The compensation paid to employees represents a small fraction of the value generated from their contribution to the operations of the business. There is a significant Pay-Productivity gap and most of the economic upside is skewed towards upper management and operationally inactive shareholders who are already disproportionately wealthy when compared to average company employees.
For example, the median Amazon worker made $29,007 in 2020, according to the company's annual proxy statement while the company declared $33.364B of net income.
Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos earned 58 times more than the median worker in 2020, with an annual compensation of $1,681,840.
The company noted other major corporations have even higher CEO-to-worker pay ratios, with Walmart's at 983:1, and CVS at 434:1, according to Payscale.com.
Online retailers hoard their profits causing large amounts of capital to be taken out of the business operations only to be distributed to a select few who are already disproportionately wealthy and to whom it has far less socio-economic impact. On a macro-economic level the funds that could have been used for employee compensation when taken out of the economy decreases the spending power of average consumer and thus lowers the average standard of living.