Imagine what the proposed(but unlikely) tax plan would do to the NBA.

[QUOTE=Kblaze8855]You dont get to be a trillion dollar company by wishing.[/QUOTE]

and you also don't do it without [URL="https://newrepublic.com/article/146540/amazon-thriving-thanks-taxpayer-dollars"][B]massive government subsidies[/B][/URL].

amazon's new hq in nyc and virginia alone will cost taxpayers [URL="https://theintercept.com/2018/11/15/amazon-hq2-long-island-city-virginia-subsidies/"][B]$4.6 billion[/B][/URL].

[QUOTE]1. Wealth acts as a funnel. If I have money, I can go open 40 McDonald's franchises, pay someone to run them, and make way more money than I started with. So if 40% of wealth is inherited, a lot of that "earned" wealth is also just money flowing to investors, who have invested their inheritances or windfalls. [/QUOTE]

This country isnt old enough to have much of dynastic wealth you suggest. There are not a lot of rich since 1821 families handing down the money. Most millionaires are just small land owners. Of course its easier to take money and make more...but as I said...most of the people targeted are massively wealthy off just being better at something than other people. Giving it to your kids? Fine. Thats the reason most of us want to do well.



[QUOTE]2. Workers are required to run a company. They are the ONLY people required to run a company. You are making my point.[/QUOTE]

The workers as individuals arent required to do shit. They can quit and be replaced. Someone has to do with...and someone will always do it. You mix up a person....people...being easily replaced...with work needing to be done. Sure work must be done. But all the workers can be replaced...which is why they have no real power.

[QUOTE]3. The people (mostly large groups) who own big businesses primarily worry about how they can personally take as much money from the business as possible. The people that run the business might make a ton of money, but they aren't the ones who own it. Small businesses and start-up successes are held up as examples because that's the only level where the motives of the owners are usually productive, and more in line with the labor.[/QUOTE]

Where did the idea come from that people arent supposed to run a business to make money off it?

And they all start small. Nobody comes out the gate as amazon. You could start with millions and never come close. Hell billions.

Mark Cuban likely couldnt start a new amazon if he wanted to.


[QUOTE]4. "If workers were somehow united...." it's called a union. We used to have them and everyone made more money, and the economy was consistently booming. Unions have been on the decline for decades, mostly due to attacks by business interests, who ARE united. I'm sure you know what a Chamber of Commerce is. They act as the business-equivalent of a union.[/QUOTE]

Unions dont stop anything because as I said...not enough people have the will power. People need work.

Try to unionize and shut down a walmart....not only would they close the store as an example but while they were deciding they would get 400 applicants to replace the people outside.

Poor people...do not...and never will...stick together.

[QUOTE=Kblaze8855]This country isnt old enough to have much of dynastic wealth you suggest. There are not a lot of rich since 1821 families handing down the money. Most millionaires are just small land owners. Of course its easier to take money and make more...but as I said...most of the people targeted are massively wealthy off just being better at something than other people. Giving it to your kids? Fine. Thats the reason most of us want to do well.





The workers as individuals arent required to do shit. They can quit and be replaced. Someone has to do with...and someone will always do it. You mix up a person....people...being easily replaced...with work needing to be done. Sure work must be done. But all the workers can be replaced...which is why they have no real power.



Where did the idea come from that people arent supposed to run a business to make money off it?

And they all start small. Nobody comes out the gate as amazon. You could start with millions and never come close. Hell billions.

Mark Cuban likely couldnt start a new amazon if he wanted to.




Unions dont stop anything because as I said...not enough people have the will power. People need work.

Try to unionize and shut down a walmart....not only would they close the store as an example but while they were deciding they would get 400 applicants to replace the people outside.

Poor people...do not...and never will...stick together.[/QUOTE]

Poor people have in the past, and will in the future unite.

The fact that Walmart would shut down a store just to stop a union from forming proves how powerful a union can be.

So many things in our society are designed to distract, misinform, manipulate, and drain working people of their energy. It's not an accident. If you think like this, our media makes a lot more sense.

All that leads is to a bunch of guys saying the same thing as you. It's the easiest explaination for the way things are, but it's not necessarily the correct one.

