Washington Post public editor: Jeff Bezos could solve pay equality tomorrow | Hacker News Reader

Washington Post public editor: Jeff Bezos could solve pay equality tomorrow

cjr.org

20 pointsericzawo13 comments

> money he would never, ever miss. But he won’t do it. That’s all you need to know.

Saved you a click. Seems like some kind of sustained narrative against Jeff Bezos rather than any serious analysis

Amazon drew attention to themselves with this press release https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/amazon-donates-10-millio... and I think holding them accountable for not actually doing the thing they want credit for doing is fair.

Oh sure, but I was talking about news even before their donation. The news cycle constantly has something negative to say about his net worth for some reason. A figure that is just paper value btw, it's not like he could actually cash in and have billions of dollars in the bank. Net worth numbers are worthless heuristics

I absolutely agree that with social power should come with social responsibility. I absolutely see that Bezos has insane amounts of social power. I absolutely see that he is taking on very little social responsibility... which is the normal amount (note: "normal" has been very many bad things before).

Overall, this article is lame. It's a weak stance and misses what I think should be the central point: with power comes responsibility. Including social power.

Have we learned nothing from the past 2-3 weeks? Puff pieces like this don't accomplish anything. Need to find the next Jimmy Hoffa to lead a unionization effort, while putting safeguards in place within the union structure to make sure power is decentralized.

If we really need help from the Mafia in order to fix income inequality then we truly are screwed. :P

right because your elected officials cannot, therefore we need to find someone that could and look how easy is for them to do

Yes, we should demand more from government. However, collective action by workers inside their workplace is also incredibly important. You should check out the Washington Post Guild study cited in this piece, it's quite interesting.

What I'd also add is that in our system the government does not operate independently of powerful folks like Bezos. You can't ignore either of them.

People are living without hope all across America and Jeff Bezos is afraid of being slightly less rich after becoming the richest man to ever live...

I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that pay inequality can be solved by simply having the owner talk to the union and toss money at the problem. Have any large organizations been able to close their pay gaps this way?

I mean, call me stupid, but paying the women and minorities more money seems like a pretty effective way of making sure the women and minorities aren't underpaid.

I don't think the article is suggesting that the billionaire owner should intervene directly with a donation. But rather the billionaire owner should accept 200k p/a drop in revenue from WashPo to clear the gap, the resulting hit in reporting would affect his net worth, but only by a minuscule amount.

Right, that's the framing that I don't understand. I'm pretty confident that the cause of pay inequality at the Washington Post isn't people explicitly saying "well, we could pay women and minorities fairly, but we won't do it because Jeff Bezos wants higher profits".

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