WEBVTT - Amazon and Inequality 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.676 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:23.716 --> 0:00:26.676 where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:27.156 --> 0:00:31.436 I'm Noah Feldman. This season, we're talking about power and 0:00:31.516 --> 0:00:34.756 the many ways that power shapes the most important stories 0:00:34.796 --> 0:00:38.716 of our time. The pandemic has been profoundly difficult for 0:00:38.756 --> 0:00:43.356 so many people, but anytime there's a disruptive situation, someone 0:00:43.476 --> 0:00:46.876 figures out a way to benefit. Almost no one has 0:00:46.916 --> 0:00:51.476 benefited more from COVID nineteen than Amazon dot Com. The 0:00:51.556 --> 0:00:55.156 numbers are striking. In twenty twenty, the company saw a 0:00:55.276 --> 0:00:59.316 nearly two hundred percent rise in profits and its sales 0:00:59.436 --> 0:01:02.916 rose over thirty percent. For the first time, the company 0:01:02.916 --> 0:01:05.756 employed more than a million workers global. It can be 0:01:05.796 --> 0:01:09.396 a real challenge to understand the rise and impact act 0:01:09.516 --> 0:01:13.156 of a company so big and with so much power, 0:01:13.756 --> 0:01:16.356 But today we have someone here to help us. Alec 0:01:16.436 --> 0:01:19.596 McGillis is an award winning journalist who covers politics and 0:01:19.636 --> 0:01:22.476 government for Pro Publica. He's the author of the new 0:01:22.516 --> 0:01:27.516 book Fulfillment, Winning and Losing in One Click America. It's 0:01:27.556 --> 0:01:30.836 a book about Amazon, and it's also a book about 0:01:30.956 --> 0:01:33.756 much more than Amazon. It's a book that's meant to 0:01:33.796 --> 0:01:38.316 be about the ways Amazon symbolizes and embodies many of 0:01:38.316 --> 0:01:40.796 the trends in the United States that have led to 0:01:40.836 --> 0:01:45.516 growing inequality between rich people and poor people, and importantly 0:01:45.836 --> 0:01:49.956 between richer and poorer geographical regions and even richer and 0:01:49.996 --> 0:01:54.276 poor cities in close juxtaposition to each other. It's a 0:01:54.276 --> 0:01:58.636 book that sets out to transcend its own subject, a 0:01:58.716 --> 0:02:02.116 tall order for any book, and we have Alec McGillis 0:02:02.156 --> 0:02:05.516 here to talk about it with us. Alex, thank you 0:02:05.596 --> 0:02:08.556 so much for being here in congratulations on your very 0:02:08.596 --> 0:02:12.516 bold an ambitious new book fulfillment. I want to begin 0:02:12.596 --> 0:02:16.156 by asking you, how did you get the idea to 0:02:16.196 --> 0:02:19.636 write a book that is both about Amazon and not 0:02:19.756 --> 0:02:24.796 about Amazon? What road led you to this conception. The 0:02:24.876 --> 0:02:29.156 road started really not with Amazon at all, but with this, 0:02:29.436 --> 0:02:32.396 you know, this issue of regional inequality, these disparities that 0:02:32.436 --> 0:02:34.556 I would see when I was going around the country 0:02:34.836 --> 0:02:38.556 as a national reporter. I would go to the Midwest, 0:02:38.836 --> 0:02:41.996 you know, or Appalacha or whatever it might be. In 0:02:42.076 --> 0:02:44.436 these sort of great recession years. That's when I really 0:02:44.476 --> 0:02:48.116 started doing that kind of serious national reporting and just 0:02:48.156 --> 0:02:51.436 being so struck by these disparities, these cities out in 0:02:51.476 --> 0:02:54.956 the Midwest that were just really reeling during the recession. 