I live a good life. The only thing that can make it better right now is more time for my wife, exercise, friends, and my books. I think a lot of people feel this way. I think it's possible to have a world where people can spend more time with their families, friends, and hobbies. I think some powerful forces don't want it to happen.

[QUOTE]The post office already has 215,000 mail trucks in operation. [/QUOTE]

And Amazon will have a tenth of that in a 6 month period. Imagine after 10 years.

[QUOTE]Amazon is a multi-decade scheme to monopolize the supply-chain management industry. Monopolies are bad.[/QUOTE]

But to be one...you must be good. Funny how that works.

[QUOTE]Amazon went without profit for a a decade when they started. They basically made very little money relative to their size until recently. They were buoyed by investment cash for that entire time, as they grew and pushed stores out of business.

A store franchise is essentially just a supply chain. Think of a store like RadioShack. They buy products directly from the companies that make them, transfer them all over the country, and then sell them to consumers.

Amazon's goal was to cut out all the RadioShacks, and connect producers directly to consumers. In that, they are effectively killing all the corporate office, supply chain manager, store manager, and lower-level employee jobs at those companies.[/QUOTE]

Amazon killed middlemen that caused higher prices by taking advantage of the internet. Uber kills taxis. The lightbulb killed candle makers.

Progress always leaves annoying shit people can do without in its wake.

You sound like Bumpy Johnson at the start of American Gangster mad at a store for selling TV direct from Sony. "What RIGHT do they have to push out the middle man?!?!" shit.

I ask you...what right does the middle man have to charge me mark up when I can get the product where he gets it? How stupid must I be to give him that extra money?

Amazon filled a common sense need at the cost of jobs that arent needed for the people to get what they need. Im sure if someone comes up with a way to run a car as well on water as gas on a large scale they will cost oil industry people jobs. Thats what a great idea does. Kill jobs that support the idea that dies to make room for what people want.


[QUOTE]Why was Amazon able to do this? Because they had no expectation of making any money at first. They just kept getting money from investors to keep them afloat, while they undercut every other company.



Amazon has effectively put a ton of other companies out of business. This is not inherently a bad thing. If they can deliver what people want, at a lower price, that's a good thing. However, when a company gets so big and powerful, there's a lot of awful side-effects.[/QUOTE]

Only when you want to make them look that way.

This is one of thise situations where it all depends on the tone of the person giving the info. Youre on here with dark music and a deep voiced announcer giving a report that could just as easily be spun positive.


[QUOTE]1. All those workers who got laid off at other retailers have to go somewhere. Effectively, Amazon pushed them into the labor market, and then hoovered up workers at low wages and poor conditions (because what else are they going to do? Radioshack and everywhere else closed!). In a lot of areas, Amazon's distribution plants are now the main source of employment. They are often run by fresh-out-of-college business students at $40k a year (I turned that job down lol).[/QUOTE]

Amazon pays a lot better than radio shack...or most of those small businesses in question. We have 2-3 Amazon related places here. I know a girl who does customer service from home and a friend of mine is trying to get a delivery job. Pays as well as BMW which for 20 years has been THE job to have around here.



[QUOTE]2. Amazon now can manipulate which products are being sold. The put products that give them kick-backs at the top of searches, or products by companies that they have purchased (by virtue of having so much cash to throw around).[/QUOTE]


Oh nooooooooooooo! Someone who comes to my online store front might be shown things I want to sell them. I must be the biggest piece of shit....


[QUOTE]3. Amazon is not powerful enough to bully local and state governments. If we had a bunch of competing companies it would be more difficult for them to get tax (and other) concessions from our governments. Amazon represents so much money and so many jobs that they are able play our governments against each other to get out of paying taxes.[/QUOTE]

We do have a bunch of competing companies. They just suck. I ordered a coolant tank for a car on monday. Got it tuesday. Shit used to take a week or two. Be upset at a company for kicking everyone ass all you want. They are gonna get bigger...because they are kicking everyones ass. Its that simple.



[QUOTE]4. They are just going to get bigger and more powerful, and keep doing this same stuff on a greater scale. They've killed all their direct competitors in America. Their only real competition now is foreign (folks like Alibaba) who are doing them same thing in their own country.


Amazon, subsidized by the American People, is a monopoly that subverts competition in the market and should be subject to anti-trust action.

