to think about" I'd suggest you have a crumb of knowledge (based in the real world, preferably), of the subject matter. The caller clearly had this conversation with his pal down the pub and decided, based on the response, that the nation needed to hear his wisdom. We didn't.
His opening statement is a lie. They BOTH started those companies from highly privileged positions. And secondly, when you open a company you don't put your own money in. To "lose everything" doesn't mean you're out on the street, you just lose the company. They are limited liability for a reason. Guess what the terrible fate of someone who loses their company is...they become an employee again!
"You're not even pretending to be relevant" "No, I'm not pretending to be relevant" Just about sums up this caller; not listening to anyone but himself while simultaneously shooting himself in the foot.
I work at one of Amazons warehouses, I’ve worked there for 3 years, up until a few months ago I guess I could manage on my wages, Im a single mum supporting 2 other adults in my household who can’t work due to disabilities, I’m not greedy I just want a wage that will afford me to pay my bills and feed my family.
This caller cares so much for small business owners that he fails to see how Amazon are taking over those small businesses by copying their products and selling them for less.resulting in closures of small businesses.
I always think about Amazon like this, if you take away the people at the top it would probably struggle as a business, but if you take away the people at the bottom - the drivers, the pickers - there is no business.
@@oggyoggy1299 So both the creator and the worker are integral, yet one is taking most of the wealth and accruing more money than they can ever spend whilst the other struggles to put food on the table. It's everything wrong with modern capitalism.
@@oggyoggy1299 Completely missing the point. If everyone started their own businesses, there would be no workers to make them function. The point is that Amazon is a company recording profits of hundreds of billions and yet there is a huge disparity in the way that money is distributed. You're arguing that because someone at the top had an idea and was fortunate enough to be born into circumstances that his idea could be realised and because a load of people fortunate enough to be born into circumstances that they have the money to invest in his idea, they should automatically qualify for significantly greater percentages of the profits than those who currently do all the work and without whom the company would cease to function. I'm not suggesting the shareholders and CEO go without. I'm saying we should recognise that everyone is important to the business and remuneration should reflect that. Apple shouldn't be spending £90bn worth of profit on buying their own shares whilst paying people in Asia a pittance. The world is not a meritocracy (as you imply) but land where lineages of success are maintained. The Elon Musk's of this world are quite happy for us to believe otherwise because it's what makes people come out and defend their right to own 45% of the entire world's wealth.
@@DJLDomino You completely missed the point. A business was started. The owner invited people to work for him if they wanted to. If the people wanted to they did.
Surely "minimum wage" or "living wage" should deal with this issue? If Govt. believe that it is now no longer possible to get by using these benchmarks then the govt. should increase them in line with inflation?
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” -John Steinbeck (paraphrased)
This man really argued that companies worth billions of dollars should receive corporate welfare from the government to cover their labour costs rather than have the companies pay their employees a living wage… it actually blows my mind.
this happens when people have been handed an objective to argue but no rational way to do it.,.,.., also note the exact same words used by so many different people expressing reactionary or callous sentiments.,..,., they all use the exact same phrases.,.,
I don't care that whether Musk has 300 billion or trillion dollars.Just give the workers a living wage and pay the taxes,after that hord all the gold you want
Bet he is a Small business owner with dreams of being a big business owner and seems to think repressing wages is the only way to do it and doesn't like the fact that employers exist for employees not the other way round. You can't say "You should be grateful for having a job at all and then say well if you don't like it there are plenty of other jobs out there?
Amazon made ~$30.4 B net profit in 2023, and has ~1.61 M employees. So the math is *roughly* works out that Amazon could give every employee a $18,000USD per year pay rise and still make a $1.45 BILLION profit. That's roughly a $8.60USD per hour pay rise (using 40 hours worked per week).
Man people have been conditioned to only take scraps and thank the rich for those scraps and then call into the show to to defend said scraps. The downtrodden defending the ones with the boot on their back. It’s exactly like a person in a abusive relationship who identify with the abuser as a coping strategies.
We have a set of rules for pay disputes in this country. You negotiate a pay rise with the employer and if they don't respond with an acceptable offer for the employees to agree to they down tools and take strike action. Simples
One of the funnier things about this is a caller who's defending Amazon paying higher wages on the pretence that increasing wages will put small employers out of business. Does he even have the foggiest idea just how many small employers Amazon as a conglomerate has crushed over the years?
Personally I thought this was a case of hating the player and not the game ...Amazon and any other company do what they do because they're allowed to regardless of morality. If we had a government who taxed corps on their actual earnings and put decent mininmum wage in place as the cost of being allowed to do business then things would have to change. Unfortunately they don't and so we're all outraged at Tech millionaires but not the system which allows for such disparity.
True, but part of the problem is that the likes of Amazon bribe and corrupt the system in their favours so they still deserve the criticism aimed at them. And since most people have zero political influence all we have is the ability to boycott them in favour of more ethical alternatives.
@@daniellomas3783 Bribes wouldn't do much if politicians didn't take them and there's the issue . We keep voting for leopards and then complain when they eat our faces...
