551–560 of 581 posts
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How is that even disturbing? Can you elaborate?
That they use their view of the world in order to determine who to donate to
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Technically it's Amazon's money, not yours. You can't write the donations off on your taxes, for example.
Exactly. If you want to donate, do it first-hand rather than second-hand via another organization, in order to be more tax-effective.
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> They don’t seem to be very concerned about injuries. One example that comes to mind is storing 40 lb bags of dog food such that people had to duck and lean over and drag them under a low shelf, that’s practically designed to cause back injuries and in fact caused multiple in a single warehouse. I used to work for Amazon a few years ago. I'm uncertain whether it was 12 pounds or 12 kg, but when a *tote weights more…
Are there 2 people generally available to do work like this?
The bigger issue is that no one is actually asking for help because of culture.
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The definition disagrees with you. Facts are just that - facts. The analysis of how you arrived at that fact is statistics. It requires numerical analysis. If you've ever taken a stats class you'd know an answer like "more than average" without any numerical work shown would be marked wrong. You'd also know that saying "more than average" provides no real information since it's a huge range. https://www.merriam-webst…
Average of X > average of Y fits “a collection of quantitative data” For more detail, I have taken statistics, even tutored PHD students. Showing your work is required if the answer is 4.415 or more than average. A sample refers to a single element, statistic encompass a sample, a parameter covers to the full population. You will often hear statistics communicated as something like “more than four times as likely” an…
None of the stuff you mention actually means anything when you try to apply it to policy if you don't know how the result was achieved, what it's actually measuring, and what the baseline is. Any good statistical analysis will cover this as well as things like biases, corrections, and confidence. Otherwise I could give you a fact of my opinion is more liked than your opinion...
I think this is a little short-sighted on Amazon's part. PTA/PTOs were onboarding loyal Amazon customers via Amazon Smile because of the fundraising. In the last PTO I was involved with, Smile accounted for about 2% of our donations ($3000/year = ~$150K in household spending from our school). To put that in perspective, about 90% of our $150K annual fund raise was direct donations from parents and local businesses, A…
I think this is a little short-sighted on Amazon's part. PTA/PTOs were onboarding loyal Amazon customers via Amazon Smile because of the fundraising. In the last PTO I was involved with, Smile accounted for about 2% of our donations ($3000/year = ~$150K in household spending from our school). To put that in perspective, about 90% of our $150K annual fund raise was direct donations from parents and local businesses, A…
What's a PTA/PTO?
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Some retail isn't high margin, that's absolutely true. Some retail has a 75%+ markup as standard at the store. That's why they're able to regularly offer sales where they take 25%, 50%, even 75% off: it's not just to clear out unsold inventory; many retailers that do this are still making a profit at those prices. Amazon, being a "sell everything and more" retailer, certainly doesn't get to enjoy those high profit ma…
Some retail has a 75%+ markup as standard at the store. That's why they're able to regularly offer sales where they take 25%, 50%, even 75% off: it's not just to clear out unsold inventory; many retailers that do this are still making a profit at those prices. But how many of those items actually sell at the sticker price? The reason I ask is because I've noticed this with mechanical watches (which I have a moderate…
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The 20,000 families benefitting from housing in the Seattle metro area as a result of Amazon's investments in the community might define charitable vs. non-charitable differently than you. I've personally met the women and children benefitting from the $100M Amazon and its employees have donated to Mary's Place -- their lens is not yours. Your comments about AFE are a bit underdeveloped. File under no good deed goes…
20,000 houses hardly makes up for the 12m square feet that Amazon inhabits in the Seattle Metro area, very little of which is built in such a way to contribute to a livable or affordable city. Their impact on the real estate situation is nowhere near positive even with this whitewashing.
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Kinda off topic but why do grade school kids need a MacBook air?
Chromebooks seem to be the standard nowadays. At least that is what are issued by the school around here (Midwest US). My first thought is that if someone can't afford a computer, wouldn't they prefer to have a "lesser" computer and have the remaining difference in cash or necessities? Maybe the donors are a little out of touch with what their recipients need. I'm sure they are appreciative of the computer, but there…
The computers cost about 40% of the overall budget. We had enough money to fulfill other aspects of the PTO’s program, PE, Art, Music, Dance, (the ‘A’ in STEAM that LAUSD skipped over) Robotics.
This was a magnet school with widely varied socioeconomic family profiles. And the PTO is not authorized by contract with the school to engage in other social programs. But those in need were covered by a) the Federal hot lunch program, and b) LAUSD-funded anyone on campus child or adult could have a free breakfast (of dubious quality, all carb no protein and for example, a 10% juice sugar-laden drink qualified as ‘fruit’) just for being on campus. Going hungry was by choice only. And you would not believe how much food is thrown away from the breakfast program. My wife fought hard to connect with local homeless shelters to send the food but school administrators put the kibosh on that.
So why should we opt for austerity when we had everything covered? Actual parents will always choose the best option within their reach.
I like the idea behind Amazon Smile but the execution is a bit underwhelming. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars at Amazon since joining Amazon Prime, but I've only generated $98.66 in donations -- a fraction of a percent. That's worse than just rounding up the price to the nearest dollar. What's the point? I get that Amazon's retail profit margins are terrible, but if they're only going to donate a totally insi…
> I get that Amazon's retail profit margins are terrible Why do you think that? I get some 2-8% of the purchase amount via their Amazon Affiliate Program. Furthermore, their "Amazon Choice" or whatever it's called where they suggest 1 version of the product over the rest is often made by Amazon itself because they saw that someone else was profiting nicely off of it so they get in between and squash the competition.…