Is Amazon delivering for everyone now?

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Seattle, Jul 24, 2019.

  1. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    Are you jealous of someone who inherited money? Should they not have inherited money? Did their family make "too much"?

    Why even bring that up in a thread about Amazon? Surely you aren't equating a local person who inherited some money with Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or any of the other 1 percenters.

    What should that specific person that you saw being interviewed be doing differently?

    Wages in jobs that are in demand are fine and with low inflation lower paying jobs that are less in demand go further. No one is guaranteed a job. No one is guaranteed a high paying job. No one area of the country is guaranteed that nothing will ever change.

    Are you just complaining about everything? Are you just complaining that things aren't the way they were at some point in the past? When has that ever been the case?

    I'm not sure that I've ever been in a Walmart. I may have walked though one years ago. Walmart has certainly had no negative impact of my life. I think I've ordered online from them once or twice. That's about it.

    I think the impact would be mixed on most communities. They have more customers than employees. I'm sure they have some employees that weren't particularly marketable in that community when Walmart showed up.

    If they were they wouldn't have gone to Walmart. You can argue that they had higher paying jobs but later went to Walmart because Walmart put smaller companies out of business.

    You can also argue that Walmart came into communities where they weren't being served well. Most people in smaller communities aren't hoping that Walmart will leave. Don't go to Walmart and they will leave.

    It seems that your only argument is that you wish everything was the same it was right after WWII. Things change. Everywhere.



    The Post Office has to adapt to change just like everyone else. I think they are doing a decent job at the moment. They were pushed and shoved into the customer service business after long having no competition.

    Amazon isn't one of their major problems. USPS is doing a decent job existing with UPS, Fed Ex and Amazon's influence at the moment.
    I feel like I am talking to Debbie Downer here. What is it you want exactly? Do you want Amazon to be put out of business?

    Are you arguing that you should automatically be provided a job? You don't need to have an education, or a car and the job that is to be provided to you, without any obligation on your part to move to where better paying jobs are, should pay more than the current job pays because you used to have a job that paid more?

    We aren't currently in an economy where there is massive unemployment. We aren't in an economy where there are no decent paying or even very good paying jobs. We are in an economy where there is a bigger gap between haves and have nots than there was in the recent past. That's legitimate to think about. It's also legitimate to do something about it other than waiting for high paying jobs to come to the lesser educated people unwilling to move to areas where the jobs are and who aren't willing to get more education or whatever is needed to get the job that you want.

    It seems you are arguing that people who have earned money, saved money, passed it down to their children, is the major concern for you.

    It's not a concern that people need to do anything to adjust to changing conditions just like everyone else in the world has had to do from time immemorial. That's just not realistic.

    It is realistic to want a system that is more to your liking. That's fair. It's more important to do something about ones personal situation whether society is organized in the best way for you or not.

    Most people are pretty well off by most historical standards. The picture I see being painted is that everyone is either "rich" or "poor" and if they are "richer than you" they owe you something.

    If everyone votes for higher taxes and if you can get undue corporate influence out of politics then voting will get a better safety net.

    It's not going to bring back jobs that automation has taken away. It's not going to bring back jobs are just aren't in demand anymore.

    You are never again going to see large numbers of people supporting a family of 5 with one wage earner working at the local t-shirt weaving factory.

    Part of the population is going to continue to require a higher education and the other part is going to require additional "technical or vocational" education, maybe more like the model in Germany.

    What is your solution and what exactly is your "demand" that isn't being met?
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Few are as lucky. Walmart's influence has pervaded the US.
    Funny you never get bored with the personal attack schtick.
    The famous eyesight of the willfully blind, blinkered by presumptions, imposed on the rest of us as if it were the weather.
    It's not just that it's irrelevant, that schtick, but that you are so offensively and inevitably wrong when you take off on it.

