Rich people spending their money isn’t really the problem. It helped put me through college.
Because those yachts were bought with money skimmed off our labor.
If that was the case, it should work both ways: when Bezos "lost" $20 billions of May 1st, how many skimmed labourers suddenly were able to afford $1 million houses ?
What matters is 1) how much wealth any given employee generates, and 2) how much of that generated wealth they retain. Anything that doesn't end up in their pockets, and is not a business expense otherwise, is economic rent collected by their employer.
Why would it? The notion that "it should work both ways" assumes that "both ways" are equally viable.
The average joe in america and many other places has more money in a month than many have a year, the average american or european has access to luxuries other people dream off.
We are rich by proxy of simply living in the states or in europe. Furthermore we also have more opportunities and the ability to become a millionaire too.
We are envied by many places worldwide, we need to stop being angry at what others have and be better.
I hate the anti-rich people talk because we could do far more productive things.
besides, to many people we are included in that rich category we talk own about.
Corporations have a net positive effect on society, so we should sit by and watch the dragons add to their hoard? They don't need a billion dollars, it's just a video game to these people. They want to increase their high scores so they can be top of the leaderboard.
Also, millionaires include people who saved a million dollars over their lifespan in order to retire. Retirees need that money if they want to live a modest lifestyle, pay for unexpected (or really expected at that age) health care costs, and support their grandchildren. It's a luxury we'd all be lucky to have and tragically many people weren't able to achieve. Add in an order of magnitude and what more do you get? What value does a person add to the world when they have a billion dollars instead of a million?
So it comes down to: is a handful of pseudo-randomly selected[0] people having wealth on the scale of billions a good outcome or a bad one? Personally I think it's pretty obviously the latter, and if you agree then I struggle to see why a wealth tax isn't the obvious solution.
0: "It isn't random, they worked harder than everyone else!" Where would Microsoft be if Gates' mom wasn't friends with IBM's John Opel? Where would Amazon be if Bezos had been born 5 years earlier, or later? Etc.
Citation needed.
Maybe we shouldn't speak of companies as being "net positive" or "net negative", but rather speak of what could be improved if there was more competition, more companies, more market. Less monopolies.
If you think Amazon is unfairly using their monopoly to keep others out and capture the market, state your claim. If you think competitors could do better, prove it with consumer choice.
Walmart or Shopify or eBay or wherever you want to shop are just a click away. If consumers think they can do better, then they will. I have already ditched Amazon for all those reasons. But you cannot speak for others.
The competitors you list also aren't head-on in competition with Amazon. Aliexpress predominantly serves non-American markets. eBay, like it, is an auction site. Shopify does not have one central market, it's completely decentralized. Walmart is the most similar to Amazon, and perhaps with its acquisition of Jet.com and its growing investments in ecommerce, it may yet prove to be a lasting competitor. Stay tuned.
Greater reach and resources is part & parcel of being the top consumer choice. If they blanket the airwaves, if there is some asymmetry, still who cares? You're going to have to show how consumers do not have a choice or how it doesn't help consumers.
Because regardless of how intense Amazon's marketing and reach get, their competitors are still one click away. Finding out about competitors is one search query away, one media article away, or one advertisement away. Frankly, if a consumer is unable to expend the minimal effort to find & choose an Amazon competitor to buy a product, they're basically not trying at all. And not trying is their choice.
As far as anti-competitive behavior, I will defer to luminaries more informed than I
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/amazon-wins-ruling-resu...
It doesn't matter if there isn't a direct Amazon competitor. All large companies compete on multiple fronts. It does not mean there is no competition in shopping.
I don't respond to essay dumps like this. If you want to say something, you're going to have to say it or quote it.
If you refuse to engage further in this conversation, that is your prerogative and it is noted. We can consider this matter closed.
Essay dumping is not conversation. Although it is also your prerogative to avoid conversation as well.
> If Amazon detected lower prices on other sites, it would bury their products in Amazon search results, where they got most of their sales. Some of the merchants were eager to grow their sales on other sites, but Amazon’s policies prevented them from offering lower prices elsewhere to draw shoppers away.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/amazon-is...
> Amazon constantly scans rivals’ prices to see if they’re lower. When it discovers a product is cheaper on, say, Walmart.com, Amazon alerts the company selling the item and then makes the product harder to find and buy on its own marketplace -- effectively penalizing the merchant. In many cases, the merchant opts to raise the price on the rival site rather than risk losing sales on Amazon.
