Awww look at the poor landed nobility. Boohoo.
Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
71–80 of 114 posts
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#72No post body was provided.
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm... that doesn't make much sense. The UK was in terrible economic shape before Thatcher.
That was my recollection, but looking at plots of real GDP per capita and debt/GDP, I'm not seeing any substantive changes associated with the Thatcher years. Is there any metric where it pops?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/08/a...
It looks like under Thatcher got inflation under control, unemployment rose, then fell (similar to the US during the same time period) and the economy had a run of growth from '81 to '90 that peaked near 5%.
Not too shabby when you look at the 10 years prior when inflation was 25% and the economy shrank from '74-76.
Britain was regarded as a "sick man of Europe" before Thatcher took office.
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#74If you see how Hermes Group, an Otto owned logistics company, (sub-)subcontractors have to handle their daily work load at (often below) minimum wage pay, often with their private cars, it's hard to believe he's that serious about running a morally superior business for any other reason than getting good PR. DHL is not golden either but Hermes is just bad in every aspect. As a private customer in Germany I would try…
DHL sucks these days.
They deliver late or never and sometimes steal my stuff.
Hermes always delivers.
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also strongly disagree with the (white-washing) statement, that the working conditions at Hermes are purely a result of the logistic market! There are other logistic companies that still have far better working conditions. So it is possible. The whole construction of Hermes is made this way, that the conditions of the workers are bad and Hermes itself can wash their hands of it. Even the small companies in between…
I did not say that Otto is innocent in this case. Most of the bad press is a result of Hermes' overdependence of contractors, who often have contractors themselves. Of course, each link in the chain of contractors is obligated to make profit from the already low shipping price. DHL has this problem too (see the small "On behalf of" at the logo). Even though, DHL has another history (Deutsche Post) and therefore some…
My critics of this system goes just in this direction. The construction is on purpose in a way, that responsibility is disconnected from Hermes and the pressure is made so that the contractors themselves are forced to create bad working conditions.
There are also contractors that admitted that they had to cheat the tax system to stay afloat. Many have gone bankrupt and the people involved are often left without social security. That's all inside the "System Hermes".
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm... that doesn't make much sense. The UK was in terrible economic shape before Thatcher.
Thatcher was highly regarded as role model how profitable it is to go for more privatization. But the result is, that today the UK is in worse state as it was before Thatcher. It was profitable of course! But not for the 99% of the people.
I'm no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but the UK economy in the 1970's was a complete disaster - much, much worse than it is today.
For example a combination of very high inflation (above 15% pa for the 4 years between 1974 and 1977[1]) combined with huge strikes by unions led to incidents like the "three day week"[2] (where the conservative UK government rationed electricity to businesses: they could only use it 3 days per week) and the "Winter of Discontent"[3] (where the Labour government failed to reach a wage control agreement with unions, leading to more strikes and the Thatcher government).
Official unemployment figures throughout the 1970's look much better than today (eg, 5-6% unemployment rather than ~7.5% now), but that doesn't take into account the fact that many were not being paid because of strike action, and also that the high inflation meant people were chronically underpaid (hence the strikes).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6729683.stm is worth reading to get some idea of just how bad it was.
[1] http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conve...
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was my recollection, but looking at plots of real GDP per capita and debt/GDP, I'm not seeing any substantive changes associated with the Thatcher years. Is there any metric where it pops?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/08/a... It looks like under Thatcher got inflation under control, unemployment rose, then fell (similar to the US during the same time period) and the economy had a run of growth from '81 to '90 that peaked near 5%. Not too shabby when you look at the 10 years prior when inflation was 25% and the economy shrank from '74-76. Britain was regarded as a "sick man of…
I don't think, that such figures as economic growth and inflation rate are the only and best methods to evaluate the results of a specific politic.
What is the impact on the people and the state in general? Which factors are also important in this time.
The thing is, that economic bad times change with better times -- even with no change at all in politics. To consider every time a success of the leading party is often times just statistical brainwashing.
The Germans also had a bigger raise in economy with the opposite politics.
Also look how the long term results are, since the Thatcherian politics are still followed by the successors. The privatization of many areas like railway and water services resulted in worse quality of service. Also the UK today has nearly killed of all its industry base. Instead they have only left their banks, so they are largely susceptible now to blackmail of this sector, that is the reason why the banking sector can not be reorganized in Europe, since it is blocked by the veto of the British.
What is left is a poor leftover of capitalism.
Of course it is white-washed by statistical figures that always skip the negatives, since the advocates of unregulated capitalism want to prove their point.
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#78The Otto Group’s sales are up 17% in Germany since the recession, while Amazon’s have doubled since 2010. Huh? This comparison confused me. I wonder why the author didn't use the same years? What was the baseline?
It's an unfortunate but common practice I've noticed: they don't want repetition, or anything close to it, so they jump between synonyms -- or, sadly, what the journalist thinks is a synonym. But since a lot of synonyms aren't perfect (or just aren't synonyms), you can't tell what they mean, and this is a prime example of it. I see this same phenomenon in software/API documentation too, where you can't tell what is a…
More likely they have different data for different time spans, so throw in what they have.
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or performing some useful function that can't trivially be replaced by menial robotic labor?
Would you consider being a doctor a useful function? IBM's Watson already performs as well as a second year med student [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/05/25/ibms-watso... ]. Eventually, all jobs will be replaced by software or robotic labor. What then? EDIT: "Your Job Taught to Machines Puts Half U.S. Work at Risk" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/your-job-taught-to-...
You get a job fixing the machines
Re: Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Payday lending and rent-to-own are two legal, and rather corrupt* ways to scam money from poor people. * In general these businesses do not make their lives better; they're worse off than if they hadn't done business with them in the first place. In general ... ymmv
So you're saying if someone need $100 right now and has terrible credit, that's it's better that they can't get the $100 at all, rather than pay a high interest rate?
That's not really the problem, though. The issue comes when those loans can be rolled over, and when the borrower ends up with multiple stacked payday loans, and can't make any headway into the capital because an increasingly large proportion of their income is taken up by interest payments. It's literally usury, and close to loan-sharking.