I wonder how the change in tax laws for charitable giving affected those at the very high end of the income scale? I know the incentive simply isn't there for middle class people anymore. This line raised my eyebrow..
The top 50 donors on The Chronicle of Philanthropy list donated roughly 50% less than last year. Overall donations from the world's 50 top donors dropped from $14.7 billion in 2017 to $7.8 billion in 2018.
Yup. There should be no jobs in that area so that rent is low and people can live in poverty.
Are there no jobs there now? Do the people that live there live in poverty? Again, I question why someone worth $137 billion, before their divorce settlement, requires a $1 BB subsidy? Just fund your own damn business and stop asking for welfare handout. I know people claim the taxes paid offset the subsidy but what happens to the costs of wear and tear on public transit, roads, infrastructure and the housing shortage? Who pays for that cost? Or does it get ignored, negatively impacting those who have always lived there or are forced out? It appears to me to be trickle up in that Bezos gets richer because he’s heavily subsidized and doesn’t pay taxes as it is. He’s not some start up that needs a hand getting going.
Yup. There should be no jobs in that area so that rent is low and people can live in poverty.
Are there no jobs there now? Do the people that live there live in poverty? Again, I question why someone worth $137 billion, before their divorce settlement, requires a $1 BB subsidy? Just fund your own damn business and stop asking for welfare handout. I know people claim the taxes paid offset the subsidy but what happens to the costs of wear and tear on public transit, roads, infrastructure and the housing shortage? Who pays for that cost? Or does it get ignored, negatively impacting those who have always lived there or are forced out? It appears to me to be trickle up in that Bezos gets richer because he’s heavily subsidized and doesn’t pay taxes as it is. He’s not some start up that needs a hand getting going.
He's the chair of a publicly traded company. He, and the board, have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders (me, for example) to construct the best possible deal for the shareholders. It isn't a private company. Don't blame Bezos for the decision of state of Virginia to extend the offer. Second, the subsidies have zero to do with the price of real estate in NOVA. That has been insane for 20 years now. When I lived up there, I wanted to be inside the beltway, but the average price was in the $400 per sq foot even back then. And the closer you are to the metro, the worse it gets.
Yup. There should be no jobs in that area so that rent is low and people can live in poverty.
Are there no jobs there now? Do the people that live there live in poverty? Again, I question why someone worth $137 billion, before their divorce settlement, requires a $1 BB subsidy? Just fund your own damn business and stop asking for welfare handout. I know people claim the taxes paid offset the subsidy but what happens to the costs of wear and tear on public transit, roads, infrastructure and the housing shortage? Who pays for that cost? Or does it get ignored, negatively impacting those who have always lived there or are forced out? It appears to me to be trickle up in that Bezos gets richer because he’s heavily subsidized and doesn’t pay taxes as it is. He’s not some start up that needs a hand getting going.
He's the chair of a publicly traded company. He, and the board, have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders (me, for example) to construct the best possible deal for the shareholders. It isn't a private company. Don't blame Bezos for the decision of state of Virginia to extend the offer. Second, the subsidies have zero to do with the price of real estate in NOVA. That has been insane for 20 years now. When I lived up there, I wanted to be inside the beltway, but the average price was in the $400 per sq foot even back then. And the closer you are to the metro, the worse it gets.
I’m not blaming Bezos. VA should tell him to fund it himself or subsidize infrastructure improvements and other negative effects like the affordable housing fund, which they contributed less than a penny on the dollar to. Insane housing prices made more insane. Sounds like a winning play.
Yup. There should be no jobs in that area so that rent is low and people can live in poverty.
Are there no jobs there now? Do the people that live there live in poverty? Again, I question why someone worth $137 billion, before their divorce settlement, requires a $1 BB subsidy? Just fund your own damn business and stop asking for welfare handout. I know people claim the taxes paid offset the subsidy but what happens to the costs of wear and tear on public transit, roads, infrastructure and the housing shortage? Who pays for that cost? Or does it get ignored, negatively impacting those who have always lived there or are forced out? It appears to me to be trickle up in that Bezos gets richer because he’s heavily subsidized and doesn’t pay taxes as it is. He’s not some start up that needs a hand getting going.
He's the chair of a publicly traded company. He, and the board, have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders (me, for example) to construct the best possible deal for the shareholders. It isn't a private company. Don't blame Bezos for the decision of state of Virginia to extend the offer. Second, the subsidies have zero to do with the price of real estate in NOVA. That has been insane for 20 years now. When I lived up there, I wanted to be inside the beltway, but the average price was in the $400 per sq foot even back then. And the closer you are to the metro, the worse it gets.
I’m not blaming Bezos. VA should tell him to fund it himself or subsidize infrastructure improvements and other negative effects like the affordable housing fund, which they contributed less than a penny on the dollar to. Insane housing prices made more insane. Sounds like a winning play.
What you are forgetting is that people are greedy and they want to cash in. It's really not Amazon's fault that rent went up it's the people looking to drive prices up because they know people will pay..
Yup. There should be no jobs in that area so that rent is low and people can live in poverty.