No American starts a business on their own. At the very least they are standing on the economic and social foundations of the country. They benefit from the infrastructure and the workforce built up over generations by taxpayers big and small.
There is no such thing as a self made Billionaire. There are men that were born into money, given huge tax advantages, or someone exploiting their employees. Or a combination of the three.
If Amazon didn't exist they would probably have a job in any one of the 1000's of small companies that no longer exist after Amazon crushed them with its questionable tax practices and insatiable appetite for customers. No denying it's super efficient, but that equates eventually to less jobs overall as well.
100% agree. Amazon has killed the highstreet
@@keithgriffiths9864 The high street killed itself with overpriced goods and no places to park and also the hours they are open aren’t favourable to people working full time.
@@UnknownPersononGoogle local council want the buildings for apartments.
Amazon have run a huge number of small companies out of business by undercutting their prices and taking a loss until the competitor loses all his customers.
@@UnknownPersononGoogle They are 'overpriced' on the High Street because they actually pay tax to the government. Unlike Amazon.
How they've gotten the common man to argue and fight against its own interest is very fascinating.
And it's a nightmare also..
He sounds like a small business owner thinking this will effect him
Pretty delusional
That's where we are now unfortunately. It's not even an exclusively American or British thing either
This fool is not the common man. He's a Victorian throwback.
This man sought to defend a company that avoids taxes, gets government subsidies, rakes in 10s of billions of profits, with horrible working conditions owned by the 2nd richest man in the world against minimum wage workers that have had to urinate in bottles on occasion and are asking for more than 35p a hour. Absolute madness
Well, the poor guy has to pay for that yacht plus the smaller tender yacht for the helicopter that takes care of it. The man has needs.
During the pandemic, Jeff Bezos made so much money that he could have given each of his 876,000 Amazon employees across the globe a $105,000 bonus and still walk away with the same outrageous fortune he had before the pandemic began.
Do you use amazon?
@@boomslangCAHe needs the money for the Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket so he can play astronaut
I deleted amazon subscription a year ago when I found out how employees are worked and payed.
Imagine Normal working class everyday people thinking more about the multimillion and billion companies at the end of the road than themselves. this is where we have been at for far to long
yep never understood the hero worship of greed
Everyone is being brainwashed, and it’s being implemented from schools upwards …
Absolutely. The planet cannot afford billionaires...
I don’t understand people sometimes. Like Jeff Bezos isn’t a self made men he’s just hired lots of amazing people to do the work for him.
@@michaelhughes6634 after a nice big loan from his parents too.
I'm always amazed at people who come out to argue AGAINST a living wage as the social standard.
Tory.
This would be a typical Brexiter type of argument. They are projecting their own envy upon others. They will argue a point until it effects them directly and then deny that they ever argued in the first place.
It’s hard to undo centuries of religious and authoritarian brainwashing that has insisted that poor people deserved to stay poor and atone for the next life to try again and rich people deserved all their money without questions of how or where this capital came from.
Spoilt first worlders
It's the usual "I had to experience bad conditions, so it would be unfair if the people after me did not" mentality that this echelon of people employ to every issue. It's literally just projection of envy, but to admit that to themselves would infer that they were incorrect, so instead they deflect blame elsewhere, as they have been taught to do by their representatives.
It's sad. You see this argument time and time again, especially where I am in the US. Basically people are so infatuated with the dream of being mega wealthy that they fight against their own best interest. It's so bizarre AND absurd.
America is a broken society. Huge wealth and terrible poverty. Wages for the working and middle classes are hardly higher than they were in 1976.15pc of children born in the US are born into poverty. Life expectancy is shameful.
@@stevemitchell1454 No disagreement here.
If you start your own business you can become a billionaire, we all can all become billionaires!
@@forestsunset9617 Try starting a business on below living wage. Watch the billions flowing in. Yeah, doesn't work like that apparently.
@@joriskemper5392 i was being sarcastic
The scariest thing is that cruel idiots such as this caller walk among us everyday
There is a symptom called borderline schizophrenia, just witnessed it.
you took the words out of my mouth, there's to many of them
This used to be said in the 1970/80's. I am guessing he is an business owner.
And they vote...
And get to vote ffs
Any company who doesn't pay a decent salary to enable people to live a modern life shouldn't be in business. Simple.
Indeed. Its a sad thing, but it applies to small businesses also. If your argument is "I can't afford to pay a living wage" then you're not a viable business, plain and simple.
The irony is people are holding up Elon Musk as some sort of inspiration, when all he is doing is throwing money he doesn't actually have (a lot are government grants) at uneconomical business models. Because whilever people are foolish enough to invest in him, he can do that, doesn't mean any of the businesses will ever be profitable.
At least Jeff Bezos established a viable business, although its kinda worse seeing as it would STILL be viable even if Amazon workers were paid fairly.
@@alexatkin Throwing money at business ideas is what investors do. They don't all have to survive, if only a small fraction become viable, those make the money back for the investor. The rich keep getting richer no matter what.
But Amazon should not be able to underpay their workers. They are doing what is legally not forbidden to increase shareholder profits as much as possible, which they have to do to avoid a hostile takeover. This isn't even about Bezos, it's not his decision anymore. It is the internal logic of the stock market.
