Re: Chris Hedges
 

My kneejerk reaction was to say "break up." But how do you break up, say, Google? Split search from ads? That won't work. Split Gmail from ads? Nope. Fails again. Break it into mini-Googles based on geography? That'd only earn regulators a Ted Stevens' "the internet is a series of tubes" meme online.

One could break up Amazon, as there's bricks and mortar and supply networks, etc. And it is clearly, and admittedly, predatory. But taxing it seems the better course.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

I don't see one particular problem. They are many. But one I definitely see of importance is compulsion. Facebook has integrated itself into other platforms in a manner where one needs to have a Facebook account to use the platform, or has to jump through hoops to use it without a FB account. The expansion compels people who'd otherwise avoid FB, as many do, to provide a truly pernicious data mining machine with information.

People. Soylent Green is people.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Tax avoidance is much easier at that level.

I have trouble with the idea myself, but it's tech disruption and efficiency that are most responsible for and unusually effective at removing taxable events and market participants from the economy. The current system isn't set up to absorb the removal of those events and participants that's been occurring and is increasing.

Disruption and efficiency also drive deflation. Things get cheaper. This is not a great scenario in a situation where wage inflation is needed.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Why would you want to break up Google? What problem are you trying to solve?

Why would you want to break up Amazon? What problem are you trying to solve? How is it predatory? (From what I can tell, its prices aren't consistently better than the alternatives, but a lot of people don't want to shop around.)

Re: Chris Hedges
 

What other platforms? Do you have to use them? Are you just vexed by ads that follow you around the web?

True. So maybe just simpler to nationalize the company, leave it under current management, and distribute the stock to the entire population?

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Well, you are in Minnesota, so i bet it passes. Like everyone who posts here with a college degree from a Minnesota school seems a bit off, and plus I've watched Fargo (movie and TV) and I think those folks will give you a pass. Unless, does your firm have a n office in more sophisticated places and you somehow sent out an email firmwide?

Re: Chris Hedges
 

I'm surprised you haven't moved to soul cycle at this point.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Am I on ignore?

Re: I don't need technology to ignore Hank
 

I give your posts the full amount of attention they deserve.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

I think a discussion of how Google's search results are displayed would be appropriate. DOT used to have detailed regs for computer reservation systems when they were owned by the airlines. ETA: Not implying those are a good model, just that regulation is in order if we think there's a problem.

I think the EC, as is its wont, is going about in in a backasswards way, though.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

You're talking about undoing vertical integration, though. If you're trying to restore competition, you need to break it into parts that are going to compete with each other.

Not specific to Amazon, but the worst case scenarios of automation/efficiency is getting rid of the labor but keeping manufactured goods expensive. Especially if your goal is to generate well-being for displaced workers. Letting the price of what they need fall is much more direct than propping up prices to try to get some table scraps for them.

Now, if costs drop and prices don't, we need to go looking for some market power to step on.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Yes, that's what's good about them.

One way to raise real wages is for the stuff people need and want to buy to get cheaper.

*Not, none of what we are talking about is inflation or deflation, which are monetary phenomena.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

In other words, "yes, Google has enduring monopoly in search." So what problems does that monopoly create?

Re: Chris Hedges
 

"Restore" competition? Amazon has plenty of competition. There is almost nothing you can buy from Amazon that you can't also buy in other places.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Sebby's the one who implied there was a problem. I'm just saying his fix doesn't solve what I assumed his problem to be.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Like I need my indoor stationary bicycling classes to become even MORE culty and weird. SoulCycle isn't out here anyway. It would damage the brand to let fat Midwesterners into their studios.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

The shaming of cults in this post is problematic, and offensive.

The body shaming of those deemed overweight to your standard is problematic, and offensive.

The shaming of those companies seeking to protect their brand, and hence their service marks, is problematic, and offensive, and now that I think about it, unAmerican.

Re: When opportunity slams you on the butt and whoops Howdeee!
 