    Gratuitously parading ignorant wingnut presumptions of other people's motives for the twentieth time is not a fitting occupation for a grownup.
    - - -
    One obtains that knowledge by reading the post - it consists of a quote from the thread "about Amazon", and a response to the quote. The quote provides the "why", and the response is the "what". That general approach works for lots and lots of posts, especially mine. Try it.
    - - -
    As noted: Wages are not, in general, on average, "fine". Net worth among the ordinary citizenry has declined under wage stagnation, as has wellbeing and so forth, in the US.
    And no, they don't - wage inflation has lagged price inflation of necessities since Reagan; medical care and education being the most obvious examples, but housing and transportation almost equally oppressive. The crash of '08 remains largely unrecovered for most of the citizens of the US.
    As if calculated vandalism by the Republican Party were some kind of natural and unavoidable phenomenon.
    So the rich will have no complaint if taxes sufficient to repair the damage done by their political initiatives are levied against their income and wealth, the laws enforced against the poor are enforced against them as well, and their money is banned from political arenas along with their financial interests etc.
    They can't afford it - not in an economy structured around Walmart and Amazon and globalized/automated production, with inequality of wealth and income approaching that typical of feudal societies. More likely current trends will continue, with the educated needed by the wealthy imported from higher functioning educational systems or exported to by globalized manufacturing etc.
    Meanwhile: the models provided by more competently governed States are largely irrelevant to the US under Republican Party governance - (if what the population "required" were of any import the CEOs of most health insurance, drug manufacturing, fossil fuel, and agribusiness corporations would be in prison, their businesses confiscated by the State along with their ill-gotten wealth) .
     
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  5. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    How has Walmart's influence "pervaded" the U.S.?
    Regarding your personal attack comment, have you read any of your own posts?



    People still have jobs, houses are still being purchased in neighborhoods or the prices wouldn't still be going up and not that's not predominately due to "rich investors".

    Come out of the basement and walk around. The neighborhoods are full of houses with people in those houses. Sure, you can argue that the lowest wage jobs haven't keep pace with inflation. There isn't much inflation so that's not the problem. Those jobs just aren't economically viable anymore. It's called change. Complaining doesn't accomplish anything. People can always look around and found someone with similar circumstances to their own that are doing well and that adapted better. That's the better approach to take.

    There aren't as many lesser educated people being employed in farming anymore either so they have to adapt. There really isn't a better system so far. You aren't pointing out another system that exists elsewhere that you are in love with. You have to deal with reality.


    I get it, the sky is falling.

    The sky is falling.
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2019
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  7. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    3,266
    That is a really weird response to this:
    (bolding mine)

    What is directly inhibiting people from "adapting" is stated precisely within the passage to which you responded. C'mon.
     
  8. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    @ Seattle

    From your posting, I gather that you are a few years older than me. Consider the annual costs of post-secondary education from the time you finished high school, and compare with today's costs. Seriously, I went to an "elite" private uni that cost a shit-ton on a full ride scholarship--I was a "professional student," in the sense that I was actually attending school and profiting (financially) from it. (My mother made minimum wage, had a chronic debilitating illness--for which she ought to have been on disability, but couldn't afford to be--and I come from a long line of poor and uneducated folk, so I've definitely got problems with "inherited wealth.") That was actually a "thing," once upon a time. Today, annual tuition, fees, etc., at my former uni exceed one hundred grand--that's freakin' insane! Compounding this, as you note in your own post, it has become increasingly necessary to obtain some sort of post-secondary education n order to survive in this world. How the hell are poor people supposed to manage that?
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    No, it isn't. If you are a blacksmith and you continue to try to be a blacksmith you get poorer by the day. If you become a carpenter, your wages don't continue to go down. If you get a job at Burger King...now there's your problem.
     
  10. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    My father died when I was 3. My mother didn't remarry and I have no brothers or sisters. She was a school teacher and left teaching at a certain point to be a stay at home mom. Money was not rolling in at my house.

    Today tuition is more but I went to a private grad school (public university).

    There are many options, even today. Get a financial need full or partial scholarship, get an academic full or partial scholarship. Go to a community college for two years and then transfer to your local state university.

    Work on campus. Study something that pays well upon graduation. If you really can't justify it, don't go to college, become a plumber or electrician... although I think healthcare and public higher learning should be essentially free.

    Certain things have always seemed expensive, especially housing. You just have to take the plunge if that is what you want. Don't have kids, don't buy a new car, save, don't ignore reality...you aren't going to get any of that if your planned career is to sell hamburgers your entire life.

    There aren't as many "rich" people as you think. There are plenty of "poor" parents who saved a lot and left it to their kids. That's not a "habit" that needs to be penalized.
     