0:02:55.036 --> 0:02:57.116 Then you'd come back to Washington and you see this 0:02:57.516 --> 0:03:02.396 incredible prosperity on display and this total disconnect really with 0:03:02.516 --> 0:03:04.636 what was going on elsewhere in the country. And it 0:03:04.716 --> 0:03:07.556 kind of drove me crazy, just the complacency that you'd 0:03:07.556 --> 0:03:10.716 see in Washington, no real notion of just how bad 0:03:10.756 --> 0:03:13.596 things have gotten out there. And I saw it again 0:03:13.636 --> 0:03:16.236 when I moved back up to Baltimore where I live now, 0:03:16.236 --> 0:03:18.956 and just seeing in those forty miles between Baltimore and Washington, 0:03:19.076 --> 0:03:22.356 just how huge the disparity was growing over wider and 0:03:22.436 --> 0:03:24.916 wanting to write about that, and then after Trump got elected, 0:03:25.276 --> 0:03:29.556 realizing just how big the political fallout from these divides was, 0:03:30.196 --> 0:03:32.636 but then finally decided to write about it through the 0:03:32.676 --> 0:03:35.636 frame of Amazon shows that as my frame, and shows 0:03:35.676 --> 0:03:37.796 it as the frame for two reasons. One, the company 0:03:37.876 --> 0:03:40.356 is now so ubiquitous that it's just a very kind 0:03:40.356 --> 0:03:42.396 of handy way to take you around the country because 0:03:42.396 --> 0:03:44.956 it's everywhere now in our life, so it's just a 0:03:44.956 --> 0:03:47.876 good thread to sort of show who we are now 0:03:47.916 --> 0:03:50.556 as a country. But more importantly, it was a good 0:03:50.596 --> 0:03:53.556 frame because it itself helps to explain the problem. The 0:03:53.596 --> 0:03:57.596 tech giants are a big reason for these these regional inequalities, 0:03:57.596 --> 0:04:02.116 because the regional inequality is based partly in economic concentration. 0:04:02.196 --> 0:04:05.556 The concentration of our economy in just a handful of 0:04:05.556 --> 0:04:09.036 companies has driven a lot of this concentration of wealth 0:04:09.116 --> 0:04:13.196 in certain places. Let me ask you first a historical 0:04:13.276 --> 0:04:15.996 question and an economic question about this place you started 0:04:16.036 --> 0:04:19.716 the regional inequalities. So when I think in a non 0:04:19.756 --> 0:04:23.556 scientific way about the history of regional inequality and disparity 0:04:23.596 --> 0:04:25.556 of wealth in the United States, my first instinct is 0:04:25.556 --> 0:04:28.756 to say, that's almost baked into the history of the country. 0:04:28.876 --> 0:04:31.276 You know. I think of the fight over ratifying the 0:04:31.356 --> 0:04:37.396 Constitution in seventeen eighty nine, huge geographic difference in desire 0:04:37.436 --> 0:04:42.516 to ratify, reflecting huge disparities in wealth between small farmers 0:04:42.636 --> 0:04:46.676 in the interior and growing merchant class closer to the coasts. 0:04:47.116 --> 0:04:50.836 Tell me whether you see the geographical disparity in wealth 0:04:50.876 --> 0:04:53.396 that you're seeing now as in some way different in 0:04:53.516 --> 0:04:56.436 kind than the kinds of disparities that we saw in 0:04:56.436 --> 0:04:59.356 the United States at other moments when our economy was 0:04:59.396 --> 0:05:02.236 shifting to a new kind of economy. I see it 0:05:02.436 --> 0:05:06.036 it's different both in degree and kind. For starters, while 0:05:06.076 --> 0:05:08.636 we've always have had wealthier and poorer places in the country, 0:05:08.636 --> 0:05:11.116 of course, the gaps have just gotten a lot bigger, 0:05:11.276 --> 0:05:13.236 just the way that the gaps have gotten lot bigger 0:05:13.356 --> 0:05:16.156 on the income ladder between you the one percent and 0:05:16.236 --> 0:05:19.596 nine nine percent, so have the regional gaps gotten bigger. So, 0:05:19.636 --> 0:05:23.676 for instance, as recently as nineteen eighty, there were only 0:05:23.756 --> 0:05:26.836 certain small parts of our country that had median income 0:05:26.916 --> 0:05:31.156 that was twenty percent or greater than the average, or 0:05:31.876 --> 0:05:35.036 twenty percent or lower than the than the average. Most 0:05:35.036 --> 0:05:37.116 of the country kind of clustered close to the median. 0:05:37.516 --> 0:05:41.276 Now huge swaths of the country are above that plus 0:05:41.356 --> 0:05:45.476 twenty percent line or below twenty percent and below the average. 