Are there no jobs there now? Do the people that live there live in poverty? Again, I question why someone worth $137 billion, before their divorce settlement, requires a $1 BB subsidy? Just fund your own damn business and stop asking for welfare handout. I know people claim the taxes paid offset the subsidy but what happens to the costs of wear and tear on public transit, roads, infrastructure and the housing shortage? Who pays for that cost? Or does it get ignored, negatively impacting those who have always lived there or are forced out? It appears to me to be trickle up in that Bezos gets richer because he’s heavily subsidized and doesn’t pay taxes as it is. He’s not some start up that needs a hand getting going.
He's the chair of a publicly traded company. He, and the board, have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders (me, for example) to construct the best possible deal for the shareholders. It isn't a private company. Don't blame Bezos for the decision of state of Virginia to extend the offer. Second, the subsidies have zero to do with the price of real estate in NOVA. That has been insane for 20 years now. When I lived up there, I wanted to be inside the beltway, but the average price was in the $400 per sq foot even back then. And the closer you are to the metro, the worse it gets.
I’m not blaming Bezos. VA should tell him to fund it himself or subsidize infrastructure improvements and other negative effects like the affordable housing fund, which they contributed less than a penny on the dollar to. Insane housing prices made more insane. Sounds like a winning play.
What you are forgetting is that people are greedy and they want to cash in. It's really not Amazon's fault that rent went up it's the people looking to drive prices up because they know people will pay..
Bezos and Amazon are driving the greed by demanding the biggest/largest/greatest tax deal and other incentives and playing cities and states off of each other, a race to the bottom if you will. At the end of 20 or 25 years, who's to say they don't do it again for an even sweeter deal? Does anyone know if Amazon offers stock options as part of their compensation?
@Halifax2TheMax I just clicked on the first one and Vanguard has 30 million shares? Holy friggin shit.
That’s a mutual fund holding, I believe. I was trying to see who the largest shareholders were and it seems it’s institutional investors. Bezos and his three partners appear to own approximately 27% to 32% of total shares, 157,974,145 shares worth. 4 individuals own close to a third of amazon and amazon didn’t pay federal taxes. @mrussel1 do you pay federal taxes, as an amazon share holder?
@Halifax2TheMax I just clicked on the first one and Vanguard has 30 million shares? Holy friggin shit.
That’s a mutual fund holding, I believe. I was trying to see who the largest shareholders were and it seems it’s institutional investors. Bezos and his three partners appear to own approximately 27% to 32% of total shares, 157,974,145 shares worth. 4 individuals own close to a third of amazon and amazon didn’t pay federal taxes. @mrussel1 do you pay federal taxes, as an amazon share holder?
No, I would only pay capital gains when I cash out. You don't pay while you hold a security. And if you think about Vanguard, that means there are probably millions of Americans in that fund; unions, cities, gov'ts, and individual 401(k)s.
This seems like another case where the system is broken, the broken system is exploited, and the participants in exploiting that broken system are criticized because the scope of fixing the system (where the real fault lies) seems too large. The 'American Dream' is promoted so extensively, but then the public changes their tune so dramatically when someone reaches that next level of wealth and not giving 'enough' back (both the wealth and the give-back ratios being completely arbitrary).
Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
This seems like another case where the system is broken, the broken system is exploited, and the participants in exploiting that broken system are criticized because the scope of fixing the system (where the real fault lies) seems too large. The 'American Dream' is promoted so extensively, but then the public changes their tune so dramatically when someone reaches that next level of wealth and not giving 'enough' back (both the wealth and the give-back ratios being completely arbitrary).
Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
Business schools used to teach ethics and maybe they still do but Amazon wouldn’t be what it is without all the infrastructure that supports them, everything from the nascent invention of the internet, government research, to highways for their trucks and airports for the planes that carry their goods. All paid by tax payers. And why not expect businesses to practice ethical behaviors? Particularly, when they’ve become highly profitable and don’t pay taxes. Why shouldn’t we expect CEOs or Boards of Directors to ask themselves or say, is it ethical that the CFO, CIO, CEO, etc, earn 600, 800, 1,000 or 5,000 times the lowest paid worker? Why shouldn’t we expect businesses to have an ethical culture and hiring practice beyond what the law requires? What happened to doing what is right? Fairness? Equity? Why does everything have to be legislated? Bezos fought $15 an hour and now caps those wages once you hit $15.75 and you have to move into management to earn more. Exploitation to put it kindly.
And I refuse to order anything from Amazon. I use they’re website for product or book research but I refuse to use them to buy something. Whole Foods is another matter but quality and employee morale has dropped since amazon bought it.
This seems like another case where the system is broken, the broken system is exploited, and the participants in exploiting that broken system are criticized because the scope of fixing the system (where the real fault lies) seems too large. The 'American Dream' is promoted so extensively, but then the public changes their tune so dramatically when someone reaches that next level of wealth and not giving 'enough' back (both the wealth and the give-back ratios being completely arbitrary).
Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
Business schools used to teach ethics and maybe they still do but Amazon wouldn’t be what it is without all the infrastructure that supports them, everything from the nascent invention of the internet, government research, to highways for their trucks and airports for the planes that carry their goods. All paid by tax payers. And why not expect businesses to practice ethical behaviors? Particularly, when they’ve become highly profitable and don’t pay taxes. Why shouldn’t we expect CEOs or Boards of Directors to ask themselves or say, is it ethical that the CFO, CIO, CEO, etc, earn 600, 800, 1,000 or 5,000 times the lowest paid worker? Why shouldn’t we expect businesses to have an ethical culture and hiring practice beyond what the law requires? What happened to doing what is right? Fairness? Equity? Why does everything have to be legislated? Bezos fought $15 an hour and now caps those wages once you hit $15.75 and you have to move into management to earn more. Exploitation to put it kindly.
And I refuse to order anything from Amazon. I use they’re website for product or book research but I refuse to use them to buy something. Whole Foods is another matter but quality and employee morale has dropped since amazon bought it.
You are required to take an ethics class in biz school. What you're advocating is social justice, not business ethics. There's nothing unethical about their NOVA deal, from what I've seen.
This seems like another case where the system is broken, the broken system is exploited, and the participants in exploiting that broken system are criticized because the scope of fixing the system (where the real fault lies) seems too large. The 'American Dream' is promoted so extensively, but then the public changes their tune so dramatically when someone reaches that next level of wealth and not giving 'enough' back (both the wealth and the give-back ratios being completely arbitrary).
Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
Business schools used to teach ethics and maybe they still do but Amazon wouldn’t be what it is without all the infrastructure that supports them, everything from the nascent invention of the internet, government research, to highways for their trucks and airports for the planes that carry their goods. All paid by tax payers. And why not expect businesses to practice ethical behaviors? Particularly, when they’ve become highly profitable and don’t pay taxes. Why shouldn’t we expect CEOs or Boards of Directors to ask themselves or say, is it ethical that the CFO, CIO, CEO, etc, earn 600, 800, 1,000 or 5,000 times the lowest paid worker? Why shouldn’t we expect businesses to have an ethical culture and hiring practice beyond what the law requires? What happened to doing what is right? Fairness? Equity? Why does everything have to be legislated? Bezos fought $15 an hour and now caps those wages once you hit $15.75 and you have to move into management to earn more. Exploitation to put it kindly.
And I refuse to order anything from Amazon. I use they’re website for product or book research but I refuse to use them to buy something. Whole Foods is another matter but quality and employee morale has dropped since amazon bought it.
Adding the link:
Last year, CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times morethan the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO's Executive Paywatch news release today. Despite increasing protests from unions and consumer groups, the average CEO pay climbed 6% last year.May 22, 2018
This seems like another case where the system is broken, the broken system is exploited, and the participants in exploiting that broken system are criticized because the scope of fixing the system (where the real fault lies) seems too large. The 'American Dream' is promoted so extensively, but then the public changes their tune so dramatically when someone reaches that next level of wealth and not giving 'enough' back (both the wealth and the give-back ratios being completely arbitrary).
Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
Business schools used to teach ethics and maybe they still do but Amazon wouldn’t be what it is without all the infrastructure that supports them, everything from the nascent invention of the internet, government research, to highways for their trucks and airports for the planes that carry their goods. All paid by tax payers. And why not expect businesses to practice ethical behaviors? Particularly, when they’ve become highly profitable and don’t pay taxes. Why shouldn’t we expect CEOs or Boards of Directors to ask themselves or say, is it ethical that the CFO, CIO, CEO, etc, earn 600, 800, 1,000 or 5,000 times the lowest paid worker? Why shouldn’t we expect businesses to have an ethical culture and hiring practice beyond what the law requires? What happened to doing what is right? Fairness? Equity? Why does everything have to be legislated? Bezos fought $15 an hour and now caps those wages once you hit $15.75 and you have to move into management to earn more. Exploitation to put it kindly.
And I refuse to order anything from Amazon. I use they’re website for product or book research but I refuse to use them to buy something. Whole Foods is another matter but quality and employee morale has dropped since amazon bought it.
You are required to take an ethics class in biz school. What you're advocating is social justice, not business ethics. There's nothing unethical about their NOVA deal, from what I've seen.
I would argue that a business and an individual requesting massive tax incentives while not paying taxes and amassing a net worth of over a $100BB is unethical. Same goes for WalMart. An ethics class? It should be an associates degree. I never said the Amazon/NOVA deal was unethical.
Oh, and no, you can't have affordable healthcare. Or take time off for the birth of a child or to care for a sick family member. And don't you dare take that vacation time we give you because you know, we'll find someone else to replace you.
Why it matters: Regardless of how it is measured, CEO pay continues to be very, very high and has grown far faster in recent decades than typical worker pay. Higher CEO pay does not reflect correspondingly higher output or better firm performance. Exorbitant CEO pay therefore means that the fruits of economic growth are not going to ordinary workers. The growth of CEO and executive compensation overall was a major factor driving the doubling of the income shares of the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of U.S. households from 1979 to 2007. Since then, income growth has remained unbalanced. Profits and stock market prices have reached record highs while the wages of most workers have continued to stagnate.
