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Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

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Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#291

Post by cleandreams »

bilbo0s wrote: post #265
TrackerFF wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End game is: GOP knows they're gonna lose the election. They want to hand the dems the worst economy possible. Then, 4 years down the road, they can start campaigning against "do-nothing-dems" and point to the horrible economy they had to start fixing.

The thing is, right now there seems to be a disturbing pattern of the world falling apart at the end of every GOP administration. This is problematic, because we still need the GOP so that we can vote out democrats when they mismanage the nation's affairs. We can't have one party, that's not safe for us as the citizenry for obvious reasons. At the same time, we can't have this, "the world ends", at the end of every G…

Single party rule in California has been an improvement. We have a functioning government. Kinda helps in a pandemic. When we got rid of our last Republican governor we paid down our debt and California entered this dire period with a big reserve. The notion that some sort of optimal condition is reached by trashing government is just a clueless and stupid idea.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#292

Post by chrisseaton »

mbrameld wrote: post #283
chrisseaton wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A 401k is just a means of investing your salary into the stock market pre-tax. If you plan to spend it when you're retired then it's a pension!

@chrisseaton I'll just go ahead and spoon feed it to you: pension in the context of this discussion means a defined-benefit plan contributed to solely by your employer. I'm surprised a Senior Staff Engineer at Shopify is struggling so hard to grasp the concept of context.

Well I went to look it up on Wikipedia and that's what I read. Not sure why there's such a big disconnect between what people expect you to think it means and what references tell you it means!

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#293

Post by mikepurvis »

seibelj wrote: post #211
huevosabio wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty grim path to follow. If States are to go bankrupt and subject to federal imposition of what debts must be paid, then it may push States to seek further sovereignity. An example being pressure to mint their currency. This is currently banned in the constitution, but if things get dire... they could simply ignore?

I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. This will limit the see-saw that occurs whenever the president switches parties.

Part of that tension is what's led to the the current situation with COVID— the federal government is where the CDC is, so there's an expectation that they're the ones providing centralized coordination and guidance for a measured, unified, national response.

If each state has its own version of the CDC (and other similar agencies), then that's fine, but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states whose agencies may have come to differing conclusions about what measures are needed.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#294

Post by adaisadais »

hnhg wrote: post #175
adaisadais wrote: post #170

In the long term I think this will be a solid move for both Uber & Lyft. The apparent economics of both businesses are relatively dire but the long term value prop is still as important as ever: they are generating the consumer data that will ultimately be used for self driving vehicles. This will allow both companies to trim the fat and (hopefully) regain the move fast mentality that is necessary for a startup. This…

Do they fully instrument their drivers vehicles? I'd imagine a lot of sensor data is needed for self-driving cars.

No, but they have a good understanding on routes and areas with high traffic. That data is going to be worth a fortune for the first fully autonomous taxi service.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#295

Post by sct202 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #256
wonderwonder wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very few companies that offer pensions. A 401k is not a pension. A pension is recurring money that is given to you upon retirement in perpetuity. A 401k is just a means of investing your salary into the stock market pre-tax. Your employer does not even have to contribute to it although many if they offer a 401k plan offer some form of match up to x%. My last employer offered to match my contributions up to…

> A 401k is just a means of investing your salary into the stock market pre-tax. If you plan to spend it when you're retired then it's a pension!

It is not. In America, if someone refers to a pension they are usually referring to defined benefit retirement plans, where you work X years and get $Y as a result of some formula and $Y is not related to market performance or how much money is in the pot.

This is significant because the risk is on the employer to make up any short falls if the pension fund is not able to pay $Y because of market performance or underfunding. A 401K shifts the risk to the employee. If it's not enough to provide $Y per year, that's the former employee's problem to deal with.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#296

Post by notyourday »

danso wrote: post #247
chrisseaton wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a 401(k) is a pension? Almost all companies offer a 401(k) for full-time employees.

A 401(K) is not a pension. The latter is funded entirely by the employer.

That's not the case. Pensions are not always funded entirely by employer. In quite a few cases the salary of a worker is reduced by a certain amount that is added to what is contributed towards a pension by an employer.