Son, I want to say one word to you.

SoulCycles.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

The headline is at war with the first sentence.

"Elites ‘Have No Credibility Left’: Interview With Journalist Chris Hedges"

"On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Times correspondent."

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Apropos of the soccer discussion: https://www.theguardian.com/football...world-football

Re: Chris Hedges
 

This is what occurred post-2008 in the extreme, and persists considerably to the present, and it is creating pernicious wage stagnation.

As oil stagnates, so does inflation. Consumer necessities have a similar relationship to inflation.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Agreed.

Agreed.

I could conceive of a relationship between customers and value retailers such as Amazon in which the pain of low wages could be offset by cheaper and cheaper goods, made so as a result of constantly improving efficiencies. Where it gets tricky is when you build in fixed costs to consumers such as taxes (progressive wage tax is flexible, of course, but property taxes, SS/Medicare, and other state and local taxes are not) and health care. In that instance, companies like Amazon depress wages from which consumers can tackle these fixed and often increasing costs. This in turn starves the taxing entities (states, municipalities) of tax income, which decreases govt services to the these same consumers.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

I think it highlights why Hedges has been relegated to RT. He's critiqued establishment journalism's Hallin's Spheres too often and too well.

I'd have gone with, "Ex-Insider Chris Hedges Explains Why He's an Ex-Insider, and Why the Insiders Might be Delusional, and Perhaps Dangerous."

It's a mouthful, I know.

I wish Hedges weren't so shrill. And so connected to Chomsky and Nader. His points are lucid and worthy of discussion, but just as Ron Paul would say a couple sensible things, then disqualify himself by stating, "And that's why we need to go back on the gold standard!", Hedges can't help aligning himself with fringe sorts. (I get that Chomsky is arguably non-fringe, but Hedges could cite less polarizing sources for certain points than Chomsky.)

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

What this article misses is the connection from the clubs and academies for kids to the profits produced by everyone who touches a gifted athlete from high school to college to the pros. And since Americans don't know the sport, and the type of athletic talent and build that translates to can't lose-success isn't immediately apparent by looking at a kid aged 8, people who would be all over a clear cut future talent don't exist. Because of that, the types of scholarships and opportunities at all levels, as well as the constant search for talent in places not already mined by the opportunists that live in the basketball and football worlds, don't exist.

If you could look at a kid and see a future Messi or Ronaldo just from watching him play for 5 minutes at age 10 (like you could with Lebron), the sport would change here overnight.

[eta: That's not to say I didn't enjoy that article very much.]

TM

Re: Chris Hedges
 

What are you talking about?

You think below target inflation is because of oil prices? That's not right.

Again, that's not how inflation works.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Some of the effects of the tech giants have to do with their specific models and choices, but the larger effects have to do with technological shifts. Collectibles used to be sold in stores. The internet comes along, and eBay makes it much more possible to buy and sell them without going to stores, which suffer in a big way. This transition was bad for stores and good for eBay and (consumers), but it fundamental it was driven by the way the internet changed distribution. A similar thing is true for Amazon. Amazon is not generally competing by driving prices down. It's competing by letting you buy stuff without going to a store.

eta: Over time, things generally get cheaper and turn into commodities. New stuff comes along and is valuable.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Is there anything Trump could do now that would be both shocking and surprising?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Something basic and decent.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Surprising but not shocking.

Surprising and shocking
 

TPM: Russia ran a Tennessee Republican Party twitter account that had 10 times more followers than the Twitter account of the actually Tennessee GOP.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Deflation.

It runs a fairly solid correlation.

It runs a fairly solid correlation.

This is one of the few measures cited by "relics" that still makes sense to me.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

I think it's a mix. Amazon enjoys a massive advantage because, yes, I hate the fucking mall/grocery store/hardware store/getting in the car at all if I don't have to do so. But it is also cheaper. The cost of bricks and mortar are built into the price of its traditional competition.