Over the last several decades, CEO pay has grown much faster than profits, the pay of the top 0.1 percent of wage earners, and the wages of college graduates. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are more productive or have special talents or more education. If CEOs earned less or were taxed more, there would be no adverse impact on output or employment.
This seems like another case where the system is broken, the broken system is exploited, and the participants in exploiting that broken system are criticized because the scope of fixing the system (where the real fault lies) seems too large. The 'American Dream' is promoted so extensively, but then the public changes their tune so dramatically when someone reaches that next level of wealth and not giving 'enough' back (both the wealth and the give-back ratios being completely arbitrary).
Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
Business schools used to teach ethics and maybe they still do but Amazon wouldn’t be what it is without all the infrastructure that supports them, everything from the nascent invention of the internet, government research, to highways for their trucks and airports for the planes that carry their goods. All paid by tax payers. And why not expect businesses to practice ethical behaviors? Particularly, when they’ve become highly profitable and don’t pay taxes. Why shouldn’t we expect CEOs or Boards of Directors to ask themselves or say, is it ethical that the CFO, CIO, CEO, etc, earn 600, 800, 1,000 or 5,000 times the lowest paid worker? Why shouldn’t we expect businesses to have an ethical culture and hiring practice beyond what the law requires? What happened to doing what is right? Fairness? Equity? Why does everything have to be legislated? Bezos fought $15 an hour and now caps those wages once you hit $15.75 and you have to move into management to earn more. Exploitation to put it kindly.
And I refuse to order anything from Amazon. I use they’re website for product or book research but I refuse to use them to buy something. Whole Foods is another matter but quality and employee morale has dropped since amazon bought it.
You are required to take an ethics class in biz school. What you're advocating is social justice, not business ethics. There's nothing unethical about their NOVA deal, from what I've seen.
I would argue that a business and an individual requesting massive tax incentives while not paying taxes and amassing a net worth of over a $100BB is unethical. Same goes for WalMart. An ethics class? It should be an associates degree. I never said the Amazon/NOVA deal was unethical.
Typically if you have declared a business major, you have to take business ethics to get a bachelors. I can't say that's always true for every university, but it was for mine. You don't have to declare a major to receive your associate's degree. I would disagree that it is unethical. Remember there are thousands of shareholders, most of them middle class, that benefit from Amazon's profits.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,113
The latest from Amazon. I hope none of you have to live in any of these neighborhoods. Yet another reason not to use this "one click" shopping.
‘Pollution everywhere’: how one-click shopping is creating Amazon warehouse towns
In
California’s Inland Empire, Black and Latino communities already faced
some of the worst pollution. Then, more warehouses and trucks started
appearing.
Three
generations of Arah Parker’s family have lived in her pleasant,
yellow-hued home, where there used to be a clear view of the San Gabriel
mountains from the kitchen window.
There used to be – until the country’s hunger for online shopping swallowed the neighborhood.
Four massive Amazon
warehouses – ranging from 500,000 to nearly 900,000 sq ft – now
surround this historically Black community, as do distribution centers
for Target, Under Armour, Monster Energy and Keeco textiles. Her home is
now boxed in on three sides by concrete block buildings and the quiet
road out front has been paved into a four-lane expressway rumbling with
delivery trucks.
The ancient mountains are obscured by a “big,
block wall” and more often than not, they are further shrouded by a
noxious layer of haze belched up by the trucks.
“To watch the transformation, it really has been disheartening,” said Parker, 39.
The
Inland Empire region, where Parker lives, is now one of the biggest
national hubs for the e-commerce industry. The changes it has undergone
are being replicated in cities and towns across the country.
To
feed the one-click, one-day delivery demands of the nation, new
warehouses are opening quickly, often in Black and brown neighborhoods.
They sometimes chew up entire suburban blocks and communities in the
process, crowding roadways with delivery trucks and vans and air space
with cargo planes, clouding the air with more pollution.
Located
about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, the Inland Empire has the
third-largest concentration of Amazon warehouses in the US, according to
a database of Amazon facilities Consumer Reports (CR) purchased from
MWPVL, a logistics consulting firm.
"A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts."
NEW YORK — Chris Smalls spent most of the last 11 months in a tiny tent across the street from Amazon’s Staten Island 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center, where he was fired after protesting the company’s lack of protections during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had nothing. We started off with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he said after the union he helped to found scored an improbable victory over one of the world’s largest companies. “And that’s it.”
On Friday, Smalls, 33, stood in front of a phalanx of reporters and television cameras in the red sweatsuit that had been his uniform during the campaign to unionize Amazon’s first warehouse in the United States. The reporters wanted to know how he felt, what demands the new union would make of Amazon, what message he had for the company’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, who also the owns The Washington Post.
NEW YORK — Chris Smalls spent most of the last 11 months in a tiny tent across the street from Amazon’s Staten Island 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center, where he was fired after protesting the company’s lack of protections during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had nothing. We started off with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he said after the union he helped to found scored an improbable victory over one of the world’s largest companies. “And that’s it.”
