I found a recent article in the Gazette about the arrival of several hundred jobs to the Valley as part of a new Amazon enterprise disturbing for a number of reasons.
One reason is the disconnect from the recent series in the same paper about the closings of businesses in Northampton, which were attributed at least in part to online competition from companies like Amazon. The opening of a Walmart, for instance, reduces countywide employment by 150 jobs, according to a 2008 article in the Journal of Urban Economics.
Many of the jobs provide by the likes of Walmart are subsidized by our tax dollars in the form of public assistance because of low pay and limited benefits.
Also, several days after that article appeared I learned of reports of a demonstration in Cambridge against Amazon’s plans to sell facial recognition technology to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the thugs that tear refugee children away from their parents and jail them.
It seems the arrival of Amazon to the Valley ignores the evidence that these mega-corporations, by their very nature, are designed to close local businesses and siphon wealth from our communities to distant corporate headquarters.
Dave King
Amherst