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Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany

Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Trump actually has a history of renegotiating contracts and saving a bit of money. It doesn't take much more than a willingness to be involved to do this but few presidents in the past have wanted to sully themselves with such mundane work. Take the recent work he did on the F-35 https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

This was China's own plan to bolster its own plastics industry.

The fact that they decided to end it suddenly and then blame the shutdown on others trying to "push" their waste onto China is a rather consistent pattern for the Chinese government.

There was a time when America prided itself in it's technological prowess. A time when we believed science had the potential to solve our problems and propel us into the future. It's sad that we've gone the other way, clutching superstition and paranoia, as a great thinker once predicted: https://www.goodreads.com/quot...
This has historically been a "pro tech" site, which be definition and education should include individuals educated in science... but alas, it's just more politicized, polarized arse holes too willing to jump on the reichwinger "blame libs for all evils" bs....
Your prizes:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://worldtop20.org/2017-wo...
http://thehill.com/policy/inte...
And the cherry, the US, the Country FOUNDED on the principles of freedom, drops to 21....well done....
http://theweek.com/speedreads/...

The tax policy stuff isn't really Trump though. It's people like Paul Ryan. Trump is the Steve Jobs of the party - nasty but charismatic. Paul Ryan is more like the Wozniak - geeky but politically not that astute.

In a odd sort of way the fundamentally corrupt nature of American politics works well for tax reform. If you have a bunch of lobbyists complaining all the time you can gain quite a bit of information from that. So if you know Apple and co have tonnes of money overseas, you can figure out what it would take to make them bring it back.

Which, to the Trump administration's credit, they actually did

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Apple Inc. said it will bring hundreds of billions of overseas dollars back to the U.S., pay about $38 billion in taxes on the money and spend tens of billions on domestic jobs, manufacturing and data centers in the coming years.

The iPhone maker plans capital expenditures of $30 billion in the U.S. over five years and will create 20,000 new jobs at existing sites and a new campus it intends to open. The Cupertino, California-based company's shares rose 1.7 percent to a record closing price of $179.10.

âoeWe are focusing our investments in areas where we can have a direct impact on job creation and job preparedness,â Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a statement Wednesday, which also alluded to unspecified plans by the company to accelerate education programs.

You don't necessarily need to do what an individual lobbyist is lobbying for to make the companies they're lobbying for do what you want them to do.

A combination of tax cuts policy wonkish stuffs like this and good old fashioned Trumpian bullying and intimidation to get companies to create jobs in the US should do the job. And of course Trumpian praise for ones who comply.

Plus of course the Trumpian bullying and praise affects market cap

https://finance.yahoo.com/quot...

Apple's market cap is $886 billion. 1.7% of that is $15 billion. And