On Friday, Smalls, 33, stood in front of a phalanx of reporters and television cameras in the red sweatsuit that had been his uniform during the campaign to unionize Amazon’s first warehouse in the United States. The reporters wanted to know how he felt, what demands the new union would make of Amazon, what message he had for the company’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, who also the owns The Washington Post.
Damn Woke Labor expecting to be treated fairly and receive a good wage.
NEW YORK — Chris Smalls spent most of the last 11 months in a tiny tent across the street from Amazon’s Staten Island 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center, where he was fired after protesting the company’s lack of protections during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had nothing. We started off with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he said after the union he helped to found scored an improbable victory over one of the world’s largest companies. “And that’s it.”
On Friday, Smalls, 33, stood in front of a phalanx of reporters and television cameras in the red sweatsuit that had been his uniform during the campaign to unionize Amazon’s first warehouse in the United States. The reporters wanted to know how he felt, what demands the new union would make of Amazon, what message he had for the company’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, who also the owns The Washington Post.
Damn Woke Labor expecting to be treated fairly and receive a good wage.
Maybe AOC was correct in not being mesmerized by the shiny objects dangled before her? And is it really a win/win when NOVA receives 14K jobs but 18K are eliminated elsewhere? Seems like a shell game to receive subsidies to me. 2026 is a long ways away and a lot can happen between now and then. At least Arlington hasn't paid any of the bench mark incentives. Time will tell. But imagine if this had happened in NYC instead of in Arlington with its existing empty, office towers, as opposed to a lower middle class , occupied working class neighborhood?
Amazon says it is pausing construction at HQ2 in Arlington
One set of offices is set to open later this year, but the largest piece of its new headquarters is being put on hold
Amazon will pause construction of some buildings at the second headquarters it is building in Arlington, the company confirmed Friday, a setback for the e-commerce giant that just years ago promised Northern Virginia an economic boom and multiple office towers filled with employees.
In a more than year-long sweepstakes late last decade, Amazon dangled its HQ2 with tens of thousands of jobs and billions in capital investments. Hundreds of cities across North America applied, offering huge economic incentives to attract the company, and eventually Amazon gave half the prize to a site just across the river from D.C.
But then the pandemic arrived and workers stayed home. More recently, Amazon’s business suffered a decline because of overexpansion. Since then, it’s laid off nearly 20,000 corporate employees and slowed hiring and growth at its warehouses. Amazon reported an annual loss last year and cut back on expansion plans for its warehouses.
Now, that’s adding delays to construction in Arlington — although area officials maintain that they will nonetheless see the benefits of millions in incentives that they promised to Amazon. “I don’t believe this news puts at risk the benefits that Arlington has sought to realize since they made the decision to locate here,” Arlington County Board member Katie Cristol (D) said in an interview.
Amazon has filled more than 8,000 of the 25,000 jobs it projected to fill in Arlington, putting it ahead of its hiring schedule, and plans in June to formally open Met Park, the first phase of construction in the county. But PenPlace, a larger project that has not yet broken ground, will be put on hold indefinitely. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees,” John Schoettler, Amazon’s real estate chief, said in a statement. Because Met Park will have space to accommodate more than 14,000 employees, the company had decided to shift the groundbreaking of PenPlace “out a bit.”
Plans for the PenPlace site, just a stone’s throw from the Pentagon, include more than 3 million square feet of office space spread across three buildings. Cristol, the county lawmaker, said she believes that the company is committed to building at least one office tower, as well as its planned futuristic glass Helix and 2.5 acres of open space.
But the future of two other offices at that site is unclear. Amazon spokeswoman Rachael Lighty said the company is moving ahead with preconstruction activities such as filing permits, although a final timeline for the overall PenPlace project is still being determined.
After a decade of explosive growth, Amazon’s expansion began to wane in the summer of 2022. The company confirmed earlier this year that it was laying off 18,000 workers in its corporate workforce.
Big tech companies, including Facebook, Google and Microsoft, announced major job cuts in the past several months as the pandemic boom the companies experienced began to slow. In addition to layoffs, Amazon has also paused the expansion of its logistics network, which the company has acknowledged added too many warehouses and workers based on the rosy growth outlook caused by the pandemic.
Lighty, the Amazon spokeswoman, said that the construction pause was not related to any job cuts in Northern Virginia. The construction pause was earlier reported by Bloomberg News.
The news is a hit for Arlington’s office market, which has been struggling with record-high vacancy rates, as well as a major backslide for Amazon’s once-aggressive commercial real estate plans in the country.
Amazon’s move to pause construction is “unsurprising,” said John Mozena, president at the Center for Economic Accountability, a nonprofit advocacy organization in Michigan.
“The reality is that businesses are going to do what their leaders think is best for them in any sort of circumstance,” he said. “And the ability of governments to influence that is pretty minimal at best.” He pointed out that Amazon already backed out of another planned headquarters in New York City after facing significant backlash from politicians and community leaders there.
But Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, said the construction pause is just a sign that Amazon is “adapting to current market conditions.”