0:05:45.836 --> 0:05:49.116 So just great growth at the extremes of wealthier and 0:05:49.156 --> 0:05:52.956 poorer regions. But I also see it as different in kind. 0:05:53.196 --> 0:05:55.236 What has happened and has a lot to do with 0:05:55.476 --> 0:05:59.036 sort of tech dominated economy. What's happened is that the 0:05:59.036 --> 0:06:03.996 tech economy encourages agglomeration of prosperity and dynamism, and in 0:06:03.996 --> 0:06:06.836 a way that did not happen during this sort of 0:06:07.396 --> 0:06:10.876 the manufacturing heavy on me that we had for most 0:06:10.956 --> 0:06:14.036 of the twentieth century. In a manufacturing economy, one stable 0:06:14.036 --> 0:06:16.036 way of thinking about it is that once you come 0:06:16.116 --> 0:06:19.756 up with a given advance, say the steelmaking process, you 0:06:19.756 --> 0:06:23.076 could take that technology that advance anywhere that had the 0:06:23.156 --> 0:06:27.316 manpower in the national resources and the transportation links, and 0:06:27.356 --> 0:06:30.556 you could build a steel mill. And and that's so 0:06:30.676 --> 0:06:33.356 you had those all over all across the Northeast in 0:06:33.396 --> 0:06:37.476 the Midwest. The tech economy is different. The value lies 0:06:37.716 --> 0:06:41.156 entirely in the almost entirely in the initial innovation. It's 0:06:41.156 --> 0:06:44.516 all about coming up with the advances, creating the software, 0:06:44.636 --> 0:06:47.556 creating the app, whatever it might be. And and so 0:06:47.596 --> 0:06:51.156 it's all about having the human capital to prove that innovation. 0:06:51.316 --> 0:06:55.916 And those innovations come often through proximity, through the proximity 0:06:55.956 --> 0:07:00.436 of having all those great minds together with each other 0:07:00.556 --> 0:07:03.436 and with a great end with a capital to fund 0:07:03.436 --> 0:07:05.556 their work. That's how you end up with sort of 0:07:05.556 --> 0:07:08.796 the growth of clusters, like like a Silicon valley, where 0:07:09.196 --> 0:07:13.476 despite the incredible expense of living there and doing business there, 0:07:14.156 --> 0:07:17.076 you know, in the sort of dystopian levels of wealth 0:07:17.076 --> 0:07:20.316 and congestion and kind of unaffordability of those places, they 0:07:20.356 --> 0:07:22.716 still exert a pull because you sort of feel like 0:07:22.756 --> 0:07:24.476 you need to be there and TB in the mix, 0:07:24.876 --> 0:07:27.916 and so you end up within a conglomeration of wealth 0:07:28.156 --> 0:07:30.836 sort that we really on levels that we have not 0:07:30.996 --> 0:07:35.276 had before. It really is a new kind of thing. Well, 0:07:35.316 --> 0:07:38.196 we feel like we've always had wealth here and poor cities. 0:07:38.236 --> 0:07:40.276 In fact, what we're dealing with now is on a 0:07:40.276 --> 0:07:44.516 different scale. That leads to my second question about the 0:07:44.716 --> 0:07:47.156 agglomeration thing, which is that when it comes to I 0:07:47.156 --> 0:07:49.036 don't know, let's say a social media company that in 0:07:49.156 --> 0:07:52.516 raw numbers doesn't have that many employees, but it's super rich, 0:07:53.356 --> 0:07:56.756 there is some sort of human capital feature. Amazon in 0:07:56.796 --> 0:07:59.316 a way seems like a different kind of company in 0:07:59.396 --> 0:08:03.516 that it's not primarily just based on its technology. It 0:08:03.556 --> 0:08:06.556 has technology. Businesses are that probably do benefit from this. 0:08:07.076 --> 0:08:10.196 But with respect to a lot of what Amazon does, 0:08:10.796 --> 0:08:14.276 it is capable of being less agglomerated. It is capable 0:08:14.316 --> 0:08:18.596 of being more for far flung and more distributed. So 0:08:18.916 --> 0:08:23.596 I wonder about how you see Amazon itself fitting into 0:08:23.636 --> 0:08:26.756 that model that you're describing, the model where agglomeration of 0:08:26.796 --> 0:08:28.716 people and putting them near each other has made some 0:08:28.756 --> 0:08:32.636 places super rich as opposed to other places. I see 0:08:32.676 --> 0:08:35.276 Amazon a very much as actually as fitting into that 0:08:35.316 --> 0:08:38.356 model makes the Amazon different than of Google or Facebook 0:08:38.756 --> 0:08:41.636 is that it has a mass workforce that is in 0:08:41.676 --> 0:08:44.516 the warehouses, that is in the fulfillment centers, and is 0:08:45.116 --> 0:08:49.156 doing the actual physical work of delivering these physical products. 