{"id":4246,"date":"2019-03-08T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T16:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=4246"},"modified":"2019-03-08T01:46:44","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T08:46:44","slug":"amazon-i-am-the-law-in-seattle-and-d-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2019\/03\/08\/amazon-i-am-the-law-in-seattle-and-d-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon: \u201cI am the law!\u201d (in Seattle and D.C)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Judge Dredd 1995)<\/a><\/p>\n

Rather than back down from the rising national and international antitrust scrutiny put upon Amazon for its continued acquisitions and online-sellers\u2019 growing dependence on the site, the company is preparing for a long fight. Amazon\u2019s in-house lobbyists hires have tripled in the last 3 years, an addition to the 13 lobbyist firms it employs. And while Amazon\u2019s total lobbying amount of $14 Million lags behind Google\u2019s $21 Million. Amazon\u2019s rate of investment into lobbyists is growing far faster than any other tech company, at 460% since 2012. Amazon\u2019s relationship with D.C has become very intense as the firm dukes it out with other web service providers over a $10 Billion Pentagon contract over who gets to run the department\u2019s online systems.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t just end there though as Amazon continues to move towards its efforts to amend the National Defense Authorization Act allowing it to become the primary online portal through which the US government would buy its supplies ranging from furniture, to coffee machines, to pens. A successful deal would add some $53 Billion, or about 4 Whole Foods acquisitions, to Amazon\u2019s revenue. When a single company becomes the bedrock of day-to-day government operations and purchasing, it is only reasonable to become concerned towards the just how much influence the company has over our economy and thus our government. Amazon has been hiring plenty of senior government lawyers, antitrust lawyers, and before mentioned lobbyists in order to influence and challenge the government’s coming pressure.<\/p>\n

Provided HQ2\u00a0brings in the estimated\u00a025,000 jobs; Amazon is\u00a0geared to become the\u00a0largest private employer in our nation’s capital. And there are few more influential lobbyists than job numbers. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs! The word alone gets civilians and politicians alike salivating. Jobs and their associated benefits of increased spending, business creation, and business attraction are currency in of themselves in private-to-government negotiations. And in this case it is the private firm that holds the power. This can seen in Seattle where when the city wrote up plans to tax firms making greater than $20 Million a year $500 dollars per person employed\u00a0 in order to help pay for addressing Seattle homelessness. Amazon would have to pay some $20 Million for its 40,000 workers and so threatened to cease the building of a 700,000 sq. ft. secondary office in Seattle. This potential loss of job growth was enough to make the city government surrender and kill any new corporate tax efforts. It turns out though that Amazon didn\u2019t need the new building, the company has just recently cancelled its construction and expansion plans in Seattle anyway. My point being, what\u2019s to stop such an exercise of power occurring in our nation\u2019s capital city? And if something similar does happen, at some point the American populace has to question just how powerful a private company should be allowed to be. At a certain point it seems like a company truly can threaten democratic rule.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/cybersecurity\/359514-monopoly-critics-decry-amazon-amendmen<\/p>\n

thttps:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/graphics\/2019-amazon-lobbying\/<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2018\/may\/15\/amazon-threatens-to-move-jobs-out-of-seattle-tax-council-vote-homelessness<\/p>\n

http:\/\/fortune.com\/2019\/02\/27\/amazon-tax-fight-seattle\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Judge Dredd 1995) Rather than back down from the rising national and international antitrust scrutiny put upon Amazon for its continued acquisitions and online-sellers\u2019 growing dependence on the site, the company is preparing for a long fight. Amazon\u2019s in-house lobbyists hires have tripled in the last 3 years, an addition to the 13 lobbyist firms it employs. And while Amazon\u2019s total lobbying amount of $14 Million lags behind Google\u2019s $21 Million. Amazon\u2019s rate of investment into lobbyists is growing far faster than any other tech company, at 460% since 2012. Amazon\u2019s relationship with D.C has become very intense as the Continue reading Amazon: \u201cI am the law!\u201d (in Seattle and D.C)<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[227,768,779,780,733,380],"class_list":["post-4246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-amazon","tag-antitrust","tag-d-c","tag-lobbying","tag-seattle","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4249,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4246\/revisions\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}