President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States' (cnet.com) 559
President Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes, and strongly suggested that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business. From a report: The president took aim at Amazon's tax contributions, its use of the US Postal Service and practices that put "many thousands of retailers out of business!" The accusations aren't new. The tweet was likely prompted by an Axios story on Wednesday that claimed Trump was weighing "going after" Amazon over alleged antitrust activities or violations of competition laws. The Axios story appeared to contribute to a selloff of Amazon stock Wednesday, with Amazon shares dropping 4.4 percent, even though Trump's disdain for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, was already well-known. Bezos owns The Washington Post, whose coverage has been less than glowing about the new president, which may be a factor in Trump's attacks. Trump's tweet, in full: I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't that, literally, why they exist?
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Funny)
I think that he thinks that the USPS delivers Amazon's stuff for free using Unicorns.
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to go after someone that is abusing the USPS it's the Chinese sellers that use international postal law to get the USPS to pay the expensive last mile.
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
For these dipshits complaining us "leftists" should be on board with everyone paying their fair share but aren't... it's not that we don't think that, it's just that we seem to have a better idea of what the problem is than shit-for-brain idiots who only listen to grab-them-by-the-pussy-Trump.
Re: Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Funny)
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".
But you deplorables know the constitution inside and out... lol
Re: Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
does not mean that Congress should do so
I love it when people think the private industry is what's best for public utilities and services. You've learnt nothing from the internet, you'll learn nothing after you mail gets delivered once every 2 weeks and you get charged not only for sending it but also for receiving it. Go capitalism.
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"You've learnt nothing from the internet, you'll learn nothing after you mail gets delivered once every 2 weeks ..."
That would sure suck. But it sucks also today, here's how the deliveries were done in London in 1844
'The hours by which letters should be put into the receiving houses in town for each delivery are as follow - For delivery in town,
Over night by eight o'clock, for the first delivery.
Morning by eight o'clock, for the second delivery.
Morning by ten o'clock, for the third delivery.
Morning by twelv
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But it sucks also today, here's how the deliveries were done in London in 1844
Let me stop you there. The function of a public utility needs to suit the current requirements. That we don't get letters seven times a day today doesn't mean the postal service sucks, people literally don't get that much mail anymore. The current requirements overwhelmingly tend towards 1 or 2 parcel deliveries per day and a letter delivery every couple of days.
The fact they don't do more than that doesn't mean they suck compared to how it was in London in 1844, it just means they are doing what is require
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Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
LOLOL... SERIOUSLY?!?
Most of them use ePacket now... a wholly USPS owned and operated service with depots in every major manufacturing hub in China.
So lets get this right... USPS sets up this system just for US Tech companies to get electronic parts and modules from China delivered cheap and quick... and you want to "go after them" for USING IT?
*Shakes head*
mnem
Now for something completely... the same old Western Corporate-Centric BS.
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we all just reflexively side either pro or anti Trump then proceed to rationalize ...
Trump's problem with Amazon is really about his dislike of Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post (Jeff owns both) and the things the newspaper writes about Trump. Trump calling things "fake news" doesn't make them actually so...
Not trolling (really), but... to address your comments. The problem with Trump is that about 99% of everything he says is either flat-out wrong or easily-provably false. The safe, rational bet is to stand on the opposite side of whatever he's talking about.
The tweet in the TFS looks to be full of errors and/or half-truths, except for the part about harming retailers -- but is that really Amazon's fault or the people and retailers that sell through them. As to the other statements, Amazon *pays* the USPS to delivery things, albeit at a discount -- just like FedEx and UPS do for some last-mile deliveries. As for how much taxes Amazon and their retailers pay, that's on the State and Federal Congresses and the laws they pass. However, I have trouble believing that Trump and the Republicans want a rich person and company to pay *more* taxes, especially after the tax hand-job they gave their buddies and themselves in the recent tax bill.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is just Sears-on-your-iPad.
Continuing that point, Sears was a great retailer for a *long* time, but they failed to innovate and keep up with the changing landscape. I'm not sure their purchases of Kmart and Lands' End and sale of the Craftsman brand did them any favors in the long run. More recently Sears is basically owned and operated by a bunch of hedge fund people who seem intent on chopping it up, selling things off and picking the carcass clean.
Sears has a bigger problem than plunging sales [businessinsider.com]
Sears workers describe decay in failing stores [businessinsider.com]
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Did Sears have practices that put "many thousands of retailers out of business!" ?
