"The job losses are necessary to stabilize the course of a company that is a byword for online shopping, but that also needs to rethink its math, and come to terms with what it can and can’t afford."

My feeling is (like most major corporations), Amazon could have not paid the CEO $212 million dollars in lieu of laying off 18,000 people. Rank-and-file employees who are responsible for companies like Amazon and Walmart achieving their size and growth are the least valued. These founders and CEOs can still be obscenely rich, but reduce their salaries in order to protect workers' jobs - and pay them a living wage. But capitalist greed is the American way. That is, it will be until this entire system collapses. "Essential workers" are tired of being exploited and something's going to give very soon.