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On April 28 2020 04:25 Uldridge wrote: Yes, Nyxisto, let those Amazon employees get by on minimum wage jobs and stressing out making the cut of the day while he builds his empire further, for a brighter tomorrow!
Amazon employees are well compensated in general, it's the work conditions rather the pay that tends to be the issue in some regions. For unqualified warehouse work, the salaries you get at Amazon are really decent, much better than anything most companies offer for people with similar skills. (As a side note I did work at an amazon warehouse when I went to uni for a summer break, it wasn't bad really).
As to 'his empire'. Amazon creates value. The long term growth of Amazon is beneficial not just to Bezos but the people who buy on Amazon due to its innovation, the pension funds who are invested in amazon, and society in general. There's a very obvious tension between redistribution in the present and long term wealth in the future.
things like the personal computer have created much more value for everyone than Bill Gates has captured. Take the entire economy that runs on windows or Azure, or Office say, and compare it to how much money those products made. Microsoft maybe captures 1% of the total economic activity their products generate.
Long term growth compounds. If your economy grows at 1% for 50 years it'll grow by 60% total. If your economy grows 2% annually over 50 years total output will almost triple. Even If those gains aren't evenly distributed, your children and their children will almost certainly be better off if policy favours long-term growth.
On April 27 2020 02:39 JohnDelaney wrote: Does anyone have an archive of this Google Play website to prove whether or not CNN removed a Larry King video recently?
Some are claiming that CNN removed a video on Google Play that aired Aug 11, 1993. Not sure if fake news, need an archive to prove it.
On April 27 2020 02:39 JohnDelaney wrote: Does anyone have an archive of this Google Play website to prove whether or not CNN removed a Larry King video recently?
Some are claiming that CNN removed a video on Google Play that aired Aug 11, 1993. Not sure if fake news, need an archive to prove it.
On April 28 2020 04:25 Uldridge wrote: Yes, Nyxisto, let those Amazon employees get by on minimum wage jobs and stressing out making the cut of the day while he builds his empire further, for a brighter tomorrow!
Amazon employees are well compensated in general, it's the work conditions rather the pay that tends to be the issue in some regions. For unqualified warehouse work, the salaries you get at Amazon are really decent, much better than anything most companies offer for people with similar skills. (As a side note I did work at an amazon warehouse when I went to uni for a summer break, it wasn't bad really).
As to 'his empire'. Amazon creates value. The long term growth of Amazon is beneficial not just to Bezos but the people who buy on Amazon due to its innovation, the pension funds who are invested in amazon, and society in general. There's a very obvious tension between redistribution in the present and long term wealth in the future.
things like the personal computer have created much more value for everyone than Bill Gates has captured. Take the entire economy that runs on windows or Azure, or Office say, and compare it to how much money those products made. Microsoft maybe captures 1% of the total economic activity their products generate.
Long term growth compounds. If your economy grows at 1% for 50 years it'll grow by 60% total. If your economy grows 2% annually over 50 years total output will almost triple. Even If those gains aren't evenly distributed, your children and their children will almost certainly be better off if policy favours long-term growth.
I didn't know that about them being fairly well compensated, guess I stand corrected. Okay, let me ask you these questions: how much more of Amazon do we need? I don't necessarily care for economic growth, because we already have it well enough and data has it now shows more than ever that the wealth inequality NOW, not in 10 or 50 years has never been bigger. People don't care about absolute poverty, people care about other people getting more than them. Here's a very basic example of social inequivalence between animals we consider less advanced than us:
I'm fine with corporations generating value, I'm fine with innovation and growth and all that jazz. I'm not fine with things not having a ceiling on them.
I'm willing to buy that there's a psychological component that favours equality more than growth, but are you saying that should be a basis for policy? Are we supposed to make people worse off but equal rather than encouraging growth because the monkey part of our brain says so? We're also naturally suspicious towards foreigners and somewhat xenophobic, not to mention envious and violent. But it's not like that's a justification for actually making policy.
I don't think there should be a ceiling. Growth is the result of increases in technology, productivity, and entrepreneurial activity. Accounting of course for environmental health and things that aren't captured by markets. It's not some artificial thing, it's what happens when people freely come together to build new things. If there's an environment for innovation growth is the result. Hampering that means stopping people from engaging in activities that are good and constitute progress.
And as so far as inequality is an issue, it's an issue between the top 20% and the rest, not the top 0.01%. It's the people who write New York times op eds about inequality and then live in a gated community and send their kids to private schools who are destroying the commons, not Gates or some other gazillionaire. Gates will spend his entire fortune on making kids in Africa better off, he's distributing more money towards the poor than anyone else.
How does equalizing things stifle growth necessarily? Why should they even need to be represented as opposites? Xenophoby, envy and violence can all be found in some type of policy, sometimes they're end points, sometimes they're integral, but they make the world go round much more than you might initially think. The huge resurgence of the extreme right wing parties as a reaction to massive immigration waves in 2015 (iirc) in Europe are an example of that.
