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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

#301

Post by notyourday »

mikepurvis wrote: post #293
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.

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…

> 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

Commerce Clause of the US Constitution stands in a way. It (the Commerce Clause) has been a bedrock of the federal government pushing through progressive policies onto the states.

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

#302

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

wonderwonder wrote: post #270
Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This spending constitutes things like social security checks and the upkeep of military bases and other facilities. It is not relevant to state budgets. And even if all the money went to a state general fund, the worst performers would not be significantly different.

In 2014 the federal government provided 40.9% of Mississippi's state budget. How is that not relevant to the state budget? As a percentage of state budget being provided by the federal government, 13 of the top 15 recipients are red states. https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_aid_to_state_budgets

Very simple answer: blue states have bigger budgets so the % of aid they receive from the government seems smaller.

The Federalist has done an analysis of federal aid per resident:

>Against a national average of $1,935 in intergovernmental spending per American, red states receive just $1,879. Blue states get considerably more, at $2,124 per resident. Purple states see the least of their money returned to them per capita, at just $1,770. Measured in this way, the blue states are getting quite a bit more than the red or purple.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/17/red-states-tax-takers-b...

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

#303

Post by danans »

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…

> We just need for the reps to stop running the nation into the ground when it's their turn

If you think that is what the Republicans are doing each time it's their turn, not sure there is much hope in changing that pattern.

After all, they clearly think they are not running the nation into the ground when it's their turn.

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

#304

Post by Shivetya »

mikepurvis wrote: post #165
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.

There was an interesting piece in this week's Atlantic on the motivation for having states declare bankruptcy: "Under the Constitution, bankruptcy is a power entirely reserved to the federal government. An American bankruptcy is overseen in federal court, by a federal judge, according to federal law. That’s why federal law can allow U.S. cities to go bankrupt, as many have done over the years. That’s why the financia…

His unwillingness to not solve the state's pension problems should be applauded. the amount of unfunded liabilities is in the hundreds of billions of dollars and approaching a trillion if it has not passed that already. This all happened because the number of public servants who are pulling in over 100k has skyrocketed... 100k+ in retirement.. with millions past 50k! Think about that 50k in pay plus medical.

These pensions and their medical side are the reason why the ACA did not touch golden medical plans because the vast majority are in this area along with certain other larger private pension systems. By the way, the House silently dropped that provision entirely from the ACA in 2019 so they any taxation of them is gone.

My favorite story to fall back on is provided below... and there are other states worse off. This type of largess should never have been allowed nor should the tax payer bail them out. People bemoan the pay of executives at private companies, well guess who is right up there in many cases.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/10/26/ill...

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

#305

Post by afterburner »

bfrog wrote: post #182

If they are really letting go of their hard found engineering talent its a serious signal that they don't believe this to be a short term issue. Assuming the highly paid engineers around the bay took a good deal of effort, and significant cost to hire.

Maybe they're scared and taking rash actions.

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

#306

Post by mbrameld »

chrisseaton wrote: post #292
mbrameld wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@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!

The reference does include the meaning as applied in this thread, you just have to read past the first couple sentences. You do understand that the same word can have different meanings depending on the context, right?

Edit: because I think you just won't be able to get there on your own, look under the heading "Defined benefit plans" on the Wikipedia page for Pension. If you need help defining the words in that section let me know, my spoon is ready to feed Chris Seaton, the Shopify Senior Staff Engineer that doesn't understand context.

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

#307

Post by kccqzy »

cik2e wrote: post #58
bearjaws wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber eats is the biggest delta between the two companies, I suspect they still will need to cut staff though.

Nah, that’s not it. I drove for both in a major city in the months before the virus and outside of peak hours Lyft always has substantially longer pickup times. This is based on a few hundred rides for each company. This means that they have fewer passenger per driver, so the biggest delta is a smaller user base. Once the lockdown began Lyft rides basically evaporated overnight, while Uber was still going strong at c…

I believe Lyft generally has a slightly wealthier clientele: more middle-class people choosing not to drive. Uber has more reach in the lower ends of the market. So when the stay-at-home orders flooded in, these middle-class people all stayed at home, while Uber was still serving essential workers.

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

#308

Post by jshevek »

afterburner wrote: post #298
bilbo0s wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things.

This opinion requires a great deal of justification.

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

#309

Post by SauciestGNU »

bilbo0s wrote: post #207
wonderwonder wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but look at the recent protests. Armed men protesting state level governments openly egged on by the whitehouse and organized by rich political dark money.

Armed men with guns were militarily consequential during the Civil War. Today, they are a danger only to civilians.

Small arms and asymmetrical tactics have quite substantive results in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq. Let's not write off potential danger because of lopsided resourcing.

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

#310

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

bilbo0s wrote: post #297
Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Their high GDP per capita is not going to fix their insolvent pensions or runaway spending. Illinois has a BBB credit rating (just above junk!). Are you really just going to ignore that because of high GDP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_credit_...
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