0:08:49.236 --> 0:08:52.596 Which is what made it so appealing for me to 0:08:52.676 --> 0:08:54.636 use them as my frame, is that you actually have 0:08:55.196 --> 0:08:57.596 a physical manifestation of the company and all the sort 0:08:57.676 --> 0:08:59.836 reforms out around the country in a way that Google 0:08:59.836 --> 0:09:03.276 and Facebook do not. There's just a landscape and ecosystem 0:09:03.276 --> 0:09:06.156 to writing on Amazon that they lack. But as far 0:09:06.196 --> 0:09:11.156 as the actual headquarters operate of Amazon, it is very 0:09:11.236 --> 0:09:16.076 much a classic case of aglamoration. The reason why Jeff 0:09:16.116 --> 0:09:20.036 Bezos chose Seattle early on to locate his company was 0:09:20.116 --> 0:09:23.036 partly because there were tax advantages to doing so, to 0:09:23.116 --> 0:09:26.276 putting the company in Seattle not in California, but also 0:09:26.356 --> 0:09:28.876 because Microsoft was already in Seattle and he knew there 0:09:28.916 --> 0:09:32.996 was a workforce, a skilled tech workforce there that he 0:09:33.036 --> 0:09:36.836 could draw on in building his company and just as 0:09:36.996 --> 0:09:40.716 now in setting out to build his second headquarters. Because 0:09:41.596 --> 0:09:45.436 Amazon was outgrowing Seattle with forty five thousand tech employees, 0:09:45.476 --> 0:09:49.276 crammed into crammed into the city. They need a new home, 0:09:49.476 --> 0:09:52.036 and what city do they choose for their new home? 0:09:52.076 --> 0:09:55.396 But Washing Union, DC, a city that also has a 0:09:55.516 --> 0:09:59.436 large skilled tech heavy workforce as a result of all 0:09:59.436 --> 0:10:03.396 those IT contractors in the DC area that they could 0:10:03.476 --> 0:10:05.716 draw off of. And then you look at the other 0:10:05.836 --> 0:10:09.876 their smaller satellite offices of several house in each and 0:10:09.916 --> 0:10:13.356 those are all in the tech capital. So you Boston 0:10:13.476 --> 0:10:15.036 now is just they're just announced that they're going to 0:10:15.356 --> 0:10:18.836 expand to Boston up to about seven thousand salary tech 0:10:18.916 --> 0:10:21.836 types in Boston, New York's second headquarters in New York, 0:10:21.836 --> 0:10:24.476 they're getting several thousand more theirs. You got a bunch 0:10:24.476 --> 0:10:26.316 in the Bay Area, they got a bunch in Austin. 0:10:26.876 --> 0:10:29.836 So it's very much a case of them putting those 0:10:29.836 --> 0:10:33.276 people in the places where there are a lot others 0:10:33.276 --> 0:10:37.796 of those people. One of the really beautiful things about 0:10:37.836 --> 0:10:39.956 the book is the way that you go out to 0:10:40.116 --> 0:10:44.236 these fulfilming centers all over the country and tell at 0:10:44.236 --> 0:10:47.556 a very human level. The reader really gets the feeling 0:10:47.556 --> 0:10:49.196 of getting to know a little bit about the people 0:10:49.196 --> 0:10:50.876 whom you've interviewed, and you've really gotten to know them 0:10:50.876 --> 0:10:55.156 in depth, who are experiencing the effects of Amazon's economic power, 0:10:56.076 --> 0:10:58.356 That is, they are dealing with the reality that they 0:10:58.396 --> 0:11:01.036 don't have much negotiating power of their own. Visavi, this 0:11:01.316 --> 0:11:04.156 huge employer who may ultimately be the only really available 0:11:04.196 --> 0:11:06.476 employer in town, or the only employer at scale in town. 0:11:07.036 --> 0:11:11.356 And you show compellingly that the company exercises that economic 0:11:11.396 --> 0:11:15.676 power with respect to wages, with respect to hours, with 0:11:15.756 --> 0:11:20.116 respect to work conditions, and you humanize that. And I 0:11:20.116 --> 0:11:22.916 think that's tremendously powerful and a great contributions of the book. 0:11:23.676 --> 0:11:26.916 As I read those descriptions, the thought that kept running 0:11:26.916 --> 0:11:30.876 through my mind was this is all terribly upsetting. But 0:11:31.116 --> 0:11:33.836 isn't it always very upsetting when one sees the operation 0:11:33.916 --> 0:11:37.316 of capitalism in practice? You know, if we were looking 0:11:37.356 --> 0:11:40.116 at other industries that were not as