I don't believe companies keep being innovative when they've become too big to fail. They become extremely cautious in how they approach their investments because they don't want to "gamble". They wait until some innovative startup shows up and they buy them out for way too little. They bury competition. They move much too careful, but I guess that's part of the public image. You can't look too flaky/brittle when you're a monolith I suppose. Also, the amount of resources poured in marketing, which is just a way of swaying the masses to your side, so you can sell marginally more, is insane. That's not innovation, that's entrenching yourself.
And you using the "top 20%" is probably even worse than it being the top 0.01% honestly. This means that this many more people live so many orders of magnitude "better" lives than these other people. Or let me reverse that. The struggling people's lives could've been made so much more easier, like having access to basic healthcare, if just a fraction of that wealth inequality was redistributed.
On April 28 2020 05:22 Nyxisto wrote: We're also naturally suspicious towards foreigners and somewhat xenophobic, not to mention envious and violent.
Speak for yourself.
It's true though.. Ingroups are on average looked more favourable upon (whatever that constitutes mentally for you) than outgroups. Forgeigners are mostly seen as outgroups because they look different than your average fellow countryman. This is why multiculturalism is important though, it erodes these ancient segregated ways.
On CNN apparently concealing the episode where they received a call about Tara Reade, a person from CNN's PR division explained the situation like this: https://i.imgur.com/dPIsvk1.png
On April 28 2020 06:39 PhoenixVoid wrote: On CNN apparently concealing the episode where they received a call about Tara Reade, a person from CNN's PR division explained the situation like this: https://i.imgur.com/dPIsvk1.png
On April 28 2020 04:25 Uldridge wrote: Yes, Nyxisto, let those Amazon employees get by on minimum wage jobs and stressing out making the cut of the day while he builds his empire further, for a brighter tomorrow!
Amazon employees are well compensated in general, it's the work conditions rather the pay that tends to be the issue in some regions. For unqualified warehouse work, the salaries you get at Amazon are really decent, much better than anything most companies offer for people with similar skills. (As a side note I did work at an amazon warehouse when I went to uni for a summer break, it wasn't bad really).
As to 'his empire'. Amazon creates value. The long term growth of Amazon is beneficial not just to Bezos but the people who buy on Amazon due to its innovation, the pension funds who are invested in amazon, and society in general. There's a very obvious tension between redistribution in the present and long term wealth in the future.
things like the personal computer have created much more value for everyone than Bill Gates has captured. Take the entire economy that runs on windows or Azure, or Office say, and compare it to how much money those products made. Microsoft maybe captures 1% of the total economic activity their products generate.
Long term growth compounds. If your economy grows at 1% for 50 years it'll grow by 60% total. If your economy grows 2% annually over 50 years total output will almost triple. Even If those gains aren't evenly distributed, your children and their children will almost certainly be better off if policy favours long-term growth.
This is the same argument Republicans have made (and progressives used to reject) for decades
Amazon employees are only "well compensated" compared to the poverty wages available elsewhere. Working conditions are atrocious (except if you compare them to places like prison labor or these covid infested meat packing plants). The moderately improved wages came recently after a campaign by Bernie Sanders and others shaming and threatening work stoppages if they didn't improve wages.
Since, they've fired people for trying to organize for a safe working environment amid a pandemic.
People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.
On April 28 2020 04:32 Liquid`Drone wrote: Fun fact I learned yesterday!
One of the 'fathers of norwegian social democracy' - Martin Tranmæl, was pretty damn radical during his formative years. He had a speech where kind of advocated for laying dynamite traps for mining strikebreakers, and the conservative party (not fully without reason) blamed him for a strikebreaker shooting and killing a striking worker during an altercation due to his aggressive language.
That's not that interesting, although highlighting that even the peaceful norwegian social democracy had a period of pretty aggressive class struggle has some merit.
The funny thing was seeing this picture :
First half of that sheet of paper is a description of worker sabotage (including dynamite in the drill holes) and an aggressive and resolute fight against the capitalistic system.
The second half is LENIN distancing himself from the methods mentioned by the norwegian comrades, considering for example the aforementioned sabotage 'inexpedient'.
That's hilarious/fascinating. Lenin also had some pretty strong feelings about worker coops not providing the transformative changes necessary since the nature of capitalism allows titans of industry to crush them under their functionally monopolistic boots.
Making it even more comical that Neb would be characterized as talking like Lenin in such a way.
On April 28 2020 06:53 GreenHorizons wrote: People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.
Gates is effectively redistributing money from the US to Africa, eradicating diseases, running clean energy initiatives and trying to tackle climate change. If you're a progressive who cares about the welfare of the third world you should wear a Bill shirt instead of a Che shirt, and definitely not advocate to take his money and give it to the American government, which is run by people who use it to built walls and warships
I mean if you want to go after some gazillionaire go after some rich mining dynasty or whatever but people like Gates are building vaccine factories and toilets instead of telling people to inject bleach so they look pretty progressive to me all things considered
On April 28 2020 06:53 GreenHorizons wrote: People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.
