Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by bsder » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #384

bsder wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comments such as this, dismissing a huge portion of fellow citizens out of hand, without so much as recognizing that "they" might be trying to do what's best in their eyes is so far from a democratic ideal... Explain to me what I'm supposed to do with people who wear "Better Russian than Democrat" t-shirts or my father-in-law who literally said "Her views are everything I want, but I can't vote for her because she'…

you know, there are plenty of batshit insane Democrats out there too. I don't see how you can put all republicans in the same basket (nor can you Democrats). Turn off the TV and avoid the toxicity of the Internet, you'll be much happier and realize that 99% of all humans are plain old every day decent individuals.

I read "But he does it, too" as "Everything you have said is perfectly accurate and I have no defense against your accusations."

> 99% of all humans are plain old every day decent individuals

Sorry. When you can build an entire political movement out of "But he's not hurting the right people", your statement is prima facie false.

What has become clear is that a very significant chunk of the US citizenry are very much not "decent".

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

#482

Post by seattle_spring » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

coleifer wrote: post #460

chasd00 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is why a lot of people have raised their eyebrows over the cost of shelter in place vs the risk of Covid19 infection. I'm glad it's becoming more visible, a few weeks ago you'd be shouted down for even suggesting the economic and political consequences of shelter in place could be catastrophic.

Virus going to do what it's going to do. People can choose to stay home but this shelter in place stuff is wrecking the lives of the poor and the people who are most vulnerable.

Pretty sure healthcare costs and, you know, being dead might affect them more than losing their job.

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

#483

Post by hkai » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #121

Layoffs are mounting, alternative work is limited, and the unemployment systems in many states are either broken or running out of funding. Add the federal governments indicated desire to let blue states go bankrupt and we are looking at a good combination to enter a depression. Its a pretty sobering time.

Perhaps locking up young people at home due to a disease with a 0.05% death rate for people below 60 was not a great idea after all.

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

#484

Post by burner831234 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:25 AM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #301

mikepurvis wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of that tension is what's led to the the current situation with COVID— the federal government is where the CDC is, so there's an expectation that they're the ones providing centralized coordination and guidance for a measured, unified, national response. If each state has its own version of the CDC (and other similar agencies), then that's fine, but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like…

> but they also need to have a lot more sovereignty over things like (in this case) being able to close their borders to neighbouring states Commerce Clause of the US Constitution stands in a way. It (the Commerce Clause) has been a bedrock of the federal government pushing through progressive policies onto the states.

The analogy to keep in mind is very simple.

If you live in a house of five and each person buys their own groceries and cooks their own dinner, it does not matter how you scrimp and save. It is still cheaper on the whole to buy raw ingredients for dinner and make it for five people. The cost goes down dramatically>

Yes there is a CDC in every state. It would be utterly ludicrous spend of cash to have an independent, not cooperative CDC in each state attempting to manage and solve the same problems.

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

#485

Post by dantheman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #362

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…

To be fair, in SF for example the median income is $96,000. And I think that's take-home salary, so the median cost to the employer with benefits is well over $100k. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable that important city workers should make at least the area median wage. Having all of the local government employees be the lowest paid people in the city doesn't seem like a good thing. It is also kind of shocking to s…

It's great for city workers to make a great wage - just pay for it. Stop pulling shenanigans with pension systems. We just had 11 years of unprecedented growth and pension systems only got worse - expanding benefits and maintaining impossible growth targets.

City and state governments don't pay the bills - that's the problems. Any cuts they make will hurt them in elections, so they just kick the can down the road to the next government.

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

#486

Post by notyourday » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #431

notyourday wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the case. Pensions are not always funded entirely by employer. In quite a few cases the salary of a worker is reduced by a certain amount that is added to what is contributed towards a pension by an employer. The difference between a pension and 401(k) type plan is that pension is a defined benefit plan and 401(k) type plan is a defined contribution plan.

Yes, you're right that a pension often involves a reduced salary for the promise of a pension at retirement age. That's a huge part of the appeal of a public sector job that pays significantly less than its counter parts in the private sector. And that's why public sector employees get extremely angry and litigious when governments try to reduce their obligations, even as agencies face dire financial straits. Which 4…

Sorry I'm not following the question.

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

#487

Post by dantheman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:34 AM UTC

clivestaples wrote: post #478

eldavido wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I saw that a hundred times at a small school district in Southern California. As retirement nears (age 55-59), take a promotion from the classroom to the district office, and a $50-75K pay raise. Three years later, that is the salary used to calculate your pension payments... For life. I live in a neighborhood with two firefighters who were captains, retired at 50, and make over $100K a year. It's totally unsustainab…

It's generational wealth transfer from the young and poor to the old and relatively rich. It should be called fraud and theft, because that's what it is.

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

#488

Post by Acrobatic_Road » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #473

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very simple answer: blue states have bigger budgets so the % of aid they receive from the government seems smaller. The Federalist has done an analysis of federal aid per resident : >Against a national average of $1,935 in intergovernmental spending per American, red states receive just $1,879. Blue states get considerably more, at $2,124 per resident. Purple states see the least of their money returned to them per c…

It's hard to have much ability to impart good faith when you intentionally exclude the amount of money paid in by blue states. The money the federal government is paying to red states is (...mostly) coming from somewhere.

The article states that no state receives more than its residents and corporations pays in federal taxes. People pay money to the federal government and the government pays back some fraction of the money per state. So any notion that blue states are subsidizing red states is ridiculous. What's happening is that the wealthy blue states pay a lot under our progressive tax system and receive a lot in return on a per capita basis.

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

#489

Post by dantheman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #477

eldavido wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> where they bump pay 20-30% in their last year to get that pension benefit for the rest of their lives I've heard this claim many times before. Is there data supporting this or did a handful of people do it and word spreads like it is far more common that actual.

This one is a bit old:

Pension spiking could cost CalPERS nearly $800 million

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pension-spiking-repor...

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

#490

Post by dantheman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #417

ac29 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many pensions are not the "have $27k/yr starting at age 67" kind, but the "have $100k/yr + benefits starting at age 55" kind. Its the latter that people find upsetting - nothing close to poverty level.

Sure, but people took those jobs in large part because of those pensions. It is part of the entire compensation package. They often times took less money up front in return for better pensions. The problem is that this was not properly budgeted for when funding the pensions.

When you take a job and its benefits are not properly funded or the funding assumptions are insane (8% growth). That's on you.