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1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

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Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#151

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

echelon wrote: post #139
jhallenworld wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy, the new quote: "What's good for Amazon, is good for America." When GM was "good for America", we pretty much lost public transportation, so what are we losing now?

- Book stores (which were pretty awesome, actually) - Open source - Concentration of compute resources - American cinema (well, I suppose Disney has a hand in this too)

>Book stores

Ebooks killed book stores. Amazon was one of the many involved in that process. Like Pitney Bowes holding on to the printer industry for dear life. And stores sucked cause they charged ridiculous amounts of money for a glorified paperweight. Might as well scour Goodwill.

>Open Source

We live in a time with the most available and easily discovered open source code in the history of the world. This is nothing but false.

>Concentration of computer resources

Which is not a bad thing.

>American Cinema

That has been dominated well before Amazon came around.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#152

Post by robertlagrant »

echelon wrote: post #139
jhallenworld wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy, the new quote: "What's good for Amazon, is good for America." When GM was "good for America", we pretty much lost public transportation, so what are we losing now?

- Book stores (which were pretty awesome, actually) - Open source - Concentration of compute resources - American cinema (well, I suppose Disney has a hand in this too)

How are we losing open source?

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#153

Post by pwillia7 »

shakezula wrote: post #90
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are su…

There's 152 other families to work as scabs for each striking worker. I worry all of this won't be resolved until the next State level paradigm shift, like when the world mostly did away with kings and queens for liberalism.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#154

Post by tshaddox »

jefftk wrote: post #120
shakezula wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, no a startup can't replace Amazon without themselves having all of those rents, and insurances, and reporting accountants and lawyers. Amazon has a logistics network that rivals the U.S. military's right now. You can't just "displace & disrupt" that with a trendy San Francisco office.

Why wouldn't you have said the same about Amazon and B&N in 1994?

I don’t think the previous commenter was saying that no startup could disrupt Amazon, but that no startup could disrupt Amazon simply by spending less time on tax paperwork.

Amazon didn’t disrupt B&N by spending less time on tax paperwork. They disrupted them by changing essentially every fundamental piece of how they conducted their business.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#155

Post by lordnacho »

seattle_spring wrote: post #141
traceroute66 wrote: post #6

Rant time.... ;-) What's with these stupid "X in Y" numeric expressions that the dumb media insist on continuing to heap on the world ? Why not consistently use a standardised means of comparison. Like, I don't know .... percent. Or "X in 100" if you think your newspaper/blog/website readership are too dumb to know what the % symbol means. The clue's in the name FFS ... per... cent ... that's what its there for !

Why is "1 in X" so much worse than "X in 100"?

Every time X goes up 1 in the first example, the amount that's actually changed is different. In the second, it's the same.

I've eaten 1/5 of the pizza. Now 1/4. Now 1/3. Slices are all different sizes.

I've eaten 20% of the pizza. Now 40%. Now 60%. Slices are the same.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#156

Post by lotsofpulp »

hogFeast wrote: post #122
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

I come at this from the other point of view: I used to work as an equity analyst (analysing companies), and I ended up gravitating towards retail. The issue, as you imply, isn't only that Amazon is very good but the experience at many physical retailers is very poor. It is difficult to simplify this down to one thing imo. Managers in physical retail are unusually bad. Retail used to be ludicrously profitable, so most…

When was retail ridiculously profitable? The charts for public retail companies going back 2 or 3 decades show sub 5% profit margins.

The weakness of retail is that it has a low barrier to entry and does not provide much more utility compared to competitors. Quality control and branding and the internet make obtaining information about good products and being able to trust them much easier than in decades long ago.

Some retail companies with upper middle class clientele can afford a little bit of extra margin, but it is a small portion of the population with that kind of disposable income. You put a Target/Costco/Nordstrom/Home Depot/Best Buy/IKEA/Apple/Trader Joes somewhere, and a handful of other stores and you basically have it all covered.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#157

Post by shakezula »

pwillia7 wrote: post #153
shakezula wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are su…

There's 152 other families to work as scabs for each striking worker. I worry all of this won't be resolved until the next State level paradigm shift, like when the world mostly did away with kings and queens for liberalism.

The vast majority of those other workers won’t be flexible enough to be able to just drop and work for Amazon.