@@alexatkin
How about business that model their profit on cheap foreign labor, do you hold them to the same standards?
leave, then they can't operate, if you are so poorly paid, get a different job or go on benefits, too many foreigners take the poorly paid jobs which makes it harder for British workers to get anything better paid and therefor the company don't have to up their wages to attract the labour, they know there are so many foreigners that will accept it as they know no different.
@@tonygange7636 Definitely! One rule for all.
The main thing killing these much lauded "small businesses"....is Amazon, ironically.
That man is a total plonker.
yup. small biz cant compete with tax dodging mega corps.
“Without Jeff Bezos none of these people would have jobs” - well they would, in all of the small businesses Amazon has destroyed
@Psyched Guy and they actively stop people selling the original product so only their version sells
These people are literally holding back society from progress. All James did was use the caller’s own logic against him and the caller couldn’t handle it. He clearly thinks that some day he’ll be ultra wealthy
And here I was thinking that behaving as such was purely an American phenomenon.
@@J5L5M6 the Tory’s and their voters are basically Republicans. Boris Johnson was the British version of Trump. They have GBNews now which is basically a Fox/OAN equivalent. Tory voters vote against their own interest just like Republican voters
@@J5L5M6 no we have a long history of knowing our place in this country
I will never understand people who defend millionaires as if they were being personally attacked. I DON´T GET IT. What have they ever done for you?
It's just another example of how we're all groomed into capitalism from birth
Hoping to one day being called a pal, maybe.
Worse, defending billionaires.
I never understood why people get mad at millionaires and want them to get their money away
Same as working class people voting Tory, for whatever dubious means. Bananas 🍌
"Without Jeff Bezos there would be no million Amazon employees" I could easily turn that around and say without the 1 million Amazon employees, Jeff Bezos wouldn't be the richest man in the world.
without that and OUR infrastructure that he pays nothing for...
And consumers would buy their goods from other companies that would exist if Amazon didn't.
Amazon Employees Workers Need To Unionize World 🌎 Wide.
You missed the totally real not made up lore where Bezos is actual a high nevel necromancer and those are actually all undead. If you are wondering why they are not undead anymroe they got better.
Anyone can pick/pack/deliver. Not everyone can build a mega business. 😎
What the caller demonstrated here isn't ignorance, or incompetence, its a lack of critical thinking.
At no point did he ever just stop and examine his own beliefs and try to reason through them.
If you can't present a line of logic about something you believe, maybe you should stop and think about it.
Spot on.
It's deeper than that. What he's exhibiting is deliberate ignorance in support of self-serving bigotry. He's not thinking critically because he doesn't want to know whether his privileged convenient fictions actually hold-up or not.
The difference is important because you can teach someone who hasn't done critical thinking how to do that. You can't teach people who continuously refuse to learn. You can only fight them.
@@michaelccozens I believe what you refer to is called willful hermaneutical ignorance
well yeah. from the younger generation I've met, even those that did "well" in school haven't got the ability to work through something themselves. they are taught what to do and if they get it, that's it. christ, it's even as bad at university level. they bang on about "hard work" and all that subjective cobblers, but if it doesn't get them sweaty they think its some kind of fake. hard work is not repetitively pouring our the same sh*te day after day. it can and should be the effort that goes into appreciating something fully and figuring out how to do things more efficiently. no wonder we have the worst productivity like, ever. but that is the right wing nutjob aesthetic right back to the Nazis.
@SpamMullet This completely - it is incredibly rare these days, I almost feel that it should become part of Secondary School Curriculum
What a deluded man the caller is, I think he'll find that without people willing to graft and bring his idea into fruition, Amazon would still be just that, an idea.
deluded? the man's clueless. TOTALLY clueless
That's not true. Lots of major corporations started with one man. The would wouldn't just be an idea. They just wouldn't be as large as they are today.
Amazon started in the guys garage selling books.
@@fundyden4771 and the point is
@@fundyden4771 And at some point he realized this is not viable and found people to pay less than the total amount of value they produced. Value difference that was added to the pocket of Bezos and Amazon
Before Thatcher, corporation tax was over 30% higher than it is now. The Jeff Bezoses of the day were just fine. People like this caller make their mind up first and then try desperately to make reality conform. It seldom does.
So true
Yeah and we were known as the sick man of Europe with the slowest growth...please keep up!
@@JB27888 Like now?
"you're twisting what I'm saying"
"no I'm holding up a mirror mate, it's not my fault you don't like what you're seeing"
Truly amazing response.
James' uncontrolled laugh at the beginning was fabulous.
I would normally consider laughing right in someone's face to be rude
This one was so, so _so_ deserved!
Absolutely 👍👍👍
Its like the line the last guy wasn't a true libertarian it just makes you laugh
@@markwelch3564 Absolutely not! Definitely the correct response in this case Lol.
And fake
People ringing in to disagree with James are so rare now it's a real treat to hear it again!
...you can disagree with a caller without humiliating and sneering at him..unprofessional.....