Yes. Starting in the 1890s, the Sears catalog and mail order system drove thousands of small dry goods shops out of business.
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This was true at some point, but Trump and his supporters have taken over the party. One interesting book on this is Trumpocracy [amazon.com].
Re: Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Informative)
The Postal service does not operate at a loss. Instead, they have been forced to pre-pay into a fund to cover retirement for postal workers that haven't even been born yet. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010/ar2010_4_002.htm
There is nothing that says that the postal service need delivery packages at a loss.
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Re:That is the stupidest thing I have ever read (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing some of the point. The US Congress has mandated the USPS to completely pre-pay into its retirement fund at (a) an accelerated rate for (b) all their employees, even ones who aren't even close to retirement. The USPS would be fine financially if they could pay into the fund more reasonably, like every other corporation does (that still have pensions). This was done by Congress partly to hinder the USPS and foster a case to privatize it -- 'cause "it's losing money". Seemingly, you've drunk their Kool-Aid.
USPS does NOT lose money on Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
> Amazon has profited at our expense. They should be paying for the burden
Wrong:
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/29/16830128/amazon-trump-twitter-postal-service-feud
"But break down the losses, and the situation is a bit more nuanced. Delivering packages, it turns out, is a growth business, and it actually makes the Postal Service money: The revenue from package increased $2.1 billion, and was up 11.8 percent for fiscal year 2017. "
Furthermore, the financial crisis the USPS is currently in is entirely manufactured by the Republican congress of 2006:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-usps-trump-20180102-story.html
"What the Postal Service's critics (including Trump) almost never mention is that the real drag on its earnings is another congressional directive. I wrote in 2012 that the USPS' fiscal crisis was "as artificial as they come" — it was the product of a 2006 congressional mandate that the service must prepay over the next 10 years all its future expected retiree healthcare benefits."
"Those payments totaled $38 billion through 2011, with further installments of between $5.6 billion and $11.1 billion a year due through 2016. At least $34 billion is still owed, according to the annual report."
***"Conservatives who maintain that the USPS should be operated profitably, like a private business, fail to explain why the service should be burdened with a prepayment mandate that its competitors don't face." ***
The Republicans have had the knives out for the USPS for decades and this is straight up right wing ops 101 as seen worldwide. Take public service, cut funding, burden it financially until it can't function, loudly scream about how public services just don't work, and then privatize it and sell the scraps off to your donors for pennies on the dollar. Move on to the next one.
Re:USPS does NOT lose money on Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we hold coal companies to the same standard, or allow them to chew up their employees, spit them out when they're too broken down to work, and then welch on their pension obligations?
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Requiring them to fund retirement is obligations that have been earned already is reasonable (but see my next point). This law requires the post office to fund retirement obligations that have not yet been earned. That's crazy.
No other government department or agency and very few companies have fully funded its vested retirement obligations. Why is the USPS singled out
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You have been corrected on this point. At this point, you are not just displaying your ignorance, you are displaying your stupidity.
But, I'll say it again: the USPS has been required to fund retirement for employees who don't exist.
If the Republicans want to shut down or reduce the size of the USPS, they should do it openly, not this underhanded bullshit.
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Re:USPS does NOT lose money on Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. The post office is shrinking (email).
The postal service shrunk, it's not shrinking, and in fact last year it grew in total mail volume and mail revenue. You don't have to take my word for it, go read their annual reports. Email happened a long time ago. How do you think you're getting all those things you order online?
But I'll say it again: Post office employees, congresscritters and staff should get social security, a 401k match and NOTHING ELSE.
I like how you singled out a few small select groups there.
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Informative)
False. They don't have a special rate. They get a discount, but that same discount is available to all bulk shippers.
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
^^^^ This.
Gah, it pains me to have to defend Amazon, but seriously, why is it so hard to understand why a company who ships 600 million packages per year gets a bulk discount?
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but seriously, why is it so hard to understand
Because Trump supporters aren't interested in facts that contradict their Dear Leader's narrative of lies or his propaganda arms.
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Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! The same would be true of any courier service. If you do a LOT of shipping, you will get discount rates. Buying any good or service in bulk will almost inevitably lead to discounts on pricing, and if it doesn't, then you should go elsewhere for your good or service.
This whole attack on Amazon, on top of the Trump Administration's attacks on free trade and the threat of tariffs, makes me think Americans voted in a 19th century president. The whole idea that somehow because a business is disruptive to pre-existing business models as somehow representing a bad development is something I would have expected from any pre-Theodore Roosevelt president.
