Amazon's profit per worker. The biggest hidden welfare program in America. Perspective on men getting pregnant.
And sweet sweet bluegrass harmonies from a West Virginia creek day!
Words from John.
Hello and solidarity Holler Nation!
I try to get this little newsletter out once per week, usually before Thursday. That’s when my week spirals into the chaos of bartending at my small town dive. This week was a marathon on that front. Karaoke Thursday kicked straight into wing night Friday, which melted right into *our biggest night of sales since I started working there* - Christmas in July. I’ve never cleaned up so many mysterious fluids in my life. Someone literally relieved themselves in the men’s room trashcan.
Anyway, here’s the newsletter. As always, there’s no paywall. It’s currently funded by my bar job and a handful of you who want to see this kind of content stick around and reach more people. And that’s going well. Here are the numbers for July 14th-20th on TikTok alone:
Please pay to keep this content free and around for the long haul. It’s only $5 / month!
Here are the transcripts!
There’s a reason big businesses hate unions.
Transcript and sources:
Giant companies fight unions because they are good for the working class. Look how much these popular companies spent busting unions: $1.1 million, $506,000, $279,00, $837,000. And the cherry on top is Amazon spending $4.3 million against the ALU last year which tells you everything that you need to know. Unions put money into workers’ pockets that otherwise would have gone to billionaire owners, corporate shareholders, and the bottom line, so companies stop at nothing to fight them. And that should tell you how much we need a labor movement revolution right now.
Amazon’s profit per worker
Transcript and sources:
Let's do some math. This person says it's no big deal that Amazon spent $4.3 million busting unions last year because it works out to a couple bucks per employee. I thought their math was a good idea. So I ran it for Amazon's profit per worker. Amazon employs 1.6 million people worldwide. Their net profit after expenses in 2021 was $33.36 billion, which means they could have paid each and every single person that works at Amazon $28,850 on top of what they're already being paid. But instead of the workers getting the profit that their labor made, most of that profit went to a small group of wealthy shareholders who did no work to generate that profit. Why?
The biggest welfare program in America is the stock market
Transcript and sources:
The biggest welfare program in the United States of America is the stock market. It is money for nothing. Actually, it's one big bet whether the value of a company will go up or down, but the value of a company is really created by the people working there, except they're not in on the game. Check it. The richest 10% of American households owned 89% of all stocks. The top 1% gained 6.5 trillon dollars over the course of the pandemic, when most people lost their jobs by the way. That is 1.3 million households that gained 6.5 trillion dollars for doing no work at all. They just own paper. That's it. And forget how much we spend on actual welfare, 6.5 trillion is just shy of the entire United States federal budget. That is how much money went to 1% of the population for doing literally no work at all.
On men getting pregnant
Transcript:
I got something to say about men getting pregnant….
Okay, now there's just the white guys drinking Mich Ultra right now listen up dickweeds, I want to share something that changed how I think about this.
What gender are these two things? (jacked up truck, Toyota Prius) Got it?… Why?
Why do we give these things a gender? They can't reproduce. They don't have organs. But we give them gender anyway based on how they present.
Wait a got dayum minute is that… (picture of truck with truck nutz on it). Ok, that doesn't count Goddamnit.
Every other time we assign something a gender it is not linked to biology, except for when it comes to people and that's weird. That doesn't make sense. Gender and biology are two separate things. We got them confused for a while and that is fucking with your brain and making you mean.
You can go outside right now and gargle the fat sack on your $60,000 King Ranch. It is a free country… kind of… for now, I guess. But the point is you are allowed to be who you are even if I think it's weird. And I do think it's weird.
But just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean you get to go out and take away somebody else's freedom to be who they are, or force somebody to be who they're not, or in any way define what normal is. That shit is un-American, or it should be… maybe it's the most American thing to enforce rigid norms about everything including and especially gender. But if that's the case then fuck that! We should get rid of it. That sucks. Let people live.
Trans people have been around since people have been around. Celebrate their freedom. It is linked to yours. I promise that'll make us all feel better.
Okay, dismissed.