Forum Post: Get educated and make a difference
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 28, 2011, 10:03 a.m. EST by Letmehelpyou
(4)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
From the outside perspective, the OWS has a goal but no real path to get there. I will try my best to pass on my knowledge of how business works to better help you make an impact. What you do with it is up to you, but i'm sure it would make more impact on attaining your goal than camping in a park with no real message.
First off, companies are very similar to you. They are responsible for Profit and Loss or P&L. Top line or Revenue is the same as your paycheck. Margin is like your paycheck after taxes. This is the money that goes into your checking account. The company then pays bills starting with Payroll (your personal spending), Occupancy (your rent, utilities, etc) and Operations (Necessities for daily life such as toilet paper, food, etc). The bottom line of a P&L is profit (your savings).
If a company isn't making profit, it will do what you would do. Find ways to make more money or cut spending. The first place people start is personal spending or Payroll. If you look at the retail landscape, you will see that very large successful retailer's bottom lines are shrinking and therefore cuts are being made in payroll. This is done in large part due to Amazon and retailers like Amazon.
First off, Amazon does not make money off of the products it sells (it takes a bath with the Kindle Fire). It instead makes money through advertising from the traffic generated fro it's site. Brick and mortar retailers must cut margin (paycheck after tax) to stay competitive with pricing. This in turn cuts Payroll (personal spending).
Secondly, if you buy say a drill from Amazon, someone pulls the order and ships it. A delivery driver ships it straight to your house. If the drill was purchased at Home Depot, someone pulled the order and shipped it, however the receiving clerk, stocking clerk, sales clerk and cashier were all taken out of the equation. That equals job loss and money not being put back into the economy.
Next, Amazon doesn't charge state tax while brick and mortar stores are forced to. This again forces Home Depot to charge even less to stay competitive. Where do you think they can cut to stay competitive? That's right, Payroll or personal spending.
Lastly, besides the jobs and hourly wages that Brick and Mortar stores must cut to stay competitive which leads to less money pumped into the economy, the lack of taxes charged fro Amazon and the lack of taxes paid from Brick and Mortar stores are also causing more job loss as states need to cut spending due to the deficit in taxes. So firemen, teachers, etc are laid off.
Was saving the $14 buying that drill from Amazon worth it? I don't think so. Is camping at a park and telling corporate that you want a larger share of the profit going to help you? Maybe, but if you really want to make a difference, organize where and how you spend your money. If camping out is your deal, at least do it at Amazon Headquarters or to a lesser extent Wal Mart stores or Headquarters. No one at either company gives two $hits that you are camping in park in downtown wherever. It doesn't impact their P&L, which is what they are responsible for.
or keep camping and making a mess.
what a naive and poorly thought out post. Febs nailed it.
[Removed]
If goods can be delivered reliably and to client satisfaction without the use of certain jobs it means those jobs are losing relevance and are now a sign of inefficiency.
This same kind of argument was used to rail against the car because it would put wagon makers out of work.
Except the wagon worker could get a job as an auto mechanic.
And there are no other places these people can work?
The economy being tough right now doesn't change the fact that internet purchases make things more efficient and an increase in efficiency is usually accompanied by a reduction in consumer pricing (which is exactly what we have with Amazon).
It's pretty simplistic to think "other" work is just magically generated. The more efficient you become at producing goods (or distributing them, or whatever), the fewer workers you need. Amazon is a good example. All those jobs behind a cash register in traditional bookshops, are gone. There are a few jobs at Amazon obviously, but it's only a tiny, tiny fraction of those lost. Nor does Amazon cause any sort of new industry to pop up.
Now I'm not saying we should strive to be less efficient. If we're building a dam, we could make more jobs by using less heavy machinery and more shovels - we could make even more jobs, if we gave them spoons instead of shovels! Higher productivity and more efficiency is the way to go. But we have to recognize that it comes at a cost, rather than just pretending it doesn't and inventing theories to deny the reality staring us in the face.
Sometimes, new industries with new products open up and provide a few more jobs, but not necessarily enough to make up the shortfall. Plus as the economy and production becomes more technical and more advanced, the kind of people who were pushing brooms in small retailers, they can't necessarily design microchips or write computer code - and their unemployment drives everyone else's wages down. That's (partially) why a generation ago, you could get a job bolting some plastic piece onto another plastic piece at a factory for $20 an hour with no education, and today, the same person with no education - provided no college graduates are applying, provided there is such a job available with Amazon and whatnot figured in - gets a job behind a cash register for half that much pay, even though, it demands more skills to man the cash register.
My argument doesn't really hinge on new work being created or not - I am simply pointing out that wanting to preserve jobs that are not needed is inefficient and only serves as a drag on the economy.
I would suggest that overtime we more than make up for the increases in efficiency by the creation of new products, new competitors, and entirely new fields. Otherwise even if it were to remain steady our increase in population would correlate exactly with an increase in unemployment.
I would suggest that overtime we more than make up for the increases in efficiency by the creation of new products, new competitors, and entirely new fields.
I would suggest that we do make some, but not enough to cover the difference. The overall trend is not one of steady employment, historically speaking, it is one where unemployment - and/or underemployment - rises over time. It goes up, it goes down, but the average trend is an increase - whether or not there is an increase in population (the generation after the Baby Boomers, for instance, was actually smaller and yet it faced not less but more unemployment).
That is mainly a factor of facing competition from outside the nation with lower labor costs. No / low skill jobs are easily exported to nations where the prevailing wage will increase while still being much lower than production costs in the states.
Over time, unemployment is increasing even at the global scale. Street peddler economies in the developing world before industrialization did not know unemployment except for the usual unemployment caused by injury, mental deficiency and so on (as we have had since forever). They know it now.
I haven't seen any evidence in support of this. Do you have any you could link?
Sure.
http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/ilo-bookstore/order-online/books/WCMS_150440/lang--en/index.htm
The economies that haven't become industrialized are the least impacted:
Some developing countries have relatively low unemployment rates — Chad in Africa, for example, has a rate of less than 5% — but that's because many people are self-employed in subsistence jobs.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/20/business/la-fi-global-jobless-20110120
In undeveloped, subsistence economies, there is hardly any unemployment because production is terribly inefficient. Once they industrialize, unemployment appears.
That is a report on recent trending during the so-called recovery. Of course unemployment is going to remain - just look at the debt fiasco in the Euro and the horrible bond sale in Germany.
There's nothing recent about the low unemployment figures for undeveloped countries.
But you were arguing unemployment is increasing worldwide.
Of course. There isn't any to speak of in subsistence economies. It's present but low in newly industrialized economies like China. And it's high in advanced, high-productivity economies. Which direction are we moving in?
You were arguing long term unemployment increases. Your link is discussing short term unemployment increases.
I still don't see any evidence for your claim. Yes unemployment is increasing in the short term - a large and global bubble burst.
yes, how about this; trannies you are supporting? Come on, man
http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/11/10/gay_city_news/news/doc4ebace95a0c26985577656.txt
[Removed]