This is a problem inherent to neoliberalism, you’re right, I’m just not sure I’d agree that it requires a nation state level shift in politics to make Amazon pay their fare share in taxes and wages.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#158

Post by DougN7 »

echelon wrote: post #125
chubot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Barnes And Noble was also a significant computer user in the 80’s and 90’s. They put a lot of local bookstores out of business with superior inventory, prices, and generally being data driven. Then they were one of Amazon’s first casualties!

The pattern is that efficiency increases and hyperscale fell the previous incumbent. If the pace of innovation doesn't slow, Amazon may fall to the same forces. Imagine a virtualized army of engineers that the AI or brain upload future may bring. Maybe that won't happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen at some point if we don't manage to nuke ourselves. There are probably a handful of other trends that will cause…

That sounds scary - a company even more powerful and competitive that could beat Amazon. Imagine what their abuses would be!

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#159

Post by rexreed »

For comparison, and to show how much our economy has changed:

The Biggest Employers in 1955

1. General Motors Employees in 1955: 576,667 Employees today: 204,000 (as of 2010)

The No.1 car company in the US used to be the No.1 car company in the world. In 1955, GM had more than 50% of the American vehicle market and, between direct employees and those at suppliers, it was responsible for more than 3 million US jobs. GM has emerged from bankruptcy, but has fewer than half as many people, and its US market share is only 20%.

2. U.S. Steel Employees in 1955: 268,142 Employees today: 43,000 (as of 2010)

US Steel was the largest company in its industry worldwide and was among the Fortune 50 in 1955. A large portion of the steel manufacturing business has moved offshore, first to Japan and then China.

3. General Electric Employees in 1955: 210,151 Employees today: 304,000 (as of 2010)

General Electric is one of the few companies that has grown significantly over the last five decades. It was largely an industrial firm in 1955, and now makes a large amount of its revenue and profits from financial services.

4. Chrysler Employees in 1955: 167,813 Employees today: 58,000 (as of 2010)

Another car company that benefited from a very limited number of imports. The firm nearly went out of business during the 1980s recession and was rescued by the US government. It moved into Chapter 11 nearly two years ago.

5. Standard Oil Of New Jersey Employees in 1955: 155,000 Employees today: 102,700 (as of 2010)

Standard Oil of New Jersey was part of the original Standard Oil trust created by John Rockefeller. The company was merged into what eventually became Exxon Mobil.

Also Read: Apple’s Downfall: Android Sales

6. Amoco Employees in 1955: 135,784 Employees today: N/A

Another piece of the Rockefeller trust, the company was merged into BP America and is now part of BP plc.

7. CBS Employees in 1955: 117,143 Employees today: 25,580 (as of 2010)

The dominant force in both national radio and TV, the company also owned several large stations. As media has broken into more forms of delivery, including cable and Internet, CBS has grown smaller.

8. AT&T Technologies Employees in 1955: 98,141 Employees today: N/A

This division of AT&T handled the telephone company’s R&D was was spun out of AT&T completely in 1984.

9. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Employees in 1955: 95,727 Employees today: 69,000 (as of 2010)

The largest tire company in the world in 1955, Goodyear had large plants around the world. As competition from Japanese companies grew, the company went through several restructurings including a move into energy.

10. Firestone Tire & Rubber Employees in 1955: 90,000 Employees today: N/A

The second largest tire company in the world in 1955, Firestone was at one point the exclusive supplier to Ford. The company was sold to Bridgestone of Japan in 1988.

* From: https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/21/americas-biggest-...

NOTE: The above link was produced in 2010. In 2010, Amazon wasn't even in the top 10 of employers in the United States. And since 2010, some of the employers above have shrunk in size further.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#160

Post by morelandjs »

I’m not sure why everyone continually romanticizes brick and mortar retail. Its terribly inefficient, and wasteful of time, energy, space etc.

Think of all the Walmart, Dicks, Big Lots parking lots and strip malls that could be converted into better space. Think of how much waste there is when you have to pack, unpack, stage and repack merchandise.

Amazon’s distribution is a superior business model which is why it is popular. I’d also reckon that the carbon footprint per package is lower if you account for the driving that is required for more traditional shopping.

I’d rather see more competition using a similar business model than a return to concrete strip malls full of big box retailers.

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