much in the news, 0:11:40.156 --> 0:11:43.556 that we weren't as reliant on, wouldn't we also see 0:11:44.036 --> 0:11:47.036 those with economic power I mean capital, That is to say, 0:11:47.196 --> 0:11:50.236 when capital is able to do it exercising all the 0:11:50.276 --> 0:11:52.196 power that it can exercise to try to pay as 0:11:52.236 --> 0:11:54.716 workers as little as possible and extract as much at 0:11:54.716 --> 0:11:57.156 work as possible from them. I'm not saying that's Okay, 0:11:57.716 --> 0:11:59.436 you know, and that is obviously part of the history 0:11:59.476 --> 0:12:02.436 of why capital it has struggled with labor for the 0:12:02.516 --> 0:12:05.316 last one hundred and eight or so years so intensely. 0:12:05.716 --> 0:12:10.556 But is there something about this struggle that's really distinctive? 0:12:10.956 --> 0:12:12.796 Were different in that way other than the fact that 0:12:12.836 --> 0:12:18.396 Amazon's really darned powerful. I've thought a lot about this, 0:12:18.476 --> 0:12:21.516 and I and the chapter where I kind of take 0:12:21.516 --> 0:12:24.916 this on at its core iss the chapter on the 0:12:24.996 --> 0:12:29.356 extraordinary transformation of a place outside Baltimore called Sparrow's Point, 0:12:29.996 --> 0:12:34.436 which it's peninsula just southeast of the city, and it 0:12:34.516 --> 0:12:37.436 was the home to the largest steel plant in the world, 0:12:37.836 --> 0:12:41.516 Betheheim Steel Plant, that had at its peak about thirty 0:12:41.516 --> 0:12:44.836 thousand people working. There's a huge company town like right 0:12:44.996 --> 0:12:49.476 adjacent to the steel millages. It's vast industrial works. When 0:12:49.596 --> 0:12:52.596 things started out there in the early twentieth century, it 0:12:52.676 --> 0:12:55.996 was indeed very brutal place. It was just you had 0:12:56.276 --> 0:13:01.316 incredibly low paid workforce with unbelievably rough hours. Two days 0:13:01.356 --> 0:13:04.396 off a year, two holidays off year, Christmas and July fourth. 0:13:04.836 --> 0:13:07.676 They were making about a dollar a day doing incredibly 0:13:07.716 --> 0:13:13.356 dangerous work, incredibly demanding conditions, and no say on the job, 0:13:13.956 --> 0:13:17.396 and you ended up finally, of course, over the next 0:13:17.436 --> 0:13:22.156 few decades with an improvement of conditions, thanks heavily to 0:13:22.196 --> 0:13:25.596 the fact that they got organized, And so you ended 0:13:25.676 --> 0:13:28.596 up with those jobs becoming for the latter part of 0:13:28.596 --> 0:13:32.476 the twentieth century much better paid. Jobs that were still 0:13:32.716 --> 0:13:36.356 very treacherous, very dangerous, very challenging, but the middle class 0:13:36.396 --> 0:13:38.556 jobs you could support a family on where they had 0:13:38.636 --> 0:13:41.316 much more say on the job, jobs that made good 0:13:41.316 --> 0:13:44.436 money and found to some degree purposeful. That mail has 0:13:44.436 --> 0:13:46.476 now been wiped completely off the face of the earth, 0:13:46.636 --> 0:13:50.116 declined steadily, relentlessly until the Foundly went out of business 0:13:50.116 --> 0:13:52.116 in twenty twelve. Has been wiped off the face of 0:13:52.156 --> 0:13:55.396 the map, and it's been replaced by a logistics park 0:13:55.796 --> 0:13:59.036 which includes a two Amazon warehouses. And I actually found 0:13:59.036 --> 0:14:01.676 a man who worked at the wheel for thirty years 0:14:01.716 --> 0:14:04.876 and now went to work at the warehouse, making way 0:14:04.956 --> 0:14:09.276 less money and feeling much less purpose in sensive camaraderie 0:14:09.316 --> 0:14:14.076 on the job. And and so I I do think that, 0:14:14.356 --> 0:14:16.636 of course, you know, anytime I can think of job, 0:14:16.756 --> 0:14:19.516 other sorts of jobs now that if we look closely 0:14:19.516 --> 0:14:22.876 at them, with seem pretty bleak and horrific. I think, 0:14:22.876 --> 0:14:25.236 you know, for instance, what we've learned about the meat 0:14:25.276 --> 0:14:27.876 packing plants during in the age of COVID and just 0:14:27.956 --> 0:14:31.396 what reality is like there is bleaker yet