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Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

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Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#251

Post by gher-shyu3i »

fastball wrote: post #122
ChrisLomont wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>via inflation The poor tend to be net borrowers. The rich tend to be net lenders. Inflation makes the poor less in debt by lowering the real value of payback. Inflation helps borrowers.

Not sure this is true. A wealthy person might have a mortgage on a $1M home while the poor are more likely to be renting. To whit, US mortgage debt in 2020 was at $10T while the debt that the poor are more likely to have (Credit Card / Personal Loan / Auto Loan) is a combined $2.5T[1]. The wealthy are often highly leveraged in a variety of ways. Just look at some of the world's richest people – they generally fund th…

Yet people still think having a financial system based on usury is an acceptable idea. Quite baffling to say the least.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#253

Post by julienb_sea »

necovek wrote: post #189
shkkmo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why Booking.com had no money and needed a bailout is because they spent billions on stock buybacks. So when a company that does lots of buy backs later issues stock to pay bonuses, they might as well be directly using cash from the bailout. Edit: For concrete numbers, Booking.com spent 5.5 BILLION on stock buybacks in the first half of 2019.

Buybacks are not mentioned in this article, and you quote a number from 2019, which is, to the best of my knowledge, pre-pandemic. If you are saying that they foresaw the pandemic and government grants, well... Now, I wouldn't be surprised that they were doing that even in 2020, considering they were also taking out $3B in loans (in addition to $100M of subsidies) to maintain the share value or reinvesting in themsel…

Your economic worth is well defined by supply and demand. It is incoherent to say you are not "worth" the salary you are paid; if that were in fact the case, your salary would be lower, or you would eventually not have your job.

Is this fair? I would argue yes. Economic worth is a transparent situation, and it is rather clear that by positioning a career towards high demand work, anyone can improve their station in life. This is much more fair compared to some alternate systems where winners and losers are arbitrary, and opaquely determined by politics.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#254

Post by whatever1 »

deathcalibur wrote: post #91
whatever1 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or businesses can increase their unlivable wages. I am certainly willing to pay 30 cents more for my Big Mac so that the employee gets $15/h instead of 8

Isn't this mainly a game theory problem? If you don't force a minimum wage, then competitors will undercut each other. As much as we like to believe WE would go to the "more ethical place", unless the average person did then ultimately the undercutter will win. Now real life is not that black and white obviously. Costco pays a pretty decent wage allegedly but they make up for it in creative ways (like having the ware…

Labor cost at restaurants is rarely the determining factor for food prices. It is the real estate cost. But we don’t talk about it.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#255

Post by imgabe »

hugoromano wrote: post #12

Stop using marketplaces and book directly, these companies have no risks and take 16% to 30% commissions. If consumers start booking directly, recovery from the pandemic will be much faster.

This is the real lesson. I've learned this the hard way several times and I won't book through any 3rd party service anymore.

If there is a problem, like your flight gets cancelled, the book service will tell you they can't do anything and you have to talk to the airline. The airline will tell you they can't do anything because you booked through a booking service. Eventually, things get resolved but is 10x more stressful than they need to be.

If you're due a refund, like for a cancelled flight, the booking service will try to keep part of it to cover their fee. It took initiating a chargeback to get my money back in one instance.

Don't mess around with these services. I know airlines are not necessarily paragons of customer service either, but it's better to deal with one entity that is actually in charge of providing the service.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#256

Post by imgabe »

aeyes wrote: post #86
hugoromano wrote: post #12

Stop using marketplaces and book directly, these companies have no risks and take 16% to 30% commissions. If consumers start booking directly, recovery from the pandemic will be much faster.

This doesn't work anymore, the platform is also used for discovering places. I have seen this both as a traveller and working in the industry for a little while. If you are not on Booking.com you might as well close, 95% of our reservations came through Booking.com, the rest were other platforms, direct bookings and people walking in. As a traveller its extremely convenient. I have a single place to do everything, I…

Discover the place on the platform, then go to that place's website and book directly.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#257

Post by icoder »

e17 wrote: post #213
dalbasal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? European/Dutch & US rhetoric can be quite different... but the actual policies are not, at least not in a sense relevant to this issue. In fact, the US cut people a bigger piece of the covid relief money than did most european countries.