The labor market in the construction industry is still tight, and some supply chains are still constrained, putting pressure on major construction projects, he said. Amazon is pausing to see what the “new normal” in business demand will look like, he said.
Amazon announced last month that it would require workers to work from the office at least three days per week, after previously giving more latitude to departments to decide what worked best for them. The decision pleased officials in downtown Seattle, where Amazon maintains its first headquarters, who hoped it could reinvigorate the area. The neighborhood has had subdued foot traffic since the pandemic began.
But the company has also signaled its need for less office space as its growth slowed and work from home became more common. The Seattle Times reported that the company is letting a lease lapse for one of its offices in downtown Seattle and moving about 2,000 workers into existing offices.
The “mega-block” housing PenPlace is one of the largest undeveloped parcels in the D.C. area’s inner urban core. Arlington officials had touted Amazon’s project as a way to bring office workers back to a neighborhood long filled with empty office buildings.
The county is facing record-high office vacancies of more than 22.1 percent, posing a major fiscal challenge to a jurisdiction that relies on commercial properties for about half its tax revenue.
Amazon had also agreed to provide space on-site to house Arlington Community High School, whose student body largely consists of working adults, and offer limited use of conference space at the facility to the public.That facility will be included in the first corporate building that Cristol believes Amazon is still committed to building, though it is unclear if construction delays will slow that commitment.
To bring Amazon’s second headquarters to Virginia, state and local officials approved an economic incentives deal in 2019 that would give the company up to $573 million in public dollars as it met hiring and occupancy goals.
But the coronavirus pandemic had already been putting that plan into question. Amazon declined to apply for its first set of those pay-as-you-go grants from Virginia, delaying any payments from the state until 2026.
Local incentives, meanwhile, are based both on Amazon occupying certain amounts of office space as well as on expected increases in local hotel stays stemming from the company’s activity. Because Arlington’s hotel tax revenue had not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, the county has yet to pay anything to the company since its arrival three years ago.
The tech industry’s growth has abruptly slowed after a decade of rapid growth, bolstered by the gains many of the companies experienced during the pandemic. But the boom times ended in the last year, after a period of sinking stock prices and slowing revenue growth. Companies instituted hiring freezes and cut some perks before laying off tens of thousands of workers.
I wonder how this affects that ^^^^^? From A Letter From an American:
Today, on the anniversary of the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon for using “a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to maintain its monopoly power.” The FTC and the suing states say “Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.”
The states suing are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
While estimates of Amazon’s control of the online commerce market vary, they center around about 40%, and Amazon charges third-party merchants for using the company’s services to store and ship items. Last quarter, Amazon reported more than $32 billion in revenues from these services. The suit claims that Amazon illegally overcharges third-party sellers and inflates prices.
I wonder how this affects that ^^^^^? From A Letter From an American:
Today, on the anniversary of the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon for using “a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to maintain its monopoly power.” The FTC and the suing states say “Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.”
The states suing are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
While estimates of Amazon’s control of the online commerce market vary, they center around about 40%, and Amazon charges third-party merchants for using the company’s services to store and ship items. Last quarter, Amazon reported more than $32 billion in revenues from these services. The suit claims that Amazon illegally overcharges third-party sellers and inflates prices.
I don't know the ins and outs of this suit. By breaking up Amazon and creating an environment akin to our streaming services is not good in my book. I love that I have one membership and go one place to shop. What I do not want is 4 memberships to 4 shopping services like we have with streaming today. Amazon can monopolize all they want so long as I don't have to do quadruple my costs.
And no, I don't necessarily think that multiple competitors will drive down the prices.
I wonder how this affects that ^^^^^? From A Letter From an American:
Today, on the anniversary of the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon for using “a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to maintain its monopoly power.” The FTC and the suing states say “Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.”
The states suing are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
While estimates of Amazon’s control of the online commerce market vary, they center around about 40%, and Amazon charges third-party merchants for using the company’s services to store and ship items. Last quarter, Amazon reported more than $32 billion in revenues from these services. The suit claims that Amazon illegally overcharges third-party sellers and inflates prices.
I don't know the ins and outs of this suit. By breaking up Amazon and creating an environment akin to our streaming services is not good in my book. I love that I have one membership and go one place to shop. What I do not want is 4 memberships to 4 shopping services like we have with streaming today. Amazon can monopolize all they want so long as I don't have to do quadruple my costs.
And no, I don't necessarily think that multiple competitors will drive down the prices.
So you’re okay with ticketbastard? Because that’s what model you eventually end up with if it’s left unchecked. And then what? Why would you need 4 shopping services memberships? You just keep your Amazon account and continue shopping there.
Comments
Wow.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/tech/jeff-bezos-philanthropy-trnd/index.html
The top 50 donors on The Chronicle of Philanthropy list donated roughly 50% less than last year. Overall donations from the world's 50 top donors dropped from $14.7 billion in 2017 to $7.8 billion in 2018.
Maybe our resident CPA "Gern" knows..
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/tech/amazon-hq2-arlington-agreement/index.html?utm_content=2019-03-06T03:54:52&utm_term=image&utm_source=twCNN&utm_medium=social
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/us/politics/amazon-housing-northern-virginia.html
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https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/holders/
https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=AMZN&subView=institutional
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-Reviews-E6036.htm
Found all of these links interesting.