> Merchants have long complained that Amazon wields outsize influence over their businesses. Besides paying higher fees, many now have to buy advertising to stand out on the increasingly cluttered site. Some report giving Amazon 40% or more of each transaction, up from 20% a few years ago.
> Some merchants are keen to increase their sales on Walmart, which charges less to sell products on its marketplace. But sellers say the price alerts are forcing them to maintain allegiance to Amazon and making it harder to diversify their businesses. Walmart routinely fields requests from merchants to raise prices on its marketplace because they worry a lower price on Walmart will jeopardize their sales on Amazon, says a Walmart manager, who requested anonymity to speak freely about an internal matter.
The fact is that consumers continually choose to entrust Amazon the power to pick on their behalf, making it their consumer choice. If sellers leave, consumers often choose Amazon over the seller. Amazon can only "bury" merchants in their search results because consumers continue to be satisfied with what Amazon finds for them. If consumers found Amazon's search results lacking, they can find the missing sellers on other websites. Practically every consumer knows how to buy things online outside of Amazon, a lot of them do it all the time.
Personally, I choose to buy many better and cheaper things outside Amazon. I do not choose Amazon to find any of my stuff. That choice has always been extremely easily available to any consumer, but they don't choose it. Consumers aren't being denied a choice, they have chosen: they chose Amazon's higher fee marketplace.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/9/22968927/congress-justice-...
It is a separate argument, but 'more competition' isn't a magical fix to everything. This sort of gating mechanism relies on the end user/consumer having good knowledge, sound judgement, etc. Also what is best for the consumer isn't best for the society. A wild example - For me, as the consumer I'm happy to get an iPhone for $200, but that might mean that Apple pays their employees below US minimum wage.
So, I think you need to prove how Amazon is net positive in society?
In the interest of full disclosure I enjoy the occasional cigar.
What sort of citation will make you happy?
This is indeed a very controversial statement because the rich are living a lifestyle which is at best unsustainable for the planet. They emit more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere for their own lavish lifestyles. They exploit poor labor conditions and lobby against every minor improvement. They don’t contribute to our shared funds like regular people, decreasing the state’s funds for more infrastructure which would have created more jobs. And they cause stress with their increased wealth disparity. Many research has shown perceived inequality is a significant stress producer. We may very well be bettor off without them.
Yes, there is a nice division of responsibilities. But ultimately, governments are doing the jobs they get paid for. And they're not only wasteful with our money (spending on wars, defense, etc), ironically (in a sad way) they pay government workers poorly - See teachers' salaries.
>Jobs would be created without the rich.
Jobs were created at all stages in history in all kinds of social and economic conditions. Also, plenty of rich people got rich after starting companies and creating jobs. We're incentivizing people who like money to create jobs, among other things.
>See responses sibling post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31743755) about the issue with 401(k) (or pension funds in non-USA countries).
Those are not responses to my comment, so specifically what part of my comment was inaccurate? I can correct any misunderstandings, or improve my comment to fix any errors on my part.
I think that is a correlation. An empty granary attracts no rats. That doesn't mean that having rats is good for farmers.
On top of that our global capitalist situation heavily favor exploitation in cheaper labor markets. So if you are a millionaire CEO in a rich country you are very likely to exploit your workers in poorer countries (or more likely, the workers of your providers and contractors) which overall increases the QOL in your country while decreasing it in your worker’s country. Your correlation might be a cross causation.
Returns on capital flow, unsurprisingly, to those with capital. And the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands is precisely the issue that people are objecting to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/business/bear-market-time...
> But 401(k) plans can still take a significant hit in market downturns. In 2008, for instance, as the S&P 500 dropped 37 percent, the average 401(k) account balance for those who were in their 50s fell 24 percent.
> People with retirement accounts are keeping more of their assets in stocks now, as opposed to bonds or a mix of other investments. “There has been a growing complacency of people keeping most of their nest eggs in stocks,” said Monique Morrissey, who specializes in retirement at the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute. “There has been a fundamental misunderstanding — returns do not always average out.”
> “It’s not just the loss from January; it’s what happens going forward,” she said. “If you were counting on the amount that you have in your 401(k) to continually grow, well, then you may never get to what you had planned for.”
Tying retirement plans to the market only looks good when there's a continuous bull market, less so when the bottom falls out.