The US has even sent like $3k straight into the accounts of every citizen over the course of the pandemic! As far as I'm aware no other major country has done helicopter money like thia

Here that would take care of your health insurance for 2+ years (basically covering your health care for that time regardless of any misfortune that comes your way), or more than half a year of (University) tuition. In US? Probably not so much. Taking into account other welfare benefits, minimum wages, etc would also be interesting.

All I'm saying is to me it doesn't make sense to just look at that 3k and compare it to all other major countries without context.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#258

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Karunamon wrote: post #118
aeturnum wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The COVID relief has helped the rich in the same way that the mortgage tax deduction 'mostly' helps the rich[1]: the majority of the dollars go to aid wealthy people, despite the number of non-wealthy beneficiaries being much higher. [1] https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/358922-mortgage-interest...

That always struck me as an ass-backwards way of looking at taxes. $100 saved by someone near the poverty line is a big deal to them, $100 saved by someone making six figures is not near as much. The recent doubling of the standard deduction is probably one of the biggest (in terms of impact) tax cuts to the lower/middle earners (read: the vast majority of people) in a long time.

Someone making six figures still pays a lot more tax, in both net numbers and percentage (=tax brackets) than someone poor(er).

If we want to go down your route, 10% of all clothes in ShoppingCentre(TM) is unfair too, because someone buying an Armani suit saves more money than someone buying a $10 5pack of white tshirts.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#259

Post by novok »

aeturnum wrote: post #176
Karunamon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That always struck me as an ass-backwards way of looking at taxes. $100 saved by someone near the poverty line is a big deal to them, $100 saved by someone making six figures is not near as much. The recent doubling of the standard deduction is probably one of the biggest (in terms of impact) tax cuts to the lower/middle earners (read: the vast majority of people) in a long time.

I agree that poor-er people have much higher marginal utility for $1, but I think that observation supports this critique! The 'cost' of spending $1,000,000 on a wealthy person should be measured in terms of how much utility less-wealthy recipients would get out of that money. In the same way, your example with the standard deduction also, I think, supports this critique: either standard deduction is marginal once yo…

I'll be honest, the mortgage tax deduction doesn't deduct that much either as a proportion of income if you make a multi six figures income, much like the standard deduction.

For example, if you have a $1mm house, your interest on a $800k mortgage @ %2.7 APR is a ~$30k/yr interest deduction, which is in the same range as the standard deduction, representing around $15k/yr paid in less taxes. For those kinds of people, it's easier to just make $30k/yr more per year too. These people often live in states with an income tax, so they can't deduct their property tax anymore either, since it gets dwarfed by their state tax bill.

On a dollar aggregate, they of course get the most benefit from the deduction, because most middle & lower income americans don't pay a lot of taxes to get much of an aggregated benefit. But as a percentage of their own income, its not actually that much!

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#260

Post by Retric »

novok wrote: post #259
aeturnum wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that poor-er people have much higher marginal utility for $1, but I think that observation supports this critique! The 'cost' of spending $1,000,000 on a wealthy person should be measured in terms of how much utility less-wealthy recipients would get out of that money. In the same way, your example with the standard deduction also, I think, supports this critique: either standard deduction is marginal once yo…

I'll be honest, the mortgage tax deduction doesn't deduct that much either as a proportion of income if you make a multi six figures income, much like the standard deduction. For example, if you have a $1mm house, your interest on a $800k mortgage @ %2.7 APR is a ~$30k/yr interest deduction, which is in the same range as the standard deduction, representing around $15k/yr paid in less taxes. For those kinds of people…

The mortgage deduction on it’s own isn’t such a big deal but it suddenly makes a lot of things tax deductible which aren’t if you take the standard deduction.

The tax code is complex largely to enable such seemingly subtle interactions.

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