My view is that Amazon's disruption of retail is not only inevitable (if Amazon hadn't done it, someone else would have, and Amazon is hardly the only one causing the disruption, eBay is up there too), but a good thing. The retail industry has basically remained static for years, and even the "revolutionary" giants like Walmart and Target (with their highly sophisticated JIT inventory systems) had been resting on their laurels. Consumers, to a large extent, were captive to whatever the retailers wanted to sell them. Along comes new retail markets like Amazon and eBay, where consumers now have a much higher level of control, where the feedback between buyer and seller is far more direct, and all of sudden even the traditional giants are seeing sales targets slipping.
So really, Trump isn't a Capitalist at all, maybe more of an old school Mercantilist.
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think he necessarily has to have an actual overt economic policy to be an old school mercantilist. But clearly his views on trade, whatever their source, are deeply rooted in very 19th century protectionist views, and the flip side to that was the general tendency of Gilded Age Administrations (and Congresses as well) to protect entrenched interests. I can only imagine traditional brick and mortar retailers feel much the same as Donald Trump does about Amazon, even if his criticism has more to do with his perception that Bezos must be driving the WP's reporting. I think Trump is just instinctively a Gilded Age-style president.
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He does have a philosophy of sorts. Whatever FOX news told him this morning. A glaring example of this was the recent budget. He was all for it until the morning FOX news slammed it. Then he was against it.
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Trump isn't a Capitalist at all, maybe more of an old school Mercantilist.
I think that's exactly right. Look at his statements on trade, e.g. that a country we trade with is "up 100 billion on us" and not that it was a free exchange where they got a financial asset they preferred to their real goods, and we got their real goods which we preferred to our financial assets.
It's partly because of an incredibly simplistic, mercantilist perspective in which trade is intrinsically zero-sum. It's also partly because having never made a dime without bilking somebody, he cannot conceive of
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Re:I think you need to learn to read (Score:5, Interesting)
As many, many people point out here - and has been pointed out to you specifically in the past (I have a long memory on this) - the government does not subsidize the USPS at all. Zero dollars in subsidy. No charity.
You aren't misinformed, as you have been corrected on this befire. You are intentionally lying. Why is that?
The USPS was cut loose from government funding during the Nixon administration exactly for to meet those "run it like a business" conservative demands. The only problem is that Congress gets to pass rules about how the USPS runs - what days it delivers on, how often, how much it can charge, and especially the monumentally stupid pension pre-funding mandate, for postal workers yet unborn, that no private business - or government entity - anywhere else in the world does.
Re:Trump is referring to post office subsidizing A (Score:5, Insightful)
Average cost != incremental cost.
As long as they are charging more than incremental cost, they _are_ making money. The delivery guy on the route is a sunk cost.
You should know this...it's not like your a kid.
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You should know this...it's not like your a kid.
That's pretty much the entire reason everything is so screwed up and people on both sides scream incredibly stupid shit.
The average person in the US operates at the intellectual, emotional, educational, and maturity level of an 8-year-old child.
On a good day.
Strat
Re:Trump is referring to post office subsidizing A (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if you and your dear leader were right, it's irrelevant. There's only one question that needs to be asked: "How does the USPS set their rates, bulk-shipping or otherwise?".
If the rates are pre-set (by statute, fixed USPS policy, to be competitive with UPS/FedEx, etc.), then the onus is on those who set those rates to assure that the USPS is profitable. And if Amazon is simply purchasing a service at the price that it is offered to anyone. Nothing to see here. It's not Amazon's responsibility to see that anyone else is profitable.
If the USPS cut a deal with Amazon for lower rates, then it's still on the USPS for signing an agreement on which they wouldn't make money. They have accountants, MBAs, and the like, just like everyone else. And they went into any negotiations knowing their fixed and variable costs, and the price at which they could offer their service profitably. If they signed a deal to sell their service at a price that would lose them money, the again, that's not on Amazon. They need to suck it up, wait for the deal to expire, and raise their rates when the contract comes up for renewal. And as before, it's not Amazon's responsibility to see that anyone else is profitable.
Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:2)
Good luck proving that.
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Good luck proving that.
Given that all statements Trump made regarding Amazon are demonstrably false, i think they wouldn't have much of a problem if they so choose to.
Re: Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Since when did that rule start (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The president can't speak against an abusive corporation, doing so is illegal."
Look at yourself, saying this shit.