  11. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    It's not a matter of "seeming," inflation of costs for life's necessities has vastly exceeded inflation of wages--especially as regards lower wage/lower skilled jobs. This is pretty well established and amply documented. And straddling people with debt and privatization of the industries that provide the essentials only makes matters worse. It's simply much more difficult to do the things that you propose above, than it was for us 20/30/40 years ago.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    On a practical matter, it doesn't matter.
    If we are arguing politics, what to do about it, I probably agree with some of the outcomes that you are also for (I don't know for sure). If we are talking about what someone who is 20 or 30 needs to do, it's pretty much the same. You have to deal with the economy as you find it.

    I might not agree with your solutions if you are straight down the party line because economics isn't about politics and it isn't about emotion or what your gut feel is. I do consider myself liberal on most subjects.

    Inflation was 10% and higher when I was in grad school, right after I first got a car gas went from 30 cents a gallon to a dollar. There was a recession when I first started looking for a real job.

    I lived in a small town and moved to a large town and house prices seemed ridiculous for what I was making at the time, so I rented a small apartment.

    I know a 25 year old school teacher who lives in Seattle and she is buying a condo. I know 45 year old attorneys in Seattle who are renting apartments and still have roommates.

    It's never been easy. If you want to argue that it's harder now in certain areas, yes, I agree. It's also an apples to oranges comparison though. There is now the internet, smart phones, deregulated airlines, Amazon has brought prices down, Japanese car manufacturers did the same thing.

    Iceaura complains in one post about certain statistics not including everything (of course, nothing is perfect) and yet no one mentions those things I just mentioned. They aren't taken into account either. Computers are much cheaper as is most electronics. Lifestyles are generally better even though lower wages have stagnated and as I said inflation is low so that is a plus. Many more people have gone on foreign trips now.

    Or, you can just complain and post on Sciforums and wait for the "Republican Propaganda" to stop and for high paying jobs for the unskilled to suddenly appear.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No, I don't. That's not my complaint.
    Bullshit.
    That stuff is not only taken into account by the US government, it is weighted in such a way as to conceal the actual economic situation of most people - including, for example, the actual inflation rate experienced by American citizens.
    "Lifestyles" are not generally better.
    Debt, for example, is through the roof compared with more prosperous times. Net worth is significantly lower.
    Or for unions to reform, and wages for "unskilled" work (at least a third of US jobs) to be raised to a level that will support those willing to work hard in the common circumstances of such people in 1965.
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    Unions are part of the reason the "unsustainable good times" ended early. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say.

    Maybe try to reduce that "unskilled" number as well.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No, they weren't. Getting rid of them was.
    Not even the Korean and Vietnam Wars kicked the American economy in the teeth as hard as Reaganomics.
    And you can't set up a free, or competitive, or even market based, economy with Walmarts and Amazons and Microsofts and inherited wealth dominating it. Not for long, anyway.
    Jail them, deport them to Africa or some other place they "came from" (Republican Party adopted rhetoric), make their reproduction and increase as miserable and expensive as possible - might work.

    Start more wars, abet more spread of disease, shorten lifespans, privatize governance, build walls that only capital is allowed to cross - might work.

    The times of relative prosperity that followed bouts of the Black Plague in Europe are well known. They can be arranged again.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2019
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    You can't just make up a number for what you think "fair wages" should be (unionism) and then blackmail (strike) when you don't get your way.

    Companies either leave or can't profitably compete. If that wasn't the case, they would still be widespread. You can't tie the hands of a business like that.

    You can't talk about wanting a free market and then you take the free market out of things.

    You can't eliminate the companies who become successful. That makes no sense at all. There are monopoly laws but they aren't there for natural monopolies and in tech there really aren't monopolies (someone can always have a better idea).

    Regarding lower skilled people, you can provide good healthcare for everyone, educate everyone according to whatever they are capable of. If they are less intellectually capable there are still trades that pay quite well.

    Mandating high wages for jobs that don't generate those kinds of profits isn't sustainable. In other posts you have (I believe) argued that it isn't an employee's fault that a business isn't making a lot of money and that the business should just be shut down.

    Now you are arguing that we should keep those businesses around just for the lower skilled.

    Why not keep the hamburger jobs for kids and students and those in transition and not try to make them support a family of 4?

    Retail jobs are effectively for those not trying to support a family on one paycheck.

    Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, home remodelers, government workers all do well. Why not help people go in that direction instead of talking about tearing apart Amazon, Microsoft, etc. and paying McDonald's workers more than they generate in revenue?

    You know you're losing it when you keep repeating "Republican Party Propaganda" and now introducing...the Black Plague.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    But you can make up a silly, fictional description of how and why labor unions work, and post it on a forum like this. It's done all the time.
    Of course you can. But it's called "socialism", when you do it. So there's a problem, see.
    How? Do you plan to forbid people from taking what jobs they can get?
    Yep. So don't describe the conversion of the American economy into such jobs as some kind of economic recovery.
    I am? Where?
    Great idea.
    Such a program would start with tearing apart Amazon, Microsoft, WalMart, etc., of course - the economic inequality created by such organizations hollows out the job market for the trades - and recreating the labor unions that produced those skilled tradesmen.
    And not "privatizing" the schools and the Post Offices and so forth.
    So? Neither is building a First World economy on wages and working conditions that don't support a decent life.
    (Are you trying to claim that Amazon and MacDonalds don't generate high profits?)
    You need to read past the first chapter of the Econ 101 textbook.
    Especially if you are looking at the current US economy and claiming that there are no monopolies in tech.
    (Do you really believe that Microsoft enjoys its current dominant status because no one has come up with better ideas?)
    Why in hell do people think the skilled trades are for the less "intellectually capable"?
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    You know you have lost it when you keep repeating Republican Party propaganda.

    Did the part about the Plague confuse you?

    Perhaps a review of the context:
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    Or you can just make up a silly comment like that. You do it all the time.

    What's the problem? Our existing government programs are "socialism".

    I don't plan to forbid people. It's a market economy, remember? They don't have to stay at those jobs or try to convert those jobs to something that is economically not viable.

    The government is better placed to provide certain basic benefits to everyone and businesses are better placed to compete in the market place.

    You think tearing apart successful companies is the way forward to a great economy? Amazon doesn't currently generate high profits. Are you aware of the profit margins of any companies? I'm not confident about your level of awareness in general.

    Because that's generally the way it works out?
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    When they are monopolies etc, that or very heavy regulation is the only way forward.
    If free market is the best way to go, in the situation, that would mean tearing them apart. Otherwise, heavy regulation can serve.
    Then how did you plan to reserve those jobs for the transients and the kids?
    But they do, and they will, for reasons apparently invisible to you.
    You aren't linking the right poster, and you are making silly mistakes in the course of repeated attempts to attack personally.
    Is that your idea of "awareness"?
    Or is this it:
    https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ax-bill-2018-no-taxes-despite-billions-profit
    https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazo...hes-wall-street-expectations-holiday-quarter/

    Trusts and monopolies and monopsonies and the like are incompatible with free markets. Inherited wealth is incompatible with a capitalistic free market economy - it has to be limited, severely, if the effects of wealth concentration are to be avoided.

    And so forth.
     
  21. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    It's not a "planned" economy. The wage tends to mean the lower paying jobs are for transient workers.

    Amazon isn't a monopoly and if it were a monopoly it would be a natural monopoly (temporarily due to a better idea and execution). It's not however.

    Record profits for Amazon is any profits at all. Look at their profit margins, the in quarters when they have profits. They are low.

    I'm not linking the wrong poster. I'm trying to educate you. Hysterically talking about large revenues means nothing, even large dollar amount profits means nothing without talking about the profit margins.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    You linked Tiassa to quotes of my posts. Then you told me I was not being "aware" of stuff.
    Hysterically?
    I wasn't talking about large revenues, hysterically or otherwise. I was posting links to records of large profits. You said Amazon did not generate "high profits". You were wrong.
    If you want to try to bail yourself out by talking about "profit margins", feel free. But leave off the bs "hysteria", and any other wingnut word whose meaning you haven't looked up in the dictionary.
    That doesn't explain how you planned to reserve those jobs for "transient workers". That was your justification for getting rid of unions and minimum wages, remember?
     
  23. Seattle Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,849
    In a market economy I don't need to "reserve" them. They will be there for those people. No one else can afford to stay there.

    Absolute dollars mean nothing. Three hundred million dollars is a "large profit" by your definition even if were were talking about a country the size of the U.S. where that would be one dollar for each individual.

    I'm sure you have had no economics courses. You simply have the Democratic Party Propaganda talking points.
     

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