Amazon Is Worse Than Walmart

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn’t quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

The weather forecast for Chattanooga during Obama’s speech is 89 degrees with little wind, but, if only for the sake of optics, one wagers there won’t be ambulances on call.

The company, indeed, is deeply aware of the press opportunity Obama’s visit represents; it announced the creation of 7,000 new jobs across 13 states the day before the president’s appearance. But Amazon’s hardly a good corporate citizen — those new jobs come thanks to a series of tax breaks that seem more than lucky.

For instance, the company got  $269 million in back taxes forgiven by the state of Texas contingent upon the creation of new distribution centers and jobs. But as Johnson pointed out, “Amazon winds up doing what they were going to do anyway.” A company that aims to get customers the books, DVDs and tchotchkes they want  by the next day will need more and more distribution centers as its consumer base keeps growing, but they’re able to spin the construction of distribution centers as a favor they’re granting the state.

Amazon is bound up with the government beyond the state level; the company  is contracted for $600 million to host the CIA’s private data in its “cloud” system; the State Department  withdrew its planned $16.5 million no-bid contract with Amazon in 2012, at the height of the Department of Justice trial.

But the investment in Tennessee that Obama is hailing is particularly notable, coming as it does as the result of  an agreement between the corporation and Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, by which Amazon is exempt from having to collect sales tax until 2014 but has to create “at least 3,500 qualified jobs.” The agreement, struck in spring 2012, allows Amazon some twenty-one months of material advantage over bricks-and-mortar retailers in the state, bound to collect sales tax and thus charge higher prices for books.

Amazon has, meanwhile,  lobbied Washington in favor of a national online sales tax so as to penalize competitors with less robust consumer bases or looser ties with the government; after all, they’ve managed to skirt a statewide tax in Tennessee.

“The whole lesson,” said Johnson, “is that tax avoidance worked for them. The only thing that can crack the Amazon monopoly is government intervention.”

Today, at least, that outcome seems unlikely.