Enormous selection, good prices, quick delivery, the safety and comfort of shopping from home \u2013 what\u2019s not to like about Amazon?<\/p>\n
Mike Gousha put that question to Alec MacGillis, in an \u201cOn the Issues with Mike Gousha\u201d program posted on the Marquette Law School\u2019s web site on April 21, 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot not to like,\u201d MacGillis answered. He spells out what he means \u2013 as well as the reasons so many people love Amazon \u2013 in a broad and deep look at the company and its impact in his new book, \u201cFulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America.<\/em>\u201d And he described much of what he found in researching the book in his conversation with Gousha, Marquette Law School\u2019s distinguished fellow in law and public policy.<\/p>\n MacGillis, now a senior reporter for ProPublica<\/em>, said in years of political reporting across the United States for several news organizations, he grew increasingly concerned about the way the country was being divided into places that were thriving, mostly on the east and west coasts, and places that were being left behind throughout much of the rest of the country. He said that in many ways, the two economic and social cultures didn\u2019t understand each other and were growing more distant from each other.<\/p>\n That led him to undertake the new book. He described to Gousha how work at Amazon is isolating and physically demanding, even as the minimum wage at the company is $15 an hour. The jobs often are replacing manufacturing jobs or retail jobs that have been lost since the recession period in the late 2000s, and the vitality of many places around the US has waned. \u201cThere\u2019s a cost to the social fabric\u201d in \u00a0many communities, MacGillis said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more that we make that move to the one-click life, the more those other options fall away,\u201d MacGillis said, describing how commercial and cultural life is being changed. There is a curse that comes with the bigness and convenience of Amazon, he said.<\/p>\n MacGillis contrasted places such as the wealthy Washington, D.C., area, where small rowhouses are valued at high prices, with Baltimore, several dozen miles away, where poverty is so high and many rowhouses are being torn down. He talked about places such as Seattle, where \u201cgentrification\u201d doesn\u2019t suffice to describe the changes connected to Amazon, and Nelsonville, a small town in southeastern Ohio that has lost much of what were once its strengths.<\/p>\n Amazon has boomed during the pandemic period, adding about 400,000 jobs in the US, bringing its total work force to about a million. It is second only to Walmart among private employers in the US.<\/p>\n MacGillis said that only the federal government is a threat to Amazon\u2019s growth now. That is a big reason why the company is locating its second headquarters in the Washington area, he said, so it can aim for \u00a0warm relations with people who might be involved in deciding whether to rein in Amazon.<\/p>\n He said calls to take action to deal with Amazon\u2019s power have more appeal in Congress than many realize, but such calls are creating divisions between Democratic reformers who regard the company as a monopoly and many lower income or working class Democratic voters who use Amazon a lot and like it.<\/p>\n MacGillis said he had hoped that the COVID-19 period would bring trends that would help correct some of forces dividing America between haves and have-nots. But, he said, he does not see that happening. Unless huge companies such as Amazon disperse the locations where they have huge positive economic impacts, \u201cI don\u2019t see any reason why the concentration (of wealth) won\u2019t keep getting worse. . . . You\u2019re going to end up with this bifurcation, these disparities growing and growing.\u201d<\/p>\n