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Sorry for the train-of-thought on this, but I find it maddening when people expect businesses to conduct themselves more ethically than they are legally responsible for (often expecting the businesses to put themselves in a position of disadvantage for that end). We should have zero ethical expectations of businesses beyond what is legally required, we should expect them to protect their profitability within the framework of the law, and we should be more demanding of politicians to create regulations which protect worker and consumer rights if they're seen as unfair. As an aside, I do wonder how many of the people on here nay-saying Amazon's behaviours have ceased buying from Amazon (aka voting on ethical conduct with your wallets).
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
And I refuse to order anything from Amazon. I use they’re website for product or book research but I refuse to use them to buy something. Whole Foods is another matter but quality and employee morale has dropped since amazon bought it.
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CEO Pay Skyrockets To 361 Times That Of The Average Worker - Forbes
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https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-in-2017/
Why it matters: Regardless of how it is measured, CEO pay continues to be very, very high and has grown far faster in recent decades than typical worker pay. Higher CEO pay does not reflect correspondingly higher output or better firm performance. Exorbitant CEO pay therefore means that the fruits of economic growth are not going to ordinary workers. The growth of CEO and executive compensation overall was a major factor driving the doubling of the income shares of the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of U.S. households from 1979 to 2007. Since then, income growth has remained unbalanced. Profits and stock market prices have reached record highs while the wages of most workers have continued to stagnate.
Over the last several decades, CEO pay has grown much faster than profits, the pay of the top 0.1 percent of wage earners, and the wages of college graduates. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are more productive or have special talents or more education. If CEOs earned less or were taxed more, there would be no adverse impact on output or employment.
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I would disagree that it is unethical. Remember there are thousands of shareholders, most of them middle class, that benefit from Amazon's profits.
‘Pollution everywhere’: how one-click shopping is creating Amazon warehouse towns
In California’s Inland Empire, Black and Latino communities already faced some of the worst pollution. Then, more warehouses and trucks started appearing.Three generations of Arah Parker’s family have lived in her pleasant, yellow-hued home, where there used to be a clear view of the San Gabriel mountains from the kitchen window.
There used to be – until the country’s hunger for online shopping swallowed the neighborhood.
The ancient mountains are obscured by a “big, block wall” and more often than not, they are further shrouded by a noxious layer of haze belched up by the trucks.
“To watch the transformation, it really has been disheartening,” said Parker, 39.
The Inland Empire region, where Parker lives, is now one of the biggest national hubs for the e-commerce industry. The changes it has undergone are being replicated in cities and towns across the country.
To feed the one-click, one-day delivery demands of the nation, new warehouses are opening quickly, often in Black and brown neighborhoods. They sometimes chew up entire suburban blocks and communities in the process, crowding roadways with delivery trucks and vans and air space with cargo planes, clouding the air with more pollution.
Located about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, the Inland Empire has the third-largest concentration of Amazon warehouses in the US, according to a database of Amazon facilities Consumer Reports (CR) purchased from MWPVL, a logistics consulting firm.
NEW YORK — Chris Smalls spent most of the last 11 months in a tiny tent across the street from Amazon’s Staten Island 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center, where he was fired after protesting the company’s lack of protections during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had nothing. We started off with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he said after the union he helped to found scored an improbable victory over one of the world’s largest companies. “And that’s it.”
On Friday, Smalls, 33, stood in front of a phalanx of reporters and television cameras in the red sweatsuit that had been his uniform during the campaign to unionize Amazon’s first warehouse in the United States. The reporters wanted to know how he felt, what demands the new union would make of Amazon, what message he had for the company’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, who also the owns The Washington Post.
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There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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https://qz.com/2148400/business-school-teaches-managers-to-keep-wages-low/
Amazon says it is pausing construction at HQ2 in Arlington
One set of offices is set to open later this year, but the largest piece of its new headquarters is being put on hold
Amazon will pause construction of some buildings at the second headquarters it is building in Arlington, the company confirmed Friday, a setback for the e-commerce giant that just years ago promised Northern Virginia an economic boom and multiple office towers filled with employees.In a more than year-long sweepstakes late last decade, Amazon dangled its HQ2 with tens of thousands of jobs and billions in capital investments. Hundreds of cities across North America applied, offering huge economic incentives to attract the company, and eventually Amazon gave half the prize to a site just across the river from D.C.
But then the pandemic arrived and workers stayed home. More recently, Amazon’s business suffered a decline because of overexpansion. Since then, it’s laid off nearly 20,000 corporate employees and slowed hiring and growth at its warehouses. Amazon reported an annual loss last year and cut back on expansion plans for its warehouses.
Now, that’s adding delays to construction in Arlington — although area officials maintain that they will nonetheless see the benefits of millions in incentives that they promised to Amazon. “I don’t believe this news puts at risk the benefits that Arlington has sought to realize since they made the decision to locate here,” Arlington County Board member Katie Cristol (D) said in an interview.
