1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by rhacker » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

lovecg wrote: post #400

kortilla wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity (cheaper goods, foods, and much more complex high end goods (iPhone, airplanes, etc).

Yep. Back in the hand-written letter days people must have thought “think how much time we would save if all this was automated and letters were delivered instantly!” Nope. We just send 10x more.

Yeah but we read 100% fewer of them.

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

#532

Post by rhacker » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #509

XorNot wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where Walmart didn't post a gross profit of 24.3% for 2020[1], you might have a point. But in a world where Walmart posted that much profit on it's $559 billion 2020 revenues[2], somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages. Which they clearly have the money to ac…

>somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages. How is it a transfer to walmart? The people who get paid the benefit are eligible for it regardless of whether they're employed by walmart or not. Suppose walmart automated their jobs and replaced them with robots, you'll still…

but it hasnt. if they weren't so huge those people might be making living wages working at Bills and Jims and Franklin's sewing shop.

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

#533

Post by nunez » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

wyre wrote: post #338

nunez wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. eBay is even worse! Zeroth, lots of eBay resellers drop-ship from or resell directly from Amazon. There are plenty of bots looking for arbitrage opportunities between Amazon, brick-and-mortar, and OEM. First, there's absolutely zero guarantee that you'll get what you bought. The chances of you getting a box of rocks is significantly greater on eBay than on Amazon (unless you use Amazon Marketplace, in which the…

Lol. Have you used eBay significantly or so you avoid it because of the reasons you just posted? I’ve replaced Amazon completely with eBay and have been using eBay for the past 4 years. I have never received a product I didn’t order using eBay. I wish I could say the same for Amazon.

I use eBay as a buyer and a seller. I do not use them often, largely because the reasons specified above.

Example.

Several years ago, I purchased a pair of Lucky Brand jeans. Same cut as what I already had, in the same size. Seller provided dimensions; I thought they would fit because I already had those pants.

They arrived three days later. They did not fit.

Seller would not honor a return. PayPal sided with the seller. I was out $35. I’m actually still pissed that that happened, five years ago, and it was only over $35!

On Amazon, I would’ve returned them in three taps and a drive to Whole Foods.

Should I have looked at the item more carefully? Sure. But the point here is that this transaction would have been significantly easier on Amazon _and_ I would have just bought a different pair of pants right after that.

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

#534

Post by nunez » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #483

queuebert wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than shipping damage, I don't regularly get misleading or broken items from other retailers, especially small ones. This only happens with third-party Amazon retailers, who mostly sell trash and hope you don't care enough to return it because it was so cheap.

It's rare, but I did, back when I regularly ordered from other places. I also regularly didn't get things on time. And I don't mean a day late, I mean "hasn't even shipped yet by the time it should arrive" late, and without even a notice. What really sold me on Amazon was game sales, though. I'd pre-order something at Walmart or Gamestop and show up on release day to find out they didn't get it. This happened enough…

Yeah, Walmart, Target, and basically any large reseller is excellent when they have the inventory in their warehouse. Once you use them for drop-ship (which they aren’t transparent about…at all), orders will get dicey. The arrive by date is an estimation that assumes that their last-mile logistics pans out.

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

#535

Post by gruez » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #532

gruez wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages. How is it a transfer to walmart? The people who get paid the benefit are eligible for it regardless of whether they're employed by walmart or not. Suppose walmart automated their jobs and replaced them with robots, you'll still…

but it hasnt. if they weren't so huge those people might be making living wages working at Bills and Jims and Franklin's sewing shop.

>if they weren't so huge those people might be making living wages working at Bills and Jims and Franklin's sewing shop.

I'm skeptical of this. If anything amazon's push for minimum wage makes me think they're better able to afford the increased cost of labor than their competitors.

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

#536

Post by XorNot » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #508

XorNot wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where Walmart didn't post a gross profit of 24.3% for 2020[1], you might have a point. But in a world where Walmart posted that much profit on it's $559 billion 2020 revenues[2], somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages. Which they clearly have the money to ac…

Gross profit is profit before paying their employees, so saying they have a gross profit percentage of X is certainly not dispositive (and is close to meaningless) in terms of supporting whether they could pay their employees more than currently. You need to look at an operating income figure to make such a conclusion. (Or another financial measure that’s “after” labor, but OI is probably the standard one.)