@@chatham43 treating everyone's terrible views with respect is how we have gotten into this mess in the first place
@@chatham43 the caller was out of his depth with JOB, anyone who listens regularly would know his wit is razor sharp and he can literally tear people to shreds til they start questioning their own opinions and arguments, it's what JOB thrives on and many listeners love this particular type of argument, people are free to call in or not call in but they do so at their own risk of being ridiculed
@@maximoo9861 job has a team feeding him through his headset,so it's not him all the time, he's just an arrogant bully,any stand up comedian will tell you the the guy with the mike always wins
@@maximoo9861 unless they say they're left wing and they don't like Keir starmer then James has a breakdown.
Lost a lot of respect for JoB over the last few years.
"Own risk" he had a $400,000 gift from his parents to start the company, that would be unbelievable today, back in the 90s that is the equivalent now of over 2 million... own risk is nonsense
Reminds me of Richard Branson, rich parents bought him a business and then he pretended to export vinyl records in order to get tax refunds. After he gets caught his mother pays the tax authorities and he avoids prosecution
It's not only the money, it's the security in the back of the mind that your parents of something else will always help you if you Fxxx-up.. I've seen it with a lot of children with wealthy parent. If it succeeds it's nice, if not, not a man overboard... So wealth stays in that family, even though they maybe not even really invest.
@@JJVernig so true
@@peterw4338 didn't know that
Own family risk, happen.
More of the workforce in the UK need to unionise. This is the only way we can have our voices heard & stop the exploitation of workers & corporate greed.
You could go a step further and outright seize the means of production, but people are a bit reluctant nowadays.
Unionisation is the way to achieve real levelling up
@@theeniwetoksymphonyorchest7580 or leveling down
Amazon employees workers need to unionize world 🌎 wide.
The politics of envy line instantly makes you aware that the user has no understanding of politics or economics.
Spot on, there are many signifiers of a lack of critical thinking... they don't get it when you point these out... surprise that!
Yeah, sounds like a line straight out of Bullingdon Boy's Club
"If a company can afford it the staff can get a payrise" but argues one of the worlds most successful companies cant afford to increase the UK's worst paid workers wages. So basically in his mind, no one is entitled to a payrise. You can bet he is only concerned about his shares.
"That's between the company and it's workers to work out" Gee that's sounds a whole lot like collective bargaining doesn't it, I wonder what mister caller thinks about that.
He also suggested that government should subsidize pay raises for Amazon employees. Wait until he hears about how taxation works.
Every amazon employee could have been given $150k, and he'd still be richer than before the pandemic.
If we had no Amazon does this person think no one would buy things?
The worst thing is he believes what he's saying
No the worst thing is these people are everywhere.
@@AJ-xv7oh yeah idiots that read newspapers and believe it
@@AJ-xv7oh 👏👏👏👏
Can’t ask for a pay rose because of inflation otherwise everyone gets a 10% increase so £300 a day becomes £330 it’s not affordable for all companies, great caller
Do you believe in what you're saying?
FFS: Paying your employees enough to survive should be the cost of doing business. If a business cannot do that, whether large or small, they shouldn't _be_ in business.
LOL this caller is a complete clown!
The caller was spot on.. James is a entertainer
@@Superior208 Nice try troll
@@ChrisTheMoiler just because David disagrees with you doesn't make him a troll.
Best way to get a pay rise is to vote with your feet.
If Amazon employees left for better opportunities Amazon would have to pay more.
Inflation doesn't dictate wages, markets do.
@@richardschofield2201 what a classic disgusting tory attitude.
How much of a sycophant do you have to be to possibly consider defending Amazon here?
@@richardschofield2201 No he is a troll, did he provide any evidence or even a point? No he did not, he is a troll. You on the other are worse, you proved you lack critical thinking. PS economics is NOT a science, peole have completely conflicting ideas about it, which is the OPPOSITE of science.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
In the UK where I live there’s poor people who lease out a brand new 4x4 for like 70% of their monthly wages and the rent and food/bills taking up the rest and they act like they are millionaires online.
One who lives near me calls himself a “self made man” while he works for someone else on minimum wage and spends his money on a car rental per month.
Very sad society.
@@UnknownPersononGoogle where I used to live a load of people had Audis and BMWs they bought when they remortgaged their right to buy council properties 😒
That and socialism doesn't work..
@@elcristoph7380 well it does. But never mind eh.
Amazing that someone so dense can take the time out of their day to call into a radio show, to contradict themselves at every turn only to burrow into a hole of inability to defend a point.. did the guy smoke a bowl before calling in?
Unnecessary dig at bowl enjoyers. Plenty clever people enjoy a bowl my friend ✌🏻
@@Scotland2306 😂😂😂
@@Scotland2306 I think for this caller, it would be a performance enhancing drug
The turned himself in.
@@rojh9351 it is for everybody!
This guy shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a telephone or a polling station....
EXACTLY JR, that is the point here, despite the caller being polite, he proved he is not fit for public comment or voting.
Echoes of the late thirties here, do you think we should put them in ghettos, or maybe camps??????
@@bennkev dont be so dramatic.