then, of course, 0:14:31.436 --> 0:14:33.996 than what we see in the warehouses now. But if 0:14:33.996 --> 0:14:37.236 we compare the warehouses with what has come before them, 0:14:37.276 --> 0:14:41.996 a sort of a mass workplace, a place where where 0:14:41.996 --> 0:14:45.236 the average American worker looking for a job can expect 0:14:45.276 --> 0:14:47.716 to go to work that is now has now increasingly 0:14:47.716 --> 0:14:51.716 become one of these warehouses. They're so ubiquitous, they're they're 0:14:51.756 --> 0:14:55.356 so huge, they're so rapidly growing. They are in a 0:14:55.396 --> 0:14:57.516 way now the mass workplace of our country. And if 0:14:57.516 --> 0:15:00.116 you compare them to what became before them at a 0:15:00.116 --> 0:15:03.716 place like Sparrow's Point a mill, where workers were making 0:15:03.836 --> 0:15:07.396 far more than they're making now in these warehouses, and 0:15:08.036 --> 0:15:10.116 you know, have had more sense of a meaning and 0:15:10.196 --> 0:15:12.836 purpose in their daily life. Or if you compare them 0:15:12.916 --> 0:15:17.236 to the retail experience that these warehouses have in some 0:15:17.316 --> 0:15:19.876 sense sort of replaced the experience of the department store 0:15:19.996 --> 0:15:22.676 clerk that's been sort of wiped out by the e 0:15:22.676 --> 0:15:26.236 commerce revolution, I'm not sure that we would say that 0:15:26.316 --> 0:15:30.636 necessarily that the warehouse experience is no bleaker than those 0:15:30.716 --> 0:15:33.476 things that replaced. I would say that both of those 0:15:33.596 --> 0:15:38.036 other experiences had some kind of a level of better 0:15:38.076 --> 0:15:41.356 working conditions conceivably and also more of a sense of 0:15:41.436 --> 0:15:46.116 basic humanity and connectiveness than what is now on offer 0:15:46.796 --> 0:15:52.716 in the vast windowless warehouse. The root causes of that 0:15:52.916 --> 0:15:56.396 transformation seemed to me to be two, and I want 0:15:56.436 --> 0:15:58.756 to ask you about both of them. They're both addressed, 0:15:58.756 --> 0:16:01.116 i would say, obliquely in your book, but not centrally. 0:16:01.596 --> 0:16:04.796 One is globalization, which is what brought down the American 0:16:05.396 --> 0:16:08.716 steel mill. It just became much less expensive to produce 0:16:08.756 --> 0:16:12.356 steel in other places around the world. And the second 0:16:12.476 --> 0:16:14.396 is and that of course is repeated across a wide 0:16:14.476 --> 0:16:18.676 range of construction industries. And the other is unionization. Right 0:16:19.076 --> 0:16:22.956 when the Sparrows Point Steel plant was at its worst, 0:16:22.956 --> 0:16:24.956 it's because there weren't yet unions there. And then with 0:16:24.996 --> 0:16:27.196 the growth and the rise of unions towards their peak 0:16:27.236 --> 0:16:29.116 in the middle of the twentieth century in the US, 0:16:29.516 --> 0:16:31.556 the jobs got quote unquote better in the sense that 0:16:31.636 --> 0:16:35.356 conditions improved and pay improved. And then with the decline 0:16:35.356 --> 0:16:36.996 of unions, which of course is linked in some ways 0:16:37.036 --> 0:16:39.276 to globalization too. They're not totally independent of each other. 0:16:39.596 --> 0:16:41.956 Those jobs, as you say, disappeared through as it were, 0:16:41.996 --> 0:16:45.356 no fault of Amazons, right, and then the idea of 0:16:45.396 --> 0:16:47.996 what they get replaced with. Yes, it's connected to the 0:16:47.996 --> 0:16:50.676 e commerce revolution, but in the end, the core point 0:16:50.756 --> 0:16:53.636 is that the stuff that we buy and sell isn't 0:16:53.716 --> 0:16:57.196 any more made in the United States, never will be, 0:16:58.516 --> 0:17:01.036 so I wonder. And unions have also been very much 0:17:01.036 --> 0:17:03.756 in the news because of efforts in Alabama to unionize 0:17:03.516 --> 0:17:06.196 parts of Amazon. So I wonder if you just reflect 0:17:06.236 --> 0:17:08.756 on those forces, you know, the global press, which is 0:17:08.756 --> 0:17:12.076 what rid of those quote unquote good jobs, and then 0:17:12.076 --> 0:17:16.276 the