If Walmart makes 1 single cent of profit while having employees on food stamps, then that is the government sponsoring Walmart's profits by allowing it not to pay it's employees a living wage, and banking the difference as "profit".

They are literally taking your tax dollars to do this.

This is the simplest possible economic calculus: a business that doesn't pay full time employees a living wage is getting sponsored by your tax dollars for its profits.

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

#537

Post by distances » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

jmrm wrote: post #522

schrectacular wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a grinder machine that people install just below their drain. Ostensibly so that you don't have to put a strainer in there. In my opinion they provide basically zero value but lots of trouble. They encourage putting all kinds of nastiness down your pipes and in my experience tend to break and leak. But they are virtually ubiquitous here.

Lots of local and regional governments in Europe encourage people to not use the toilet or the sink as a trash can. The wastewater is usually treated before arriving to rivers and other places, so the cleanest is the water, the easiest is to treat it.

Absolutely, only toilet paper can be thrown to toilets. Everything else must go to garbage bins, especially all kinds of wet wipes. Same is surely true for US too.

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

#538

Post by kevinmchugh » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

greedo wrote: post #505

kevinmchugh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that bookstorez are dying, in the US. Amazon killed Borders, sure, and Barnes and Noble isn't as focused on books anymore. But independent bookstores have been doing okay afaict, though having to make changes. Here's data from the American Booksellers Association: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-indepen... It's possible that the bookstores are increasingly in big cities or something,…

I think if you look at the number of bookstores that were in the US before Amazon, and compare that to now, you'll see that they're in a steep decline. Not all of this is due to Amazon, since much of the consolidation was from competition from Borders and B&N. But today's B&N is a far cry from what it used to be, Borders is gone, and Amazon is the 800lb gorilla.

If you can supply the data I'd be happy to look at it. I linked what data I managed to find. I think Amazon is largely responsible for ending borders, but less so the transformation of b&n. GameStop went through a similar crappification. That's just been retail.

I won't be surprised if there's a lot fewer book stores than there were 25 years ago. If we could break it out by big chain vs indie stores would be interesting. Because indie bookstores have been doing well in the last ten years (despite ebooks!). I was surprised by this. It didn't fit my mental model.

Maybe I don't remember well enough the pre-crappy versions of borders and b&n well enough, but I really don't feel strongly about them. Indie bookstores are where it's at for me.

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

#539

Post by annoyingnoob » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #526

annoyingnoob wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With less efficient vehicles. If I order 10 things from Amazon its guaranteed to come in more than one box on more than one trip. If I drive to Target I can buy all of those things in one trip.

>With less efficient vehicles It's less efficient, but not by much. The most popular passenger vehicle that's not a truck is the toyota rav 4[1], which gets 30 mpg[2]. A ford transit connect gets 22[3]. Using those figures, an amazon van that delivers to at least 2 houses in a suburb probably spends less fuel than those two households driving directly to a store. Even if they make separate deliveries, it will probabl…

The Sprinter type vans that Amazon uses in my area get closer to 18 mpg. And they have some that are just like the UPS trucks, big and boxy in Amazon blue - no doubt these are much worse.

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

#540

Post by GFischer » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #300

WalterBright wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we still don't have a robot that can take out the trash Because it's hard to justify the $$$ on a robot to automate a job that takes 30 seconds once a week. Modern people don't realize it, but an awful lot of household drudgery has been automated. I'm old enough to remember life before the microwave. What a marvelous time saver that is! You can even buy one from the thrift store for $10. I remember them being $1000…

Add to that the cheap-as-dirt popcorn maker. My mom would make popcorn in a frying pan. The machine is sooo much easier. There are the mothers of kitchen automation: 1. refrigerator 2. garbage disposal 3. dishwasher 4. electric / gas stove and oven These are really marvelous inventions. It seems I spent half my childhood washing dishes by hand. Ugh.

I still don't have a dishwasher or a garbage disposal (and I've never even used / seen any), diswasher seems really marginal upgrade as a childless couple - I guess it is a timesaver for a family of 4+?

I'm really wondering about the garbage disposal thing and I'll go Google about them.