I'd say quite the opposite actually. People like him should, under the correct scrutiny given by someone like JoB, be put out there as much as possible so that the stupidity of their beliefs can be easily exposed. Much better to have someone like this defending right wing talking points than someone who is actually trained to lie and deceive effectively.
It isn't about envy it is about how the workers are treated, how they are underpayed and the man who does nothing now has so much money he can't even spend it.
Nor would ever be able to, in his remaining years.
Not knocking the guy, he's sorted it, but - there comes a time.....
@@suzyqualcast6269 Sorry?
Of course it is envy. Those lowly workers want to live like Bezos and never have to worry about money ever again. Who do they think they are? Imagine, if everyone were rich beyond dreams of avarice, who would do the actual work? More importantly, who would they be doing it for?
@@suzyqualcast6269 Maybe he can try and buy Twitter then back out like his hated enemy Elon?
Envy would be to want something that belongs to others. The fruits of our labour are ours alone, it does not belong to executives and shareholders in the first place.
Wow, I totally, totally agree with everything James O' Brien says. There's a first time for everything!! Well said, James.
....on the money here......sadly it's the anti-tory rant most other times and people switch off.....
@@chatham43 Totally agree, Chatham43. The anti-Brexit obsession is so boring, but O'Brien is right....for once,
@@stephenbarden6121 keep pointing the obvious is not a rant, others are pretending this is nothing to do with the B word and the sun is shining.
@@stephenbarden6121 he just wants people to see the deception he simply points at it and asks you to look and brexit happens to be the greatest example in modern times of deception on a mass scale
Better late than never. welcome to the party.
Amazon had profits of $60Bn last year and that is after they doubled their infrastructure (warehouses, planes ect)
And then the Tories show fake sympathy for the plight of the High street.
Isnt this where mon£y becomes meaningless ¿?
It's just a number to them - and the bigger the better!
Amazon made a BILLION DOLLAR PROFIT during a pandemic. Those packages didn’t ship themselves.
@@Craig121000 who said that? Less people were forced to work harder. Which is why they want a raise. He took back their hazard pay and changed the rules for overtime.
I was listening this morning. It took all my self control not to kick the radio out the window. A Scottish Tory too, how disgusting
That's not all either.
If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, then you can't afford to be in business. Asking people to work below poverty wages so you can own a business IS entitlement at it's finest.
You are asking human beings to use their lives to subsidize your desire to own a business. Small businesses are just as culpable.
If a job is worth being done. it's worth being paid enough to live. End of.
Couldn’t agree more! It’s one thing to subsidise wages for a very limited time for a start up company, but companies raking in vast (or in fact ANY) profits and paying such low wages that employees have to claim benefits is beyond disgusting.
@@woofpet and since Amazon does avoid taxes in this country why should the tax payer have to subsidize it with tax credits or universal credit payments to keep their workers heads above water 🌊?
@@markbriten6999 exactly! I don’t think ANY company, with the possible exception of start ups for a very limited time, should be paying below living wage though.
Amazon's base pay is already higher than the National Living Wage.
@@calibrax Do they want a pat on the back or something
This is what happens when you read the Sun or the Mail and consider yourself informed.
After about 3 and a half minutes I'm thinking "stop James, he's already dead!" 🤣 Please everyone give this brilliant, brilliant man 3hrs of your day 🙏🏼
He says they wouldn't have jobs if not for Bezos and shareholders.
However, Bezos and the shareholders would not have billions if not for those workers.
It's a mutually beneficial business arrangement. Unfortunately, it is WAAAAAY more profitable for the shareholders than it is for the ones actually doing the work.
Happen should have stayed with books.
That initial laugh should be a meme.
"Without Amazon's wealth, those jobs wouldn't be there." - Yes, but the opposite is also true. It's not even a chicken and egg situation. Amazon's wealth could not possibly exist without its workers.
Without amazon there would be 100s of small businesses with all kinds of jobs needed to be done in them.
or OUR infrastructure
well given amazon plans to automate most of its jobs away.. Id say Amazon can exist without its workers..
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 all paying tax.
@@kanedNunable and giving out proper contracts and treating their employees like human beings.
The caller is a complete plank and deserves every bit of humiliation he gets 😂
Disagree. The caller deserved to be shown, with respect and courtesy, why his arguments were completely wrong. He did not deserve this seven minutes of unprofessional bullying.
@@worldtraveller8604 He did a little bit!!!
@@worldtraveller8604 Has has been shown why they are wrong 100s times over he doesn't care. he deserves to be bullied out of society
@@worldtraveller8604 Wouldn't that be humiliating, being made to understand how every word out of his mouth was wrong.
He is a working class Tory.
"I'm not twisting your words, I'm holding up a mirror. It's not my fault you don't like what you see."
Single handedly the best sentences I've ever heard.