From an economies of scale perspective, Amazon is unstoppable. I don't think it should be broken for this. But it's taxable event removal effect might require some additional taxation to offset the projected tax revenue losses for a time.

By "time" I mean, until baby boomers are dead. That's the pig in the python that constrains our ability to apply nimble fixes.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

And yet it doesn't compete by offering better prices. And it takes whatever profits it makes and ruthlessly invests them back into its business instead of returning them investors, and has done this for years, which is why it's been jokingly referred to as a charity run by Bezos for the benefit of consumers.

That's just its particular business model. As you point out, it can sell consumers things they want without brick and mortar stores. Consumers benefit from not having to pay those costs. Anyone else can choose the same model. No one is forcing Wal-Mart to maintain all those stores (and it's the one with lower prices, btw).

Re: Surprising and shocking
 

That will change now that they own the Tennessee Party's account, too.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

No doubt Amazon is a fantastic benefit to consumers. And most of what people assert is unfair advantage or predatory accrues from pure innovation and a unique business model. So antitrust isn't the answer.

But you still haven't addressed the tax issue. This is where disruption on the scale of Amazon's causes a really nasty ripple effect.

Spending is predicated on projected tax revenues. Projected tax revenues are crafted from consideration of current business conditions. When something as powerful as Amazon enters the picture, it blows up a lot of those projections.

Amazon removes massive amounts of jobs and taxable events by gobbling up market share, wiping out competitors, and providing ruthless efficiency. Wal Mart does the same thing, by the way, only not quite as well in terms of efficiency.

This decreases tax revenue while increasing dependence (transfers for people put out of work). The safety nets are not only starved of revenue, but their burden is simultaneously enhanced.

I don't know what the solution would be, as this cannot be tackled by merely raising taxes on the affluent, or anyone else. I think at a minimum, Wal Mart should be hit with a tax in the exact amount of transfer costs provided to its employees because the company refuses to pay anything close to a living wage.

But as to Amazon, I'm at a loss... The idea of an "efficiency tax" I floated previously bothers me. But as we run into coming decades of baby boomers requiring greater transfers from govt while revenue drops as a result of massive disrupting forces like Amazon, the spread between what we've got to pay for the transfers and the cost of the transfers could widen to an unsustainable level.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

No, you're not. Perhaps in a colloquial sense, but not as used in monetary economics. Not even in any of the quirky, out of the mainstream schools that I'm aware of.

Re: Chris Hedges
 

Which tax issue? One of Amazon's early advantages was not charging sales tax when it didn't literally have to. I'm pretty sure that's largely gone away (it has here in Minnesota, where it's now required to charge sales tax) as its physical footprint has expanded to pretty much every state. And as states have adopted sales and use taxes intended to apply to it, I think it's mostly acquiesced rather than tried to challenge them (again, that might just be the expanding physical presence).

Is there some other tax issue you're thinking of?

Well, it also employs a lot of people and, as we've discussed ad-naseum we're not seeing huge spikes in joblessness (last measured prime age employment to population ratio is less than half a percentage point below the pre-recession peak EDIT: Correction, point and a half. Read the chart wrong. Point being, there's slack but it's not it's not "massive").

You used to buy toilet paper at Target. Taxable event. You now buy toilet paper from Amazon. Taxable event. What about it taking retail market share reduces taxable events?

It's amazing that you think of everything except all of the various tax cuts of the last two decades as reducing tax revenue.

Or just raise the minimum wage.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

"Shake your head at rap music all you like: When’s the last time you heard a popular country song about finishing up your master’s in engineering at MIT?"

National Review (!)

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Kevin Williamson has long been one of my favorite Twitter follows. He’s not an insignificant part of why the National Review is my favorite conservative publication.

I don't understand
 

Why the R's don't just suggest killing or enslaving the middle class. It will be better for the middle class, believe me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/u...T.nav=top-news