Amazon advocates for new wage policy that would drive their competition out of business

Amazon has been advocating in favor of a federally mandated $15 minimum wage, which they are already paying and can afford, and which many say could bankrupt many small businesses.

"Amazon, which already pays its employees a minimum of $15 an hour, urges the federal government to force that pay scale on its smaller competitors, in full-page newspaper ads."

Amazon has been wildly successful in general, and that success has only been multiplied since the onset of the pandemic, when so many people switched to buying their goods online. It is estimated that Amazon now employs as much as 1.2 million people in the US alone as of the date of this writing.

The company itself has a net worth that approaching $2 trillion, and is the company with the second-highest value in the US, matched only by Apple. Its owner and founder, Jeff Bezos, is currently ranked as the richest man in the world.

According to the Financial Times, small businesses are in deep trouble in the US in 2021, due primarily to the forced business closures, which sent so many businesses into early bankruptcy and failure. These closures did not affect the large retailers at even close to the same rate, and those bigger companies were able to reap the benefit of the government's demolishing of their competitors.

"This slice of the economy — which consists of 4.7 million establishments with 12.6 million employees — has been under pressure for decades, first from the rise of 'big-box' stores such as Walmart, and, more recently, from the almighty Amazon.

"Now economists fear that the economic shock of coronavirus will prove ruinous for tens of thousands of mom-and-pops, with dire consequences for not only the businesses affected but also the independent, entrepreneurial streak that is hard-wired into the nation's psyche."