Shouldn't this caller ask himself 'if I can afford this, why can' t everybody who works? '
"these companies accept great risk" 30 seconds later : “the government should subsidise pay"
@@yeldaRooBTKAM and the point just flu over ur tiny head🤣🤣🤣🤣
AHH bless, he thinks Bezos and his ilk are "self made". This is what happens when you swallow the Daily Fail whole.
and where did the infrastructure come from upon which they built their success, society,
the UK has no power to deal with those tax dodgers !
also, there would have been no Amazon if not for the employees. It's crazy how one man gets all the credit for one of the biggest companies in the world
They're 'self-made' in the same way Donald Trump was 'self-made' -- "My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars..." Didn't hurt that he inherited all of Daddy's millions after he died too.
Was he actually suggesting that the government should subsidise Amazon so they can pay higher wages?
Yeah, I never thought I would hear something like that in my life. He thinks Amazon needs help to pay more... WHAT!? 🤯
They already ARE subsidising Amazon - with all of that tax they've been happily allowing Amazon *not* to pay FOR YEARS.
Yes socialism for amazon.
But the government DOES subsidise Amazon. The low wage they pay employees mean that the employees can obtain benefit from Social Services to enable them to pay rent, put food on the table and even cover cost of travel to and from their place of work. Notwithstanding the fact that the low rate of tax Amazon pays into the Treasury coffers is laughable!
@@tonybullion2537 that is the "New Normal" Business Model where Mult-billion Multi-national Corporations do not pay their Staff properly, do not pay their Taxes properly, make Record Profits, and Government must keep their Workers alive... with Tax Money that they Companies don't pay !
henceforth why Governments across the Globe are running out of Funds !
Amazon raises prices to cope with inflation then says cant pay you more cos of inflation...
@@Craig121000 yes they did amazon is a subscription service an they raised the price from 7.99 to 8.99 last month the shops on amazon arnt run owned or have set prices by amazon an can charge what they like. A simple goggle search could have saved you this public embrassment.
@@Craig121000 well troll Slayer amazon dont set them prices the studio that owns them do. Becuase amazon dont own the shops. So dang it just got worse for you when your defense shows you dont have a clue how amazon works but still felt able to pipe up.
@@Craig121000 no i can. Am am happy you can to.
Look Troll Slayer, quit when you are well behind, no point arguing a losing battle.
"Their number one priority is to shareholders"
Precisely the problem.
I just don't get it, being in investor was supposed to be a risk not a guaranteed cash cow. How did we end up with a system where the shareholders became more important than the business remaining viable? Because sooner or later if you refuse to increase wages, it wont be worth people working for you any more and then the business is done for. Were already seeing this happen in the US where low waged workers decided not to bother going back after lockdown.
ran head-first into the point, and still missed it. He was SO close
@@alexatkin "I just don't get it, being in investor was supposed to be a risk not a guaranteed cash cow." - Its not a guaranteed cash cow, Amazon didnt exist a few decades ago and faces global competition..
@@alexatkin Nah, if people leave their posts there's always a workforce desperate enough or coercible enough to replace them. Prisoners, foreign children, refugees... depends on the deal that can be done with the incoming government. To what lengths do you think our latest Thatcher wannabe is going to go to show she's tough on unions? Amazon is going to be fine in the current political environment.
Did you know their are amazon warehouses with over 100% employee turnover rates a year due to the terrible conditions, some places in America are running out of people to employ as almost everyone available for the job has quit, yet this guy is still here.
If it carries on like that they will have to up the wages to get people on
@@richardfunnell5403 and then get praise for raising there wages even though it's there terrible conditions that caused the issues.
Nomadland was an eye-opener for me (the book more than the film). I think Steve Baker read it and thought, "Yep, that's what we need in this country"
I really don't understand putting up Amazon as some paragon. Do you know how many bookstores alone were put out of business by Amazon? How many people lost their book stores because Amazon took over the majority of book sales?
Your comment is ludicrous.
Capitalism/free market has no moral obligation to be fair. It's sink or swim. If bigger businesses take the market share and you go under, so be it. That's how the free market works.
@@bobsmithy9024 my goodness, why so triggered? Maybe you should have a lie down.
@@bobsmithy9024 Except that Amazon failed to make profit for years. If we had actual free markets/capitalism then Amazon would have failed.
Loss leading is not and should not be tolerated in a free market
@@bobsmithy9024 so your saying that free Market Capitalism will inevitably result in monopolies, that can then pay poverty wages because the workers cant seek employments elsewhere, because all the small competing businesses went under? sounds like a stable society to me
Amazon can afford to give a million staff members a £1k payrise per year and still making billions upon billions in profits yearly btw.
5:20 'without the shareholders' there would be no employees' this guy must be a billionaire himself
If a business, regardless of size, can't pay it's employees properly then it is not a viable business.
1. If your company cannot pay fair wages, your company should not be in business at all.
2. The employer does not "give" a job, the employee gives his work power to the employer.
3. There cannot be an company without a workforce, but there can be a company without shareholders.
If you think otherwise and keep defending companys and the ultra rich, go to Wikipedia and read what the meaning of "stockholm syndrom" is.
That laugh from James actually seemed like pure joy. Not seen him smile even close to that in a number of years.
Although I'm tired of this argument that a business cannot afford to pay people a living wage. If your business relies on exploitation of those who make the wealth for the business then your business should fail.