Amazon has filled more than 8,000 of the 25,000 jobs it projected to fill in Arlington, putting it ahead of its hiring schedule, and plans in June to formally open Met Park, the first phase of construction in the county. But PenPlace, a larger project that has not yet broken ground, will be put on hold indefinitely. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees,” John Schoettler, Amazon’s real estate chief, said in a statement. Because Met Park will have space to accommodate more than 14,000 employees, the company had decided to shift the groundbreaking of PenPlace “out a bit.”
Plans for the PenPlace site, just a stone’s throw from the Pentagon, include more than 3 million square feet of office space spread across three buildings. Cristol, the county lawmaker, said she believes that the company is committed to building at least one office tower, as well as its planned futuristic glass Helix and 2.5 acres of open space.
But the future of two other offices at that site is unclear. Amazon spokeswoman Rachael Lighty said the company is moving ahead with preconstruction activities such as filing permits, although a final timeline for the overall PenPlace project is still being determined.
After a decade of explosive growth, Amazon’s expansion began to wane in the summer of 2022. The company confirmed earlier this year that it was laying off 18,000 workers in its corporate workforce.
Big tech companies, including Facebook, Google and Microsoft, announced major job cuts in the past several months as the pandemic boom the companies experienced began to slow. In addition to layoffs, Amazon has also paused the expansion of its logistics network, which the company has acknowledged added too many warehouses and workers based on the rosy growth outlook caused by the pandemic.
Lighty, the Amazon spokeswoman, said that the construction pause was not related to any job cuts in Northern Virginia. The construction pause was earlier reported by Bloomberg News.
The news is a hit for Arlington’s office market, which has been struggling with record-high vacancy rates, as well as a major backslide for Amazon’s once-aggressive commercial real estate plans in the country.
Amazon’s move to pause construction is “unsurprising,” said John Mozena, president at the Center for Economic Accountability, a nonprofit advocacy organization in Michigan.
“The reality is that businesses are going to do what their leaders think is best for them in any sort of circumstance,” he said. “And the ability of governments to influence that is pretty minimal at best.” He pointed out that Amazon already backed out of another planned headquarters in New York City after facing significant backlash from politicians and community leaders there.
But Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, said the construction pause is just a sign that Amazon is “adapting to current market conditions.”
The labor market in the construction industry is still tight, and some supply chains are still constrained, putting pressure on major construction projects, he said. Amazon is pausing to see what the “new normal” in business demand will look like, he said.
Amazon announced last month that it would require workers to work from the office at least three days per week, after previously giving more latitude to departments to decide what worked best for them. The decision pleased officials in downtown Seattle, where Amazon maintains its first headquarters, who hoped it could reinvigorate the area. The neighborhood has had subdued foot traffic since the pandemic began.
But the company has also signaled its need for less office space as its growth slowed and work from home became more common. The Seattle Times reported that the company is letting a lease lapse for one of its offices in downtown Seattle and moving about 2,000 workers into existing offices.
The “mega-block” housing PenPlace is one of the largest undeveloped parcels in the D.C. area’s inner urban core. Arlington officials had touted Amazon’s project as a way to bring office workers back to a neighborhood long filled with empty office buildings.
The county is facing record-high office vacancies of more than 22.1 percent, posing a major fiscal challenge to a jurisdiction that relies on commercial properties for about half its tax revenue.
Amazon had also agreed to provide space on-site to house Arlington Community High School, whose student body largely consists of working adults, and offer limited use of conference space at the facility to the public. That facility will be included in the first corporate building that Cristol believes Amazon is still committed to building, though it is unclear if construction delays will slow that commitment.
To bring Amazon’s second headquarters to Virginia, state and local officials approved an economic incentives deal in 2019 that would give the company up to $573 million in public dollars as it met hiring and occupancy goals.
But the coronavirus pandemic had already been putting that plan into question. Amazon declined to apply for its first set of those pay-as-you-go grants from Virginia, delaying any payments from the state until 2026.
Local incentives, meanwhile, are based both on Amazon occupying certain amounts of office space as well as on expected increases in local hotel stays stemming from the company’s activity. Because Arlington’s hotel tax revenue had not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, the county has yet to pay anything to the company since its arrival three years ago.
The tech industry’s growth has abruptly slowed after a decade of rapid growth, bolstered by the gains many of the companies experienced during the pandemic. But the boom times ended in the last year, after a period of sinking stock prices and slowing revenue growth. Companies instituted hiring freezes and cut some perks before laying off tens of thousands of workers.
Amazon to pause construction at HQ2 in Arlington - The Washington Post
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Today, on the anniversary of the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, the FTC and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon for using “a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to maintain its monopoly power.” The FTC and the suing states say “Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.”
The states suing are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
While estimates of Amazon’s control of the online commerce market vary, they center around about 40%, and Amazon charges third-party merchants for using the company’s services to store and ship items. Last quarter, Amazon reported more than $32 billion in revenues from these services. The suit claims that Amazon illegally overcharges third-party sellers and inflates prices.
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And no, I don't necessarily think that multiple competitors will drive down the prices.
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