unionization, which may be a partial solution, but even 0:17:16.316 --> 0:17:18.356 by your account, doesn't sound like a total solution. It 0:17:18.356 --> 0:17:20.796 sounds like those jobs in the warehouses would still be 0:17:20.796 --> 0:17:22.996 pretty bleak, to use your word, even if they were 0:17:23.076 --> 0:17:27.956 unionized and had better conditions and paid better. If the 0:17:27.956 --> 0:17:30.516 warehouse has got unionized in years to come, it would 0:17:30.516 --> 0:17:32.436 be a really big deal. I do believe it would be. 0:17:32.636 --> 0:17:35.676 It would serve to some degree to kind of term 0:17:35.556 --> 0:17:39.116 the arc of history and a couple notches forward again, 0:17:39.596 --> 0:17:41.556 so that in a place like Sparrows point where you 0:17:41.916 --> 0:17:43.516 now are back to kind of square one, with a 0:17:43.556 --> 0:17:48.876 non unionized workforce working really demanding job pay less than 0:17:48.996 --> 0:17:52.036 what they're owed, with very little say on the job. 0:17:52.116 --> 0:17:55.156 If you could then kind of lift those jobs up 0:17:55.436 --> 0:17:58.676 to something that's supported a more sort of stable middle 0:17:58.676 --> 0:18:03.196 class kind of existence, with some more sense of voice 0:18:03.396 --> 0:18:05.876 and respect and dignity on dignity on a job if 0:18:05.916 --> 0:18:08.076 they if they pull us off. So it really is 0:18:08.116 --> 0:18:10.596 a big deal. I mean, if you absolutely can see, 0:18:11.156 --> 0:18:14.036 um this the spreading to other warehouses. And the fact 0:18:14.116 --> 0:18:18.236 is that as difficult it is to unionize in this 0:18:18.636 --> 0:18:21.516 day and time, and as aggressively as Amazon has fought it, 0:18:21.796 --> 0:18:25.516 the warehouses are actually relatively well suited to unionization in 0:18:25.516 --> 0:18:28.156 a way that too many other forms of our certain 0:18:28.156 --> 0:18:31.076 contemporary work are not. You know, it's it's really hard 0:18:31.076 --> 0:18:34.836 to unionize the gig workers, the uber drivers, that it 0:18:34.876 --> 0:18:38.356 exists outside of kind of a normal employment kind of realm, 0:18:38.756 --> 0:18:41.636 Whereas whereas the warehouses, you've got thousands of people in 0:18:41.636 --> 0:18:44.196 one place, and so you you you could see it 0:18:44.236 --> 0:18:47.116 spreading and that's why, um, you know, it's also not 0:18:47.476 --> 0:18:50.236 inconceivable that Amazon is going to be so worried about 0:18:50.236 --> 0:18:53.876 the spread that there's people who floated the prospect that 0:18:53.916 --> 0:18:56.676 they might shut this place down if it were about yes, 0:18:56.956 --> 0:18:59.996 that that's how that's how much of a threat who 0:18:59.996 --> 0:19:03.116 would be to them for this to become a president, 0:19:03.276 --> 0:19:06.236 and that they would want to do anything possible to 0:19:06.236 --> 0:19:10.916 to just just just quash it. So the stakes really 0:19:10.956 --> 0:19:14.636 are are quite large. But but as for the larger forces, 0:19:15.036 --> 0:19:16.916 this is something that the Amazon talked a lot about 0:19:16.996 --> 0:19:18.916 when I was discussing the book with them, and they said, 0:19:18.996 --> 0:19:21.076 you know, look, these are all these are all larger 0:19:21.116 --> 0:19:22.756 forces at work here that have kind of brought us 0:19:22.796 --> 0:19:26.956 to this point technology globalization, where we just happened to 0:19:26.996 --> 0:19:30.036 be the company that's that's kind of come to fill 0:19:30.116 --> 0:19:34.196 this this slot. And if it wasn't us, some company 0:19:34.236 --> 0:19:37.316 called something else doing what we're doing now, and it 0:19:37.396 --> 0:19:40.436 just happens to be us. And and that's true to 0:19:40.476 --> 0:19:42.956 some extent. But I think there's a tendency among a 0:19:42.956 --> 0:19:45.076 lot of us to kind of especially a lot including 0:19:45.076 --> 0:19:47.636 a lot of like sort of liberal wrong types, to 0:19:47.716 --> 0:19:50.156 kind of often to sort of ascribe too much, to 0:19:50.236 --> 0:19:55.116 sort of grant systemic structural forces and leave personal and 0:19:55.556 --> 