You are absolutely right! And in any case Amazon is NOT one of those companies! It very definitely CAN afford it!
Why is he talking about small employers in a discussion about Amazon!? 😂
in effect that IS correct ?? there's AMAZON and the rest.......................
@@raymondo162 Firstly, the discussion was about Amazon so why he’s talking about small employers struggling if wages rise I have no idea. Secondly, there are plenty of other huge corporations employing people in the UK. They may not be at Amazon’s level, but McDonalds, Tesco etc are hardly small fry.
I'm shocked at the entitlement around small employers. your desire for your own business should not entitle you to give people poverty wages.
I have boycotted Amazon. I will not buy from them because my money would not help the workers of Amazon. +++++
Delighted to live in a country that still has no Amazon warehouses.
*Jeff Besoz would like to know your location*
They are a cancer
These businesses are nothing without the workers
I am in Unite and they provide protection to employees from all backgrounds and circumstances. They gave me support when I was in a job that the employer said they didn't recognise Unions. However that doesn't matter. If you have a case the Union will back you 100%. Unite have backed me in the past and come through for me. In my opinion. It will benefit all working people to be in a Union going forward. No matter the industry we need to protect each other in the UK. Peace and Respect toi all
He literally said the tax payer should subsidise the wages paid by private companies & the same tax payer should not try to negotiate a pay rise but quit. All power to the corporates. The scary part is he doesn't even understand what Corporatocracy is & how he has argued for it.
Amazon paid fewer taxes in Europe than I did last year! i paid for the infrastructure that allowed Besos to be the richest man in the world ! something is WRONG!
Yes….we did not invent Amazon. We let a US company destroy the tax paying high street.
The US Government will not let us tax their companies. They will come down hard if we try to tax amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple.
When we where top dog….we took our foreign made profits back here…and taxed them here .
Thatcher is responsible starting this.
She wanted a quick fix for unemployment and didn’t care if our future was full of untaxable foreign companies.
Correct. Very few rich companies and people acknowledge the benefits of being part of the society that enabled their wealth generation much less show one iota of gratitude. They peddle the myth of the self-made entrepreneur. No one on this planet is self-made, no one.
What the caller doesn't seem to comprehend is that the system is broken. The breaks up until now have always been visited upon the lowest paid and vulnerable. Due to rising inflation the just about managing are taking some serious licks, this class of people are significant in number. The scales have gone too far off the charts for the working majority to accept the status quo.
I love when people who don't work in the sweatshops advocate for the company owners who do not pay taxes, pay their employees fairly or care about anything other than profit margins. This guy had no idea what he was talking about...the sad part is he probably doesn't make much more and still doesn't get it.
Blissful ignorance. We have made this behaviour and way of thinking into the norm we have became a bunch of masochistic slaves
It sounds more like he's a small business owner and he's just trying to save his own back by chiming in to say that raising wages is bad.
He will be a small business owner with loads of buy to let multi occupancy properties. Guaranteed.
@@RossKempOnYourMum01 Well if he is a small business owner he can look forward to Amazon pricing him out to undermind him and buy his business dirt cheap.
If you make a call to LBC with the intention of making a name for yourself by giving "that James O'Brien something to think about" I'd suggest you have a crumb of knowledge (based in the real world, preferably), of the subject matter.
The caller clearly had this conversation with his pal down the pub and decided, based on the response, that the nation needed to hear his wisdom.
We didn't.
His opening statement is a lie. They BOTH started those companies from highly privileged positions. And secondly, when you open a company you don't put your own money in. To "lose everything" doesn't mean you're out on the street, you just lose the company. They are limited liability for a reason. Guess what the terrible fate of someone who loses their company is...they become an employee again!
"You're not even pretending to be relevant"
"No, I'm not pretending to be relevant"
Just about sums up this caller; not listening to anyone but himself while simultaneously shooting himself in the foot.
“What has one man’s wealth got to do with his employees?”
At least in the beginning he used to make it appear genuine and organic
If a business can't pay a living wage, it has no right to exist.. Man is defending the concept of unfair work compensation
I get a lot of things off amazon no problems always on time they should get a better pay rise
I work at one of Amazons warehouses, I’ve worked there for 3 years, up until a few months ago I guess I could manage on my wages, Im a single mum supporting 2 other adults in my household who can’t work due to disabilities, I’m not greedy I just want a wage that will afford me to pay my bills and feed my family.
The government should subsidise with all of that tax they take off amazon right? 😂😂😂😂
This caller cares so much for small business owners that he fails to see how Amazon are taking over those small businesses by copying their products and selling them for less.resulting in closures of small businesses.
If you increase wages those wages go back into our economy rather than being put into offshore tax havens
I always think about Amazon like this, if you take away the people at the top it would probably struggle as a business, but if you take away the people at the bottom - the drivers, the pickers - there is no business.
You take away the creator and there is no business.
@@oggyoggy1299 So both the creator and the worker are integral, yet one is taking most of the wealth and accruing more money than they can ever spend whilst the other struggles to put food on the table. It's everything wrong with modern capitalism.
@@DJLDomino
There are plenty of examples where the creator of the business fails and goes broke.
