441–450 of 581 posts
I'm assuming they rationally did the math to see if the program was a net contributor to bottom line or not. (That's the sort of rigor i've come to expect from a company like Amazon)
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As a customer, I don't care if their overall impact is spread thin, it's my money going to a charity I chose.
Technically it's Amazon's money, not yours. You can't write the donations off on your taxes, for example.
They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for no good reason, so it was always pretty clear to me that it was nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off.
> They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for no good reason They 100% did > nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off Do you even know what a tax write off is? PR stunt of course, but that is every single company who also donates to charity. Should we instead shame companies for blatant PR stunts so that they donate $0 instead?
> Should we instead shame companies
Companies obviously exist for profit, but companies at the size of Amazon can take the view that doing good things is genuinely good for business on a level deeper than quick PR (creates company alignment, healthier economy).
PR is a competitive, zero-sum game.
> Should we instead shame…
Yeah. This isn’t a purity test for a company who’s genuinely trying to change things for the better. This is shaming using charity to launder human rights abuses, dishonest business practices, anticompetitive behavior and win favor with politicians.
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Saying companies pay payroll tax is like saying they pay sales tax when you buy something from them. It’s sort of true and sort of false.
It sounds like you don't understand the basics of payroll tax. The SS tax that gets deducted from your paycheck is only half the amount. Employers are required to pay the other half. If you're self-employed, you pay both halves, and that is one of the penalties of being treated as self employed.
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> the lgb alliance (a boring trans-hate group) Can you direct me to any place where the LGB Alliance officially affirms “trans hate” as their core message? Seems like a remark that fails the barest minimum of common sense thresholds, in that it’s unclear to me how any such body could ever hope to remain a tax-deductible registered charity.
It’s just plain rhetoric at this point. Anyone not actively supporting trans-rights these days are effectively labelled a “hater” or transphobic. Essentially the trans-activist doing their best to gaslight the situation and get as much chilling effect as possible. It’s dishonest, undemocratic and should be enough reason for most reasonable people to distrust them. And yeah. I’m transphobic for posting this, obviously…
There is no gaslighting whatsoever, one of the co-founders literally, somewhat famously, broke down in court when backed into a logical corner about whether trans women were lesbians. Even if you take the naive definition of "transphobia" where there must be actual fear it still holds up.
Of course they don't say their beliefs are transphobic. That's the real rhetoric -- because they're happy to tell you that they think that trans women are men who pretend to be women like that doesn't invalidate the very core definition of what it means to be trans.
This group would run into no trouble whatsoever had they had no stance at all about trans people and just said that they preferred to focus on the sexuality rather than gender issues.
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Injuries per item picked is obviously the inferior of the two, and fairly poor on its own as well.
If I sit on ass all day, I assume my injury rate will be lower. Using an injury rate on items picked (or items picked per man hour) could at least show the correlation between increased productivity and injuries.
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It’s hard to imagine the average small business successfully evading taxes as well as Amazon. In 2019 Amazon paid zero taxes receiving a net $129 million refund from the federal government, in 2018 they received a $137 million refund after paying 0$ on a net income of 11.2 billion dollars. In 2020 they paid a net tax of $162 million on $13.9 billion of pre-tax income a net tax rate of 1.2%.
I was just listening to a small business owner yesterday. She paid a $120K down payment on a property, and has set everything up so that the tax benefit of that property is $180K. That's not $180K deduction, but a $180K credit. She'll rent the place out for a meager profit, so doesn't have to pay the rest of the mortgage. Essentially, the taxpayers bought her the house - she got a house + cash out of the deal. Small…
> "our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin" If that's the supposed reason, I call bullshit. Could've just reduced the number of charities.
Unpopular opinion, but charities are like carbon credits. Most of the money goes into people’s pockets and very less percentage of the donations actually make it towards helping the cause they run on. Very few legitimately use the money in the way we expect it to be used. So I’m okay with them losing $400M.
It’s a service that fulfils a critical need but is run on a shoestring budget, with very little of the money spent on anything but critical necessities. Although Amazon Smile wasn’t a huge source of income for my branch, it will leave a hole that will have to be filled.
I can’t say I disagree that there aren’t plenty of mega-charities that spent too much on admin and fundraising, but I also know firsthand there are plenty out there deserving of every penny coming their way.
[1] https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/our-organisation...
I haven't bought anything from Amazon in years and you shouldn't either. Buying things from them supports slave labor, union busting, and low wages.
Wow, that sounds very privileged and condescending. "And you shouldn't either"? I'm sorry I can't do that, so can't many other people. Despite all the problems, in general, Amazon is still the most convenient and accessible place to buy things with relatively good customer service. In some cases it's the only place to buy certain products. If you can live in a bubble without Amazon, great for you, but don't preach ot…