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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

#331

Post by selimthegrim »

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…

There’s plenty of financial engineering in Chicago last I checked.

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

#332

Post by corporateslave5 »

orky56 wrote: post #261
corporateslave5 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. The fed printed so much money and dropped rates so low, there’s a massive excess of capital looking for business opportunities. Monetary policy is what is driving the economy, and it’s making this bubble bigger than ever. You can’t ignore economics and cheap money. We will have ten more we work like companies.

Rates are low now but it will take time for this to get reflected in VC/PE/corporate dollars to invest. The addressable market of consumers/enterprises that are willing to spend money on non-essential products/services is down and will drop further since budgets are being tightened and fat is being cut. The 2008 unicorns that were born out of the last recession had to provide oversized returns to investors based on t…

Not really. You are underestimating the magnitude of money injected into assets.

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

#333

Post by bsder »

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 can't have one party, that's not safe for us as the citizenry for obvious reasons.

Why not? If one party doesn't actually want to govern, kill it.

In addition, the Democrats are hardly a unified bloc. And, if the Democrats, themselves, split into 2 parties because they have buried the Republicans, that would solve your problem, no?

California is your counterexample. Excising the Republican party like a tumor made things a LOT better.

I see burying the Republican party as a patriotic duty at this point. It is so rife with corruption from Russian and Chinese infiltration that it should be regarded as a foreign enemy.

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

#334

Post by jgwil2 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #192
ForHackernews wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, pension benefits were one of the main benefits unions fought for (and won) so that their members could have an income in their old age and retire. Today, very few workers still have pensions, but the few that do tend to be those represented by a union. In many states, this includes government employees: teachers, firefighters, police, etc.

> Today, very few workers still have pensions I've never seen a professional job that didn't include a pension - certainly not in the tech industry.

Why are you going all up and down this thread trying to pedantically show that people are using the term "pension" slightly differently to Wikipedia's definition? It's not contributing anything to the discussion.

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

#335

Post by eldavido »

Shivetya wrote: post #304
mikepurvis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

People need to understand, the value of a 100% of final-salary pension for people earning 100K retiring at 55-60 is likely millions. It's even worse with the games people play with PTO and other benefits (where they bump pay 20-30% in their last year to get that pension benefit for the rest of their lives).

Look at the average retiree's 401(k) balance for comparison and it gets pretty clear how unfair this is. There's a huge political opportunity for someone to tell this story properly and get a restructuring done.

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

#336

Post by selimthegrim »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #314
cwhiz wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McConnell is a shrewd negotiator so I assume he is using the bankruptcy position to win concessions on rescuing the oil and energy industry. Otherwise there will be a handful of Republican states facing their own bankruptcies. Trump is just a spiteful moron but not even he would let New Mexico, Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas all fail.

No, but he'd let New Mexico fail (it's blue) and ram through a bailout for the rest out of political patronage, and the legislature would go along with it, since the Democrats seem to be allergic to actually opposing Trump policies.

Is Louisiana blue enough for him? No wonder JBE is hightailing it to the White House to kowtow.

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

#337

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

lonelappde wrote: post #329
Shivetya wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

Should the Federal government return tax money it took from the people of New York to give to the people of Kentucky? Why or why or why not? The Federal government can easily tax /discredit those wealthy pensioners to fund unemployment insurance, if they do choose.

It's amazing that the US Federal government seems to be able to provide trillions of dollars in liquidity on a moment's notice to anyone and everyone - except the states.

Airlines? Of course. Junk bond investors? Sure, why not? States? "We're not going to bail out Democratic-run states."

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

#338

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#339

Post by luckydata »

stephencoyner wrote: post #19

This seems like a great time for Amazon or Google to buy Lyft. Amazon could bundle rides with package deliveries and get the pre-existing driver and passenger network from Lyft. Lyft was actually telling drivers to work with Amazon when the pandemic started (1). Waymo could take Lyft’s aggregated rider demand. They already have a partnership to transfer autonomous rides from Waymo to Lyft during bad weather situation…

> This seems like a great time for Amazon or Google to buy Lyft.

and buy what exactly? Uber and Lyft aren't very valuable businesses, especially as their mythical ability to corner the supply (drivers) hasn't materialized at all.

IMHO both of those companies are destined to shut down or survive in a much more limited fashion, as unicorns they make no sense.

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

#340

Post by Gibbon1 »

corporateslave5 wrote: post #173
herdodoodo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fed printed so much money and dropped rates so low, there’s a massive excess of capital looking for business opportunities Learn about monetary policy is and how the Federal Reserve controls the money supply before you make opinions on the matter.

Educate me then, why am I wrong?

You aren't wrong. Most of the central banks loans went into inflating the price of stocks, bonds, and real estate. Inflation in those assets has been running over 10% a year. While goods, services, and wages has been running 2% per year. That's all due to central bank operations.
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