0:19:59.196 corporate responsibility out of the picture. I mean, there are 0:19:59.276 --> 0:20:02.796 choices that the company has made over the years that 0:20:02.876 --> 0:20:06.756 have made these Some of these problems especially acute. The 0:20:06.836 --> 0:20:10.116 things that described in the book, the the aggressiveness with 0:20:10.116 --> 0:20:13.916 which the company has from its very founding pursued tax 0:20:13.956 --> 0:20:17.236 avoidance at all different levels. The the extremity of it 0:20:17.396 --> 0:20:21.356 of the demands, the production demands in the warehouses, the 0:20:21.396 --> 0:20:26.236 fact that it has that a further exacerbated regional inequality 0:20:26.076 --> 0:20:28.796 by choosing to put the big second headquarters in the 0:20:28.876 --> 0:20:33.236 richest city in America, Washington, DC, instead of seeing this 0:20:33.316 --> 0:20:36.796 as an opportunity to somehow spread spread the wealth a 0:20:36.876 --> 0:20:39.516 little bit by putting the company in the Saint Louis 0:20:39.596 --> 0:20:43.356 or Cleveland. These are all choices that the company made, 0:20:43.356 --> 0:20:46.716 and so I do think absolutely there are larger structural 0:20:46.756 --> 0:20:48.716 forces at work. In the book is not intended to 0:20:49.636 --> 0:20:54.236 somehow hold the Amazon Singly responsible for everything about the 0:20:54.236 --> 0:20:56.876 way we live and we are today. The company's partly 0:20:56.996 --> 0:21:00.396 is probably, as I said, the outset also an expression, 0:21:00.396 --> 0:21:02.836 a symptom of metaphor first sort of who we are now. 0:21:03.196 --> 0:21:06.076 But it is also partly an explanation and a cause 0:21:07.836 --> 0:21:20.276 We'll be right back. One of the pairings that you 0:21:20.316 --> 0:21:23.676 do a great job of highlighting in the book is 0:21:23.716 --> 0:21:27.116 the Washington, DC, with its tremendous economic growth in recent 0:21:27.156 --> 0:21:30.876 decades versus Baltimore just a short distance away. And you've 0:21:30.876 --> 0:21:32.716 written both for the for the Baltimore Sun and for 0:21:32.716 --> 0:21:36.396 the Washington Post, so you're ideally qualified to write about this. 0:21:37.116 --> 0:21:40.076 And you say that the disparity between the two is 0:21:40.436 --> 0:21:42.916 sort of like their different worlds, which I agree with entirely. 0:21:43.396 --> 0:21:46.236 You also say that it's unprecedented. And I sort of 0:21:46.236 --> 0:21:49.036 wondered about the unprecedented part because I immediately thought of Newark, 0:21:49.156 --> 0:21:52.316 New Jersey, and New York, New York, which I'm not sure. 0:21:52.356 --> 0:21:54.116 I mean, obviously, new works a lot smaller than New York, 0:21:54.156 --> 0:21:57.036 but they're pretty darned close together. And you know, Newark 0:21:57.116 --> 0:22:01.996 once had a thriving middle class and then didn't. And 0:22:02.036 --> 0:22:04.756 the disparity is really extraordinary because parts of New York 0:22:04.756 --> 0:22:06.756 are among the poorest places in the United States. Of course, 0:22:06.756 --> 0:22:09.356 so are some parts of New York City itself. Could 0:22:09.356 --> 0:22:11.756 also argue that, you know, East New York, taken as 0:22:11.756 --> 0:22:16.196 its own city, is extraordinarily disparate in its poverty relative 0:22:16.236 --> 0:22:19.236 to the unimaginable wealth of Manhattan, and you know, you 0:22:19.236 --> 0:22:21.596 can almost see one from the other. That's that's how 0:22:21.636 --> 0:22:23.796 close they are to each other. And it made me 0:22:23.836 --> 0:22:28.876 wonder again if this kind of just tremendous wealth disparity 0:22:29.876 --> 0:22:34.036 isn't kind of cooked into capitalism, or cooked into American capitalism, 0:22:34.036 --> 0:22:37.196 and maybe in a certain way long has been. That's 0:22:37.196 --> 0:22:38.756 not to excuse it. You know, it could be just 0:22:38.796 --> 0:22:41.076 as bad if it's been going on all the time. 0:22:41.116 --> 0:22:42.636 I mean, that'd be sort of like saying that, you know, 0:22:42.716 --> 0:22:46.196 racial injustice in the United States today is unpresented. It isn't. 0:22:46.236 --> 0:22:48.916