The absolute state of the left.
The problem, anonymous coward, is that the corporation isn't abusive in the ways that Trump claims they are. Yet here you are essentially supporting the assertion that the President should be allowed to tell lies about a privately owned company and specifically target that business for burdensome regulations, potentially for the sole reason that the President believes the owner is a political enemy of his.
Is there no abrogation of conservative morality that you won't stand for?
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No one is arguing whether Amazon is good or bad, you fucking idiot.
Trump stated that Amazon pays no taxes and it is somehow ripping off taxpayers by shipping parcels with the USPS. Neither of those is true.
This is a discussion that involves the actions of the Orange one. Sadly, facts have no place here.
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Again, his wording makes it hard to agree with. But with the way
Re:Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed that Amazon is becoming a monopoly, and it may need oversight from the FTC. But using outright lies about the company is not the way to do it.
There are many negative (and truthful) things he could say about Amazon. It is a mark of his incompetence that he is unable to do so.
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Monopoly power? Where do you people imagine Amazon has a monopoly?
Trump doesn't like Amazon because Bezos owns the Washington Post. He has no clue what he's talking about.
That's not to say Amazon isn't abusing the marketplace. Amazon's cloud service segment draws in over 100% of their profits: every division in the company loses money, and AWS brings in the loss plus all of Amazon's profits.
Essentially, a retailer pays $30 for a thing and sells it for $50--$30 cost, $16 of proportional operating overhead, and $4 of profit. Amazon sells it for $40--$30 cost, $16 o
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How does badmouthing a company and driving its stock price down interfere with a company's ability to execute contracts or interfere with its business relationships? It's market manipulation, not tortious interference, and it is illegal because of SEC law (section 9(a)(2)), not because of contract/business law.
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Yes you can and no he's not. I'll leave figuring out why your wrong as an exercise for the reader; it shouldn't take anyone with a room-temp-or-higher IQ more than a few seconds.
Re:Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't sue POTUS, dumb shit.
Richard Nixon, is that you?
Besides, Trump is 100% right.
He is not. Amazon a) pays a shitload of taxes and b) it is not causing any loses to the US by using the USPS for deliveries. If anything, Amazon alone might very well be what's keeping the US Post Service afloat these days.
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b) Exactly, USPS *makes* money on packages, they lose money on letters. (plus there is the whole pension thing that really is the reason they are in financial trouble.)
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You can't sue POTUS
Says who? {Citation needed}
Besides, Trump is 100% right.
LURK MOAR.
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You can't sue POTUS, dumb shit.
Besides, Trump is 100% right.
That's just plain false.
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Besides, Trump is 100% right.
No. He is POTUS, if a company is able to behave as he claims they behave, and not be accountable to any laws, he should be changing the laws.
Instead he's flogging the messenger. Every time you hear from a politician that so-and-so isn't paying taxes and is/should be treated as a criminal, you should ask that politician "why aren't they?". Answer is usually they're not doing anything wrong AND we don't want to change the laws to fix it, BUT I want my constituents to like me.
Re:Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree with what the dude said, but I do find it interesting that folks tend to have missed a perfect opportunity to admire his speaking about making the rich pay their Fair Share(tm).
I mean, damn... if there was ever a time when the entire left-wing could've gotten together and said " Yeah! Make the evil corporation pay!!! "
Oh well. Mod this post on down for pointing that out, I got karma to burn off *shrug*.
Okay, meanwhile, there's a vast difference between some politician's ramblings, and the issuance of an executive order, a bill (viz. Congress), or regulatory guidance memos.I wonder if anyone out there knows that?
Re:Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, if only he could have gotten a massive tax reform bill through congress... if that happened there would be a clear opportunity to actually do something about amazon not paying any taxes.
Oh wait, that did happen... so either the new tax plan fixes this problem in which case what is trump bitching about, or it doesnt' do shit to fix this problem and he is just being a blowhard to distract from other shit.
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I mean, damn... if there was ever a time when the entire left-wing could've gotten together and said " Yeah! Make the evil corporation pay!!! "
So you're complaining that the left wing aren't stupid enough to fall for Trump's bullshit? Trump doesn't want corporations to pay, he wants the corporations who fund newspapers that refuse to lick his boots to pay.
You seem to forget that the left values equal treatment under the law. They don't want Amazon to specifically to pay more in taxes, they want all corporations to pay more in taxes and supporting Trump in an actual witch hunt won't get them what they want. It's not like there's any hope that Tr
Re: Lawsuit in 3... 2... 1... (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump is a rambling dottard tilting at windmills (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting retailers out of business? I thought we like the free market around here?