Gates is effectively redistributing money from the US to Africa, eradicating diseases, running clean energy initiatives and trying to tackle climate change. If you're a progressive who cares about the welfare of the third world you should wear a Bill shirt instead of a Che shirt, and definitely not advocate to take his money and give it to the American government, which is run by people who use it to built walls and warships
I mean if you want to go after some gazillionaire go after some rich mining dynasty or whatever but people like Gates are building vaccine factories and toilets instead of telling people to inject bleach so they look pretty progressive to me all things considered
Gates is effectively redistributing money to his own fortune. That's why he's wealthier today and get's ever wealthier despite "giving away" billions and having more wealth than he can even imagine spending. I'm sure it pleases him that people push his PR without even needing to be paid though.
EDIT: Bill Gates is a hoarder. If it wasn't wealth he was hoarding, it would be much more obvious to people why it is so terrible.
On April 27 2020 22:02 Sent. wrote: Do you seriously think billionaires are real life Scrooge McDucks who pursue more wealth for no other reason than to have a bigger pile of money they can dive into when they're bored?
One of them is the American President.
Yes, some of them ARE real life Scrooge McDucks who pursue wealth for no other reason than to have a bigger pile of money. There's no 'think' about it. They're not ALL like that, of course, not all of them are even greedy, but you'd have to be terminally naive not to see it when the truth of it is everywhere.
On April 28 2020 06:53 GreenHorizons wrote: People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.
Gates is effectively redistributing money from the US to Africa, eradicating diseases, running clean energy initiatives and trying to tackle climate change. If you're a progressive who cares about the welfare of the third world you should wear a Bill shirt instead of a Che shirt, and definitely not advocate to take his money and give it to the American government, which is run by people who use it to built walls and warships
I mean if you want to go after some gazillionaire go after some rich mining dynasty or whatever but people like Gates are building vaccine factories and toilets instead of telling people to inject bleach so they look pretty progressive to me all things considered
Gates is effectively redistributing money to his own fortune. That's why he's wealthier today and get's ever wealthier despite "giving away" billions and having more wealth than he can even imagine spending. I'm sure it pleases him that people push his PR without even needing to be paid though.
EDIT: Bill Gates is a hoarder. If it wasn't wealth he was hoarding, it would be much more obvious to people why it is so terrible.
Gates isn't redistributing anything to himself. If you're talking about the fact that he is giving money to his own charity, that's just a legal body through which charitable work is done. He can't just go and throw dollar bills around. He is still extremely rich because he owns significant stock in a lot of companies, but he has pledged to basically give his entire fortune away.
On April 28 2020 06:53 GreenHorizons wrote: People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.
Gates is effectively redistributing money from the US to Africa, eradicating diseases, running clean energy initiatives and trying to tackle climate change. If you're a progressive who cares about the welfare of the third world you should wear a Bill shirt instead of a Che shirt, and definitely not advocate to take his money and give it to the American government, which is run by people who use it to built walls and warships
I mean if you want to go after some gazillionaire go after some rich mining dynasty or whatever but people like Gates are building vaccine factories and toilets instead of telling people to inject bleach so they look pretty progressive to me all things considered
Gates is effectively redistributing money to his own fortune. That's why he's wealthier today and get's ever wealthier despite "giving away" billions and having more wealth than he can even imagine spending. I'm sure it pleases him that people push his PR without even needing to be paid though.
EDIT: Bill Gates is a hoarder. If it wasn't wealth he was hoarding, it would be much more obvious to people why it is so terrible.
Gates isn't redistributing anything to himself. If you're talking about the fact that he is giving money to his own charity, that's just a legal body through which charitable work is done. He can't just go and throw dollar bills around. He is still extremely rich because he owns significant stock in a lot of companies, but he has pledged to basically give his entire fortune away.
He's a billionaire getting richer, of course he is quite literally redistributing wealth to his own fortune (a bit of a bastardization of the term imo). What's done with the wealth when he's dead isn't even up to him/them imo. The giving pledge is PR not a functional body or executable contract.
On April 28 2020 06:53 GreenHorizons wrote: People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.
Gates is effectively redistributing money from the US to Africa, eradicating diseases, running clean energy initiatives and trying to tackle climate change. If you're a progressive who cares about the welfare of the third world you should wear a Bill shirt instead of a Che shirt, and definitely not advocate to take his money and give it to the American government, which is run by people who use it to built walls and warships
I mean if you want to go after some gazillionaire go after some rich mining dynasty or whatever but people like Gates are building vaccine factories and toilets instead of telling people to inject bleach so they look pretty progressive to me all things considered
Gates is effectively redistributing money to his own fortune. That's why he's wealthier today and get's ever wealthier despite "giving away" billions and having more wealth than he can even imagine spending. I'm sure it pleases him that people push his PR without even needing to be paid though.
EDIT: Bill Gates is a hoarder. If it wasn't wealth he was hoarding, it would be much more obvious to people why it is so terrible.
Gates isn't redistributing anything to himself. If you're talking about the fact that he is giving money to his own charity, that's just a legal body through which charitable work is done. He can't just go and throw dollar bills around. He is still extremely rich because he owns significant stock in a lot of companies, but he has pledged to basically give his entire fortune away.
Much to his heirs' outrage, if I remember correctly.
EPT
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