Any organization that gets this powerful will act this way in our current system, and it doesn't have to be this way.[/QUOTE]

Im good with it. I suppose im not the guy who gets bitter at someones success. Im motivated by it.

Hopefully I can think of something that does a job better than anyone ever imagined crush 200 places who werent as good as I am and have haters on the internet mad im so great while ordering my products.

If Amazon didnt work they wouldnt be in every computers browser history and in every phone as an app.

Complain away. Youre complaining to the people who made Amazon what it is.

I have some jerky coming to give my underlings for the breakroom at work. I'll post in here when it arrives. I care what Amazon did to shitty companies as much as I care about taxi drivers mad people can use an app to get better faster service for less money.

When I need to get to the car rental place I uber or lyft. Im not calling a cab. When I need something I dont wanna drive around to find in a real store I order it in 12 seconds on amazon and have it in a day or two. System works. All good.

I dont even know where id go for most of the shit on amazon if I DID want to go to a real store...which to be clear...I dont.

The problems of a monopoly are well documented. Amazon didn't invent any new technology, or make any breakthrough innovation. It's not the product of some dominant genius. It's just a bunch of rich folks who put their money together in order to take over an industry and destroy their competition.

This has happened numerous times, and the impact has been studied in depth.

[B]Go read about Standard Oil.[/B] When something really essential gets monopolized, usually the government needs to step in.

Look at Microsoft. Once they got a certain % of the market, they could freeze out different operating systems from working with their hardware, and freeze out software from working with their operating system. Other tech companies couldn't really get a start if Microsoft didn't want them to. When one firm gets too powerful, competition ends. Competition is what gets us better goods and a lower price. That's why the government broke up Microsoft.

Amazon isnt oil. Nobody...noooooooooobody needs amazon. Amazon is something we want. They filled a void we didnt know was there. They did it better....and kicked everyones ass at it. Amazon could go away tomorrow. Its hardly a load bearing pillar of my world the way microsoft or oil would have been for many people at their peaks.

Amazon is a dominant convenience.

[QUOTE=SomeBlackDude][URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuvEJ-U1UDc"][B]this[/B][/URL]

[/Quote]

FOR THE RECORD, "DESERVING" IT OR NOT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH IT. TIME TO WAKE UP TO THE FACT THAT LIFE ISN'T FAIR. HELLO? THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ISN'T TO MAKE LIFE FAIR.

[QUOTE]the trickle down hustle. roger ailes, sean hannity, etc have somehow brainwashed the working poor into believing that they (the oligarchs) being taxed the same rates they were when 'murrica was supposedly great = the greatest injustice imaginable.

and now our top tax rates are back to great depression era levels.

and guess what's on the horizon.

[url]https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/3069659/investors-turn-bearish-as-73-predict-recession[/url]

[url]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/us-national-debt-2-trillion-donald-trump-presidency-deficit-treasury-congressional-budget-office-a8710546.html[/url]

i know, you look shocked.[/QUOTE]

We're going to go into a recession ultimately because we never actually did anything to pay for our ****ups leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. All the federal reserve did was print more money and keep interest rates at 0 for a decade. But I'm glad you think it's as simple as Trump increasing the deficit. I'm glad you think it's that simple.

The IRS should not exist. Taxes should be handled at a state level and a state level only unless it's a national emergency. The only reasons the IRS "needs" to exist are because 1) we have an insanely over inflated military and 2) people think the federal government should be taking care of them instead of getting out there and getting a ****ing job and planning for their future. In other words, the IRS only exists because people have a false sense of what the federal government should be doing in our lives, which is not much.

If we got rid of 1 and 2, we would not need a national tax collector. In fact, I'm quite confident that the founding fathers of this ****ing country literally gave their lives and spilled blood so that we weren't being unjustly taxed without representation, which is essentially exactly what's going on today. The people in DC do not have your best interest at heart. VERY few of them. It's not a R/D thing, either, so let's not go there.

[QUOTE=Kblaze8855]Amazon isnt oil. Nobody...noooooooooobody needs amazon. Amazon is something we want. They filled a void we didnt know was there. They did it better....and kicked everyones ass at it. Amazon could go away tomorrow. Its hardly a load bearing pillar of my world the way microsoft or oil would have been for many people at their peaks.

