Bernie Sanders Becomes Jeff Bezos's Worst Nightmare

As the Amazon boss schemes to lay off 600,000 workers and replace them with robots, Sen. Bernie Sanders confronted Bezos and stood up for blue-collar workers.

There seems to be widespread denial among many Americans about the rapid technological changes billionaires are pushing and what they will mean for American workers.

Many people act like AI replacing workers is a distant idea, but it is already happening.

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Corporations, billionaires, and CEOs love the idea of being able to replace their human workers with technology that never needs a day off, gets sick, or requires wages and salaries.

Amazon’s owner Jeff Bezos is pushing a plan that would fire 600,000 Amazon warehouse workers and replace them with robots by 2027.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stood up for those workers and confronted Bezos in a new letter.

Sen. Sanders wrote to Bezos:

As you know, the pace of technological advancement in robotics and artificial intelligence has rapidly increased in just the past few years. These revolutionary technologies raise fundamental questions about who will benefit from these changes.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Amazon plans to replace over half a million jobs with robots. But that may be just the tip of the iceberg. Internal documents reviewed by the Times revealed that Amazon’s “far-reaching plan” is to automate 75 percent of its operations and that you have pushed your staff “to think big and envision what it would take to fully automate its operations.”

If Amazon succeeds on its massive automation plan, it will have a profound impact on bluecollar workers throughout America and will likely be used as a model by large corporations throughout America, including Walmart and UPS, to displace tens of millions of jobs.

Morgan Stanley recently estimated that Amazon’s efforts to replace warehouse workers with robots will save the company you founded between $2 billion and $4 billion a year starting in 2027. And that could be an underestimate. If Amazon’s estimates are correct, your company could save $10 billion by its aggressive move to robotics in just a couple of years.

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