Not paying taxes? I thought not paying taxes was smart?
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Funny)
use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy
Isn't that, like, LITERALLY their entire job and purpose to exist?
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He's killing SNL and Onion writer jobs by delivering their material verbatim.
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Grandpa's off the reservation again (Score:5, Interesting)
Saying a conglomerate doesn't pay enough taxes is Republican Sacrilege. GOP needs to get the message to Fox so they can tell him to STFU on TV, like they did on gun control when he wandered off script.
The Dealmaker! (Score:2)
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
So, using the company intended to deliver parcels to do Amazon deliveries is somehow destroying America.
Hot take: Trump might not be very business-savvy after all.
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What was your first clue?
Well, i was a bit suspicious after he managed to bankrupt a casino.
I'm so waiting for this guy to release his taxes as promised since 2016.
Pot, meet Kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
Hasn't Trump been the master of manipulating the tax code to his own benefit? Didn't he say during one of the debates that not paying taxes for multiple years, because of a bankruptcy filing, made him "smart"?
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The only public tax return we have from Trump shows he paid about $38 million in taxes at least one year. [fortune.com]
Not paying taxes after a bankruptcy is smart because then you are following the tax law which allows deductions for things like that. Not doing so would indeed be the opposite of smart: AKA dumb, which is what you are for implying taking deductions is not smart...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trump is not wrong, but it is tainted (Score:2, Insightful)
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I disagree. Trump *benefits* from WaPo attacks because WaPo is seen as elitist, what better proof to your base that you're doing the right thing than when a "swamp-supporting" newspaper is upset with you.
Rather, in my opinion, Trump is a traditionalist (despite being socially fairly liberal), and he sees Amazon as attacking the American traditional way of life, hurting the working and middle class and so on. That attitude has been a pattern of his since the 80s. I don't know that Amazon can be stopped, and
It Is A Frigging Mystery Is It Not (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't about Amazon's business practices. This is about Donald Trump attacking the Washington Post, a news outlet that reports true but unflattering things about the President.
I mean, come on. There is literally no question why Trump has chosen Amazon as one of his favorite bugbears. Trump's well-known "disdain" for Jeff Bezos and WaPo is the lede, not an aside buried under the fold.
Trump is going after an entire corporation simply because a part of it has the sheer temerity to say things about him that he doesn't like.
winners and losers (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought Republicans don't believe in the government picking winners and losers?
There is so much wrong with this tweet, and the entire line of thought. There are thousands of mom and pop places that consider Amazon a priceless tool in keeping their own costs down. Also, they are one of USPS biggest customers, and package delivery revenues are up. The reason USPS is losing billions has nothing to do with Amazon, and everything to do with first class mail and pension legal requirements. Most (all?) people pay sales tax on Amazon purchases these days, too, so a notion of an additional Internet tax is just stupid.
It's almost like everything Trump tweets is exactly wrong. SAD!
A few points to make: (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Considering Donald Trump's personality, as he demonstrates it to be, I find it much more credible an idea that what he's really all upset about is the fact that Amazon/Jeff Bezos is orders of magnitude more successful a businessman than he is, and Trump is throwing one of his typical temper-tantrums over that fact.
3. Trump claims to want to 'make America great again', and bring back jobs for American citizens from overseas. However intentionally damaging Amazon, who employs at least 341,000 people, will likely cause some of those people to lose their jobs; how is that going to make us 'great again'? (It won't)
4. Meanwhile, the guy who allegedly knows 'The Art of the Deal', and claims to be such a successful businessman, can't even keep things coherent in his own Cabinet, hiring and firing people left and right at a furious pace, and appointing cronies and yes-(wo)men to top positions instead of the people who would be best for the Country as a whole; how the actual fuck can you run the government of ostensibly the most powerful Country in the free world when there is no consistency whatsoever to the people who are making it run?
Seriously, folks, all poking the Trump supporters with a stick aside: this clown has got to go, before he completely wrecks this country.
Of course even if he left office today, it'll still likely take a full decade to repair the damage done to everything -- and we'd be stuck with Mike Pence, which in significant ways would be orders of magnitude worse. Can we just all wish real hard that a meteor falls from the sky and kills them all at the same time?