The difference between a pension and 401(k) type plan is that pension is a defined benefit plan and 401(k) type plan is a defined contribution plan.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#297

Post by bilbo0s »

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #260
bilbo0s wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your source has Massachusetts in the bottom 5, which lets you know right there it's laughable. Never lived there myself, but I know for a fact they're consistently in the top 5 of contributors to the federal kitty of all states both nominally, and per-capita. They get almost nothing back compared to what they put in. They are, arguably, the largest contributor to the nation if we're considering individual burdens. An…

You seem to think that Illinois, New Jersey and the lot must be in a great fiscal situation because they are "net contributors". As I explained in another comment, the money these states "receive" is mostly payments to individuals and has little meaning to their state budgets. Paying out a lot more to the federal government than they receive back does not mean these states are doing well and others poorly. It really…

>Paying out a lot more to the federal government than they receive back does not mean these states are doing well and others poorly.

Sigh.

Even if we look at a list of states by GDP, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts would still be perennial top 10 states. Even a list of states by GDP per capita, they all still are perennial top 10s. Per capita, I would bet that Massachusetts is number 1? (Maybe NY might edge them out? But I'd definitely bet they're number 1 or 2.)

Listen man, I don't even like Illinois. I hate Chicago. But facts are facts. They make a $#!t ton of money. And not the easy way doing financial engineering like New York. They do it the hard way with a huge diversified economy. Few states are like that. It's just a fact man.

Are you going to say that GDP is not a good indication of what a state produces?

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#298

Post by afterburner »

bilbo0s wrote: post #254
seibelj wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. This will limit the see-saw that occurs whenever the president switches parties.

I wouldn't. There is a comfort that comes from the instability of party switches. The parties don't cooperate, which means less can get done. Anything that puts anyone in an area where one of the gangs of politicians can actually do something, is to be avoided. We've learned that the hard way in Wisconsin. As a general rule, it's always best to split up your government as much as you can.

Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. The polarization in the US is likely a direct result of the massive deadlock.

Your strategy is one guaranteed to ruin your country.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#299

Post by matthewbauer »

seibelj wrote: post #211
huevosabio wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty grim path to follow. If States are to go bankrupt and subject to federal imposition of what debts must be paid, then it may push States to seek further sovereignity. An example being pressure to mint their currency. This is currently banned in the constitution, but if things get dire... they could simply ignore?

I would prefer that states have more power and we further decentralize authority away from the federal government. This will limit the see-saw that occurs whenever the president switches parties.

If we kept a common market, and common currency, you would see lots of failed states like we’ve seen with Greece in the EU.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#300

Post by nimbius »

wonderwonder wrote: post #121

Layoffs are mounting, alternative work is limited, and the unemployment systems in many states are either broken or running out of funding. Add the federal governments indicated desire to let blue states go bankrupt and we are looking at a good combination to enter a depression. Its a pretty sobering time.

>Layoffs are mounting

We just fired our cleaning crew this morning and cut hours for the entire shop floor. We are a mid-size, midwestern diesel repair shop similar to Western Truck Exchange. I used to just do valve work and major overhauls, now I carry garbage to the dumpster and fix the copiers in the front office too.

>alternative work is limited

non-existant out here really, but the real thing no one seems to be covering is crime seems up. We had two break-ins this month, one stole all our nitrile gloves, another took our air conditioner and a tool box.

>the unemployment systems in many states are either broken or running out of funding.

LOL this is a massive understatement. I applied a month ago for limited unemployment and got a voice message telling me the system was overloaded after I had completed the 40 minute call. the next day the line didnt even answer and the website was still down two weeks later. I finally stood in line for an hour at the unemployment office to be told I had to call the number "when it comes back up." Oh, those Trump Bucks? the $1200? Not me or a single person ive talked to has gotten that money.

>the federal governments indicated desire to let blue states go bankrupt

Just the blue ones? I'm in a red one and so far its starting to feel like we're all up shits creek. The local Sheriff wanted us to do oil changes on their patrol cars because we're part of a city contract for fire truck maintenance and they dont have the budget for regular service anymore. the motor pool for the county just cancelled their snow plow rebuilds, the county schools cancelled their bus maintenance and wanted to know if we would buy about 15 of them. The local water company asked if we could do their pump house generator maintenance on a net 120 or a payment plan.

>a depression.

I remember living out of my truck during the 2008 financial "downturn" and freezing all through November. I think the government may be vastly over-estimating the social credit they have with the people of this great nation if they think another round of "austerity" is going to sit right with us while all the banks get bailouts and the rich get richer.

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