Economics

It seems obvious that Amazon Logistics will eventually accept external customers and become a profitable division like AWS because their delivery workers are all contractors instead of full time employees with benefits.

tummyrampage

Generally, parcel delivery workers make a living wage and are protected by unions. I’m quite certain that companies like Fedex and UPS have brought enormous amounts of efficiency to the process. By Amazon creating their own system filled with contractors, they’re making a frontal attack on worker’s wages. Instead of being paid by the hour and having benefits, Amazon pays people by the lot and they get no benefits. They are contracted to deliver a set of packages to a geographic area no matter how long it takes. Amazon argues that if you can do it faster, than you can make more money. I’m not stupid enough to think that Amazon won’t increase the number of packages needed to be delivered if a route is consistently being completed quickly. They have access to that data in real time.

JonnyBravoII

Hey Alexa

What do you call it when there’s integration, but it isn’t horizontal?

MachoManRandyAvg

Not gonna lie, I ordered 3 items during Black Friday.

When shipment arrived, only 2 items were packed but Amazon didn’t know both arrived.

A week later it admitted defeat and said package lost. I was refunded on all 3 items

I know it’s early but my advice today: order shitloads of stuff and hope amazon doesn’t know it delivered the items! FREE

ed2727

The most fascinating thing to me about Amazon that truly separates them from 99.9% of businesses is that they focused on building an efficient supply chain that they then built a business on top of. As someone who works in supply chain consulting, I can verify that many many business (big businesses) do not focus on supply chain until it becomes a large enough expense that they have to, they build a business and then adapt a supply chain that works for them. There are incredible opportunities for savings within companies that have poorly executed supply chain networks. Often by the time they realize this, it’s too late to truly realize all the benefits of a “perfect” supply chain.

baxter8279

Now, that’s good news. Why isn’t this being reported more widely?

deck_hand

Can someone explain why this is good? Does the repatriated cash get invested into the economy, or are taxes paid on it? Or does it just move to an American bank accout?

JALLways

And the dance goes on. Hide the cash in the way the government encourages you to so you can ‘bring it back’ and everyone wins. You get a huge tax cut, and he gets to look good, and then you spend it on your stock buyback which improves the value of that stock option bonus.

None of this makes a single additional iphone, car, or air conditioner.

ThMogget

And more than half has gone to stock buy backs. So much for all that hype about job creation from increased reinvestment in labor and capital

simyjoe

This is wonderful

sitrucb

Forgive but I believe the author said this doesn’t include growing/stable numbers of international students.

Plus, almost all the decline is happening in small liberal arts colleges (mainly New England) and sketchy for-profit community “colleges”.

Finally, the number of kids is down quite heavily since 1990-1993 and 2005-2008. College age students are in the late 90s baby trough.

FarrisAT

With how expensive university education can get (especially in America), good.

Universities have been one of the fastest growing businesses in the US for at least two decades now, and have now become stupidly greedy. A lot of people still have not grasped it yet.

Successful-Tension

There was a short period of time where goin to college = good jobs etc

Now there has been a massive uprising of shit colleges with terrible ROI… I surely wasn’t mature enough to know decide plan at 17 but kids these days really really need to.

you can’t just go to college and fuck around and graduate with a good gpa an do well. you need experience throughout, internships etc.

akmalhot

This is what happens when unemployment is low. More people are employed and thus aren’t in school. When recession hits you see more people educating themselves in order to land a job.

tyco_brahe

It’s all that free government money, you see. That’s why costs goes up. Not because government spending is dropping per student, forcing more students out of college. But because of free government money. Which has to be paid back. And therefore … isn’t. Free.

And you can test it easily; if the number of students goes down, costs will go down. Wait.

purgance

Meanwhile they keep buying gas from Russia 🙂

redvelvet92

The irony is that by going green they sacrificed energy independence in favor of buying gas from Russia.

Lindys1

Oh, wierd … Germany creating more massive economic institutions that will collect interest and “fee’s”?

No thanks, if they were directly funding things I would be all about it. But just like the Paris Accords, all this does is create a massive bureaucracy that will be corrupt as all heck.

Banick088

Lol this is so stupid….

just tax the living shit out of carbon emissions and call it a day.

SFWonlyInvest

After reading the article, it seems like none of the serious criticisms of Piketty’s work are going to be addressed. This is a bit of a shame because it means that there’s going to be a rehash of the arguments all over again (e.g. elasticity of substitution between capital and labour, measurement errors etc.).

must_not_forget_pwd

Directed by Michael Bay?

octaviancincinnatus

I can’t wait to see this.

martini31337

I hate that they attribute the wealth tax to Warren when Sander’s wealth tax is much more effective and kicks in earlier.

tushmaster207

>We ?

Well maybe those with the money and power did. The rest of us rats are down here just trying to survive.

azdood85

That would be the Obama recovery I assume.

HondaAnnaconda

There was never a recovery. QE was supposed to solve the problem, now were on QE4.

The fed is monetizing its debt

Interest rates are being held down still and not being allowed to rise.

The trade deficit with china is widening, not closing.

The country is going deeper and deeper into debt on a national level and a personal level but americans arent becoming more productive otherwise the trade deficit would shrink.

All the big banks that got bailed out in 2008 are still insolvent.

Gold is going up

And we’ve got bubble in stocks and bonds. They’re high in nominal terms but it’s not because of any underlying fundamental strength

cannotconfirm111

> “The overwhelming majority of business leaders surveyed in the report said lobbying primarily advanced company interests, sometimes at the expense of the public interest. ”

It seems like that would be an accurate statement right?