Those workers could start their own business.
@@oggyoggy1299 Completely missing the point. If everyone started their own businesses, there would be no workers to make them function. The point is that Amazon is a company recording profits of hundreds of billions and yet there is a huge disparity in the way that money is distributed. You're arguing that because someone at the top had an idea and was fortunate enough to be born into circumstances that his idea could be realised and because a load of people fortunate enough to be born into circumstances that they have the money to invest in his idea, they should automatically qualify for significantly greater percentages of the profits than those who currently do all the work and without whom the company would cease to function.
I'm not suggesting the shareholders and CEO go without. I'm saying we should recognise that everyone is important to the business and remuneration should reflect that. Apple shouldn't be spending £90bn worth of profit on buying their own shares whilst paying people in Asia a pittance.
The world is not a meritocracy (as you imply) but land where lineages of success are maintained. The Elon Musk's of this world are quite happy for us to believe otherwise because it's what makes people come out and defend their right to own 45% of the entire world's wealth.
@@DJLDomino
You completely missed the point.
A business was started. The owner invited people to work for him if they wanted to.
If the people wanted to they did.
Why should government subsidise companies in a free market?
In Belgium pay rises automatically, by law, to match inflation.
The fact that this man things he actually makes sense, is just mind blowing indeed, wow!
Surely "minimum wage" or "living wage" should deal with this issue? If Govt. believe that it is now no longer possible to get by using these benchmarks then the govt. should increase them in line with inflation?
"What has one man's wealth to do with his employees?" LOL
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
-John Steinbeck (paraphrased)
This man really argued that companies worth billions of dollars should receive corporate welfare from the government to cover their labour costs rather than have the companies pay their employees a living wage… it actually blows my mind.
Yup, pretty much.
this happens when people have been handed an objective to argue but no rational way to do it.,.,.., also note the exact same words used by so many different people expressing reactionary or callous sentiments.,..,., they all use the exact same phrases.,.,
you can bet that guy runs a sweatshop....
Without amazon, would there be more jobs on the high street, cities, towns, villages and markets.... everywhere in the world?
I don't care that whether Musk has 300 billion or trillion dollars.Just give the workers a living wage and pay the taxes,after that hord all the gold you want
Bet he is a Small business owner with dreams of being a big business owner and seems to think repressing wages is the only way to do it and doesn't like the fact that employers exist for employees not the other way round. You can't say "You should be grateful for having a job at all and then say well if you don't like it there are plenty of other jobs out there?
Amazon made ~$30.4 B net profit in 2023, and has ~1.61 M employees. So the math is *roughly* works out that Amazon could give every employee a $18,000USD per year pay rise and still make a $1.45 BILLION profit. That's roughly a $8.60USD per hour pay rise (using 40 hours worked per week).
James is breaking down on this show. Have a cuppa mate. Dealing with these people is hard graft so it is
The first 40 seconds is all I needed to see 🤣🤣🤣
If the business cannot pay a living wage they aren’t viable and simply should be out of business. Simple as that.
This!
Man people have been conditioned to only take scraps and thank the rich for those scraps and then call into the show to to defend said scraps. The downtrodden defending the ones with the boot on their back. It’s exactly like a person in a abusive relationship who identify with the abuser as a coping strategies.
We have a set of rules for pay disputes in this country. You negotiate a pay rise with the employer and if they don't respond with an acceptable offer for the employees to agree to they down tools and take strike action. Simples
One of the funnier things about this is a caller who's defending Amazon paying higher wages on the pretence that increasing wages will put small employers out of business. Does he even have the foggiest idea just how many small employers Amazon as a conglomerate has crushed over the years?
He would, no doubt, "argue" that is just business... but that is because he is morally bankrupt and an idiot to boot!
He'll say its the free market
"For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not laughing with you, I'm laughing at you" :) hehe
Personally I thought this was a case of hating the player and not the game ...Amazon and any other company do what they do because they're allowed to regardless of morality. If we had a government who taxed corps on their actual earnings and put decent mininmum wage in place as the cost of being allowed to do business then things would have to change. Unfortunately they don't and so we're all outraged at Tech millionaires but not the system which allows for such disparity.
True, but part of the problem is that the likes of Amazon bribe and corrupt the system in their favours so they still deserve the criticism aimed at them. And since most people have zero political influence all we have is the ability to boycott them in favour of more ethical alternatives.
@@daniellomas3783 Bribes wouldn't do much if politicians didn't take them and there's the issue . We keep voting for leopards and then complain when they eat our faces...
James is my new favourite discovery! He talks sense
No American starts a business on their own. At the very least they are standing on the economic and social foundations of the country. They benefit from the infrastructure and the workforce built up over generations by taxpayers big and small.
There is no such thing as a self made Billionaire. There are men that were born into money, given huge tax advantages, or someone exploiting their employees. Or a combination of the three.
Nobody anywhere starts a business on their own unless they're trying to open a corner shop in the middle of a desert. 😀
In this day and age no-one starts with nothing in the developed world.
Don't forget the 0 hour contracts that most workers are on.
This guy probably bought his house 50 years ago for 6k.