Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#241

Post by groby_b » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

maest wrote: post #131

umeshunni wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the California solution to everything - tax it.

Honest question - should taxes be abolished?

Honest answer: No, because that would mean to return to Hobbesian world.

Taxes are a way to pay for communal goods. We don't pay enough of them - our obsession with cutting them is part and parcel of the disastrous response to SARS2-CoV.

I very much like having a government that can step in during emergencies and distribute the load. I like living in a society where we care about other people to.

Abolishing taxes is strictly "me first, fuck the rest". I suggest people who like this approach try living in Somalia for a while, that's their desired end state.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#242

Post by groby_b » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #154

prostoalex wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which area are you in? Every large retail store is open (so far) in Southern California, with most retailers' inventory being purchased at full retail prices. I am not sure why the retailers don't switch to curbside-pickup model exclusively, instead preferring hordes of customers roaming around every single morning, but from what I hear, Instacart and store-specific delivery programs are overwhelmed.

They are open in Southern California, but running out of basics fast. I noticed a complete lack of certain produce, milk, eggs, bread, as well as the oft meme'd paper products. Every morning I go to the grocery store in my neighborhood looking for toilet paper and every morning there is some new staple nearly out of stock. I still have a few rolls left, and amazon seems to have a few remaining in stock, so things are…

The social contract didn't "evaporate" - it was never followed by the richer half, and at some point, people got tired of being shat upon.

I suggest we start addressing inequalities and maybe all cut back a bit and share the burden, instead of hoarding now and then being surprised that the people unable to hoard object to that idea when nothing is left for them, at all. That means taking care of the working class and the homeless, too.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#243

Post by toast0 » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #201

opportune wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a buyback worse than a dividend? Both are a form of delivering ROI, it just happens that one is better for shareholders due to the tax system. In fact if airlines had actually reinvested that money, they would be even more fucked up than they are now. At least now they have free cash flow to make a temporary drop in revenue hurt less. Reinvesting money in the corporate world often involves converting cash flow…

I don't understand who buybacks are better for. A dividend would've returned money to all the people who held onto shares and wasn't paying attention to how much they should be selling off to capture the buyback and just had all the gains wiped out...

In the absence of taxes, a buyback is equivilent to a dividend with automatic reinvestment.

It's better as a shareholder in many cases to be able to control when you recognize the gain from the return to investors.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#244

Post by themagician » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

Amazon is only as good as it’s suppliers. If people can’t get to work to make things, Amazon doesn’t get new stock and they have nothing to sell you.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#245

Post by themagician » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #133

cactus2093 wrote: post #19

Amazon seems pretty constrained by supply to me right now. Everything I have looked for to stock up on from them due to the current conditions (alcohol wipes, nonperishable food, etc) is sold out. But maybe they have scaled up supply more than I realize and workers are becoming more of a bottleneck than inventory. Even if everything was in stock I'd expect my overall online purchases to decline in the next few months…

> Everything I have looked for to stock up on from them due to the current conditions (alcohol wipes, nonperishable food, etc) is sold out. Do you have any idea what the full industrial capacity of the American economy is? These type of basic items are all dead-simple to manufacture, and highly unlikely to run into supply-chain interruptions. I guarantee you that once Americans get the full on prepping instinct out o…

If we move to a lockdown the factories are churning 0%.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#246

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #236

opportune wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Just like it's worse for everybody that I try to max my investments in my 401k before contributing to after tax accounts.

That tax incentive was set up deliberately. It's socially valuable for people to have retirement savings, so the rest of us are happy to subsidise you in that saving. Buybacks are an accident of tax law and ought to be taxed the same way as dividends.

> Buybacks are an accident of tax law and ought to be taxed the same way as dividends.

The problem is it's really the other way around -- reinvested dividends should be taxed like buybacks, i.e. taxed when the purchased shares are sold.

By contrast, taxing buybacks like current dividends would create a really grisly incentive for corporations to hoard a giant pile of money, since that would be the remaining way to defer the tax. This is already what international corporations do with offshore profits because of a similar incentive to defer corporate income tax, and it's a huge problem.

We have a policy of allowing people to avoid tax on investment gains until the investments are cashed out -- this is what a 401k is all about. We might as well make it consistent across the board so it stops creating all of these perverse incentives. (That would reduce the amount of tax collected, but it would also remove most of the justification for taxing capital gains at a lower rate than earned income, so changing both at once would about balance out.)

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#247

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

ksec wrote: post #219

opportune wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or face a total financial system meltdown if the fix is poorly implemented. I think the simplest solution is for the fed/government to simply give everybody cash, since the root of the problem is that a lot of people have temporarily lost their incomes due to their jobs being essentially banned in response to the pandemic (eg a lot of people in retail outside of supermarkets/food). Anything that involves nonpayment i…

That is actually a great argument. Directly injecting liquidity to citizens. At roughly 200M adults in the US, $2000 per adults would be $400B. Except $2000 doesn't really last long.....

[deleted]

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#248

Post by sudhirj » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

harikb wrote: post #199

aswanson wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liz Holmes inadvertently stumbles upon the cure, vindicating her reputation.

She will be given a clue for the cure, she stumbles upon it, but nobody believes her this time. Time stone is used to rewind all the way back to 2003 in a third attempt

The Time Stone can't be used to "rewind" anything. Did you not listen to the 10 minutes of exposition by multiple characters on the truth about how time works?

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#249

Post by positr0n » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

kevindong wrote: post #202

crazygringo wrote: post #12

I mean, here in Brooklyn you literally cannot order AmazonFresh. No delivery slots no matter how far in the future you scroll. And it's been this way for at least a couple of days now. So makes sense.

When Amazon is the seller, I can't find any available timeslots in my part of Brooklyn. When Whole Foods (basically Amazon, but not technically) is the seller, there's one availability for 6pm tomorrow.

Interesting, same here in Dallas.

Re: Amazon to hire 100k warehouse and delivery workers

#250

Post by system2 » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #194

WalterBright wrote: post #64

I suspected Amazon would do well in this crisis, and this development confirms it. My elderly neighbors, for example, are now ordering their groceries online and having them dumped on their doorstep.

> I suspected Amazon would do well... Until people camping at home start getting sick, with their common factor being Amazon Fresh delivery.

Unlikely but plausible. I rather order raw stuff from amazon and do my sanitizing rather than order food from an unknown kitchen, delivered by a driver who was in contact with god knows how many people. Either ingredient delivered home, or I will go out and buy things myself which is probably riskier.