Obviously us plebs make do with this makeshift ad-hoc gigs system for those of us that are not self-employed. (W2 in contrast to 1099 employment)

Hehe, I mean in general I guess instability economically and that kind of spending is a type of stimulus? I mean this in regards to trying to predict US foreign policy.

sleeper5ervice

I really love the idea of strengthening local Universities. I still think we are thinking too small though. Every person young and old should receive an extra conditional day off to attend these Uni’s. There is so much wasted bandwidth. Also, you want to see these researchers interacting with businesses, bring the business people to the uni’s. Part time, 1 day a week, to pursue whatever strikes them as interesting. Education isn’t something that’s ever supposed to stop. My Uni let’s anyone over 65 attend any lectures for free. Same concept.

Jaygernaughty

The modern view is that government institutions are bad and private institutions are good. What the opinion piece presents is the opposite. Hurray for modern economic theory.

Coldfriction

I mean Silicon Valley isn’t randomly located. Like most tech hubs it’s located in the suburbs of a major city with world class universities nearby. Plus it’s in the sunbelt.

jerothattallguy

The way things work right now infuriates me so much. I am currently a researcher at a state flagship. Recently, we have been trying to get a program off the ground where researchers/students partnered up with local start-ups and businesses. The objective was to get academics industry experience and small businesses expertise that would otherwise be too expensive.

It was an overwhelming success and mutually beneficial for all parties. Unfortunately, the dean came in and shut it down because he thought that the sole purpose of the university is academic research. Apparently, researchers going out to work with start ups in their own time detracted from that. In no uncertain terms, they told me that they would kick me out if I attempted to push this stuff further.

I got in at the right time and saw the writing on the wall. Consequently , I made my own connections and continued this sort of work with a small outfit consisted of the remnants of the program after it was shut down. We have more interested clients than we can service. Shame that the concept will die with each of us slowly moving on with our career.

buttersquashcorgi

Give money? Whos money?

Who’s gonna end up paying for it?

Everluck8

Too big to fail.

InvisibleTextArea

The impact will be real, but also has to be temporary, since the demand for planes isn’t going down. Eventually they’ll either have to engineer the 737 Max to be deemed safer or produce a new model entirely, but it seem either way they’d have customers.

The time required to re-engineer or replace and the current backlog of seemingly unusable planes is disturbing (and expensive, they sell for $74 million each) though.

october17

Technically a halt in production or any domestically manufactured item could slow the economy.

If ticonderoga stops making pencils then they’d employee less people, buy less wood and graphite, use less shipping services….

It’s just the halting of 737 production is significantly more impactful to the economy

fanpple

>bringing production down from 40 planes a month to zero

Are they claiming that building 40 planes is 0.5% of GDP?. Because that’s a tough sell.

US GDP is 20T. 0.5% is 100B.

The Max sells at about 150M or lower. So 6B in goods produced. Are they claiming that the multiplier of building a plane is 15x?

Fenris_uy

Wouldn’t any halt of production slow the economy? Just that some production is material and some is immaterial.

right2bootlick

But what is the causality here? I feel like that well off countries with a real ability to invest in education, the environment and fighting inequality (and you see that almost all developed nations do this once they become developed). You can’t really worry about environmentalism, equality and the environment when people are starving and dying.

DrImpeccable76

I had to read Why Nations Fail for one of my econ classes in college. 10/10 would read again.

Lockeblack

What if it is the other way around. Prosperous nations have the ability to spend more on environmentalism, inequality and education, where as lower performing nations cannot?

Feel like this is a which came first, Chicken or the Egg situation?

Rayburn8923

Chicken and the egg.

Producing wealth is what also allows for more spending on education, protections, etc.

TracyMorganFreeman

oh man i need to unsubscribe from this sub and just stay at r/academiceconomics

there is nothing but politically biased drivel posted here anymore. this entire article is just reflecting on a book that assumes correlation = causation and has limited to no data to argue many of its main points.

r/politics is bleeding over here something fierce. barf

brainsurgeonguy

Here is the thing. Prices of things are only worth what people will pay for it. If millenials are destroyed. They will spend less money which means business earns less and has less incentive to invest. They probably won’t be buying shares, they won’t be buying houses and someone else will need to buy them to keep prices inflated.

If they can’t get into debt to buy shit the system kind of fails. If even with completely 0 interest rates it the cost of assets is too high to buy into then they won’t, and prices in an illiquid market can fall fast.

So if the future generations fail. Then the current generations also fail. Just in different ways.

fremeer

>Investors are fleeing to safety.

Where is this “safety” that the article speaks of?

> The stock market is dipping.

Is it?

cambeiu

The next recession will destroy home values to never ride again and give millennials their first shot at a good economy in the recover

joeblowme12345

Wait wait wait. Only 37% of under 25 own stocks? The only pensions left are for state and federal employees. I doubt that’s more than 15%? So does that mean that somewhere about 50% have precisely $0 in for their retirement? What am I missing?

As always, housing continues to be a big factor here. Previous generations essentially built their nest egg on the back of housing appreciation. In fact, for many, that’s the only equity they have. This will of course come to a head between younger generations needing a place to stay and older generations needing to liquidate to pay for their retirement.

buttersquashcorgi

These countless recession articles are destroying the meaning of a recession

Szwedo