Most of those retailers are out of businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
If Trump doesn't like the post office subsidizing Amazon there's a really, really easy solution: raise the rates. Problem solved. And if he doesn't like how they treat their workers he could raise federal minimum wage and drop the work week to 30/week before overtime kicked in. The latter might require congress to act but it's popular enough that if he'd stop attacking them on Twitter and take congress to task for not doing anything for the working man he'd have it done in a week. Especially if he did it right before mid-terms.
But this is all just a distraction. And an political attack on a company run by people that don't particularly like him. It'd be funny watching to rich and powerful guys in a pissing match if their actions didn't effect me so drastically.
And doing nothing about other CEOs (Score:5, Informative)
When Sears finally goes kaput the job losses will vastly outnumber the largest number of coal miners we've had in this country in the past 100 years, and they are distributed across the country. These aren't just high school and college kids working retail until they can find a steady job either; retail at Sears used to be a steady job with a career path. Now every town has lost a Sears, a KMart, or both in the past 5-10 years. All that's left of it is a real estate firm now.
Yeah, I know I'll be down-modded into oblivion on this. Go ahead. If you are too cowardly to reply to ahead and hit me with "offtopic" and "overrated".
Raise taxes on corporations and tighten tax laws? (Score:3)
lolwut? (Score:3, Insightful)
A trickle-downer who signed a huge tax giveaway to corporations is complaining that a corporation doesn’t pay enough taxes? Haha what?
Don’t the trickle-downers always tell us that companies like Amazon, etc. paying more in taxes mean less jobs? So other than being butthurt over the Washington Post, shouldn’t Trump be glad that this “job creator” is only paying the bare minimum taxes to maximize hiring and shareholder return?
Hypocrisy. Thy name is Trump.
I thought not paying taxes was smart? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, wut?
Trump Brags About Not Paying Taxes: "That Makes Me Smart"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBZR1-onmAo
What's he covering up now (Score:4, Insightful)
When Trump Doesn't Pay Taxes He's a Genius (Score:3)
Lawsuit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Probably the only thing keeping the postal service afloat right now is Amazon. And pretty sure I pay sales tax on purchases through amazon if purchased from amazon.
1. The post office runs a deficit of about $5 billion per year when you include their retirement funding requirements, so in a very strong sense they are undercharging for delivery or overpaying for retirement. Either way, the taxpayers in general are supporting delivery instead of the deliverer/deliveree.
2. There is no federal government sales tax, of which Trump is the chief executive. From his department's point of view, Amazon pays little tax. Your local state/city/county government gets the sales taxes
Re:Postal Service (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The USPS retirement funding obligation is high because the congress forced them to fund it at a much higher rate than normal corporations.
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The post office is going to be smaller than it was...email.
Given that fact, it would be insane _not_ to require them to fund their employees retirement accounts. Tax payers are on the hook for those retirements, fund them now.
That said: Fuck them. _After_ they have funded their accounts, the post office retirees should all be forced into Social Security (along with congress). Put all those funds into the SS trust.
As to what Amazon pays: Less than average cost, more than incremental cost. Normal busin
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, even this article, which takes a fairly critical view of the deal Amazon has with the USPS, indicates that package delivery is a critical part of keeping the USPS afloat:
https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]
The biggest issue appears to be that infrastructure changes necessary for handling a much higher percentage of packages have not been made. That seems like a USPS duty - not Amazon.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're a fucking idiot then.
As if it wasn't obvious even at the time that Trump was vastly more corrupt and much more of a liar than Clinton.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a fucking idiot then.
As if it wasn't obvious even at the time that Trump was vastly more corrupt and much more of a liar than Clinton.
How do you qualify that? Your shit doesn't smell as bad as my shit? They're both shit, they both stink, and whether one stinks more than the other is a matter of perception.
Re: (Score:3)
The USPS is already rolling their vehicles so the extra wear and tear is going to be minimal, in fact it's been proven that Amazon reduces fuel used to deliver goods to consumers in almost all cases so it should be going down.
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Yeah, the increased revenue and profit from Amazon was the only thing keeping the USPS solvent after the stupid Republican 50+ years of benefits mandate. Both marketing and First class revenue is declining, package shipment growth is the only thing keeping their balance sheet from going to hell.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right. After the tax bill passed, Bernie Sanders appeared on CNN and when the interviewer said the tax bill looked like a good thing, his response was: That's why the cuts should be permanent.
The reason they weren't permanent is because Senate rules require more votes to pass permanent cuts and since no Democrats voted for it, they didn't reach that threshold.