Amazon is a dominant convenience.[/QUOTE]

We're talking about scale here. Things must be sold and delivered to people. For one person, maybe it's not a necessity. For society at large I think it is.

I don't think that a lot of the things we are saying are mutually exclusive. We have a different perspective on this. The way I see things doesn't get a lot of airtime, so I take my opportunities to advocate for it.

It's good to talk about stuff like this and I'm glad we have. Not too many folks can speak in good faith on the internet and resist descending into trolling.

[QUOTE=ralph_i_el]We're talking about scale here. Things must be sold and delivered to people. For one person, maybe it's not a necessity. For society at large I think it is.

I don't think that a lot of the things we are saying are mutually exclusive. We have a different perspective on this. The way I see things doesn't get a lot of airtime, so I take my opportunities to advocate for it.

It's good to talk about stuff like this and I'm glad we have. Not too many folks can speak in good faith on the internet and resist descending into trolling.[/QUOTE]

Things don't [B][I][U]need[/U][/I][/B] to be sold and delivered to people via online shopping. They can easily go to a brick & mortar retailer.

If Amazon folded up shop tomorrow, the only thing that would change in your life is your convenience level.

[QUOTE=Ben Simmons 25]FOR THE RECORD, "DESERVING" IT OR NOT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH IT. TIME TO WAKE UP TO THE FACT THAT LIFE ISN'T FAIR. HELLO? THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ISN'T TO MAKE LIFE FAIR.[/QUOTE]


they need it to be somewhat fair to have consumers... if shit slips too much with us, eventually...theyre going to too because there will be no demand.

[QUOTE=Ben Simmons 25]You're right, you don't deserve to get rich people's money. Now you're figuring it out...



We're going to go into a recession ultimately because we never actually did anything to pay for our ****ups leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. All the federal reserve did was print more money and keep interest rates at 0 for a decade. But I'm glad you think it's as simply as Trump increasing the deficit. I'm glad you think it's that simple.

The IRS should not exist. Taxes should be handled at a state level and a state level only unless it's a national emergency. The only reasons the IRS "needs" to exist are because 1) we have an insanely over inflated military and 2) people think the federal government should be taking care of them instead of getting out there and getting a ****ing job. In other word, the IRS only exists because people have a false sense of what the federal government should be doing in our lives, which is not much.

If we got rid of 1 and 2, we would not need a national tax collector. In fact, I'm quite confident that the founding fathers of this ****ing country literally gave their lives and spilled blood so that we weren't being unjustly taxed without representation, which is essentially exactly what's going on today. The people in DC do not have your best interest at heart. VERY few of them. It's not a R/D thing, either, so let's not go there.[/QUOTE]

Some would say that the founding fathers gave their lives and spilled their blood because they were afraid the King was going to outlaw slavery. Slavery was outlawed in the UK in....1772. It took a while for slaves in the colonies to get their freedom.....luckily our founding fathers escaped the dastardly King before that!

[QUOTE=Ben Simmons 25]Things don't [B][I][U]need[/U][/I][/B] to be sold and delivered to people via online shopping. They can easily go to a brick & mortar retailer.

If Amazon folded up shop tomorrow, the only thing that would change in your life is your convenience level.[/QUOTE]


you could say the same thing about communication technology AT&T monopoly ... phones or whatever. You dont NEED it... hop on your horse and deliver a letter you lazy pos.

[IMG]https://thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/paul-revere52719.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=tpols]you could say the same thing about communication technology AT&T monopoly ... phones or whatever. You dont NEED it... [B]hop on your horse and deliver a letter you lazy pos[/B].

[IMG]https://thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/paul-revere52719.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]:lol

[QUOTE=tpols]you could say the same thing about communication technology AT&T monopoly ... phones or whatever. You dont NEED it... hop on your horse and deliver a letter you lazy pos.

[IMG]https://thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/paul-revere52719.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]

The vast majority of cities across the US won't allow you to ride horses as a primary means of transportation.

Additionally, the vast majority of us don't NEED cars or phones or the internet, either. They're all just major conveniences.

[QUOTE=tpols]they need it to be somewhat fair to have consumers... if shit slips too much with us, eventually...theyre going to too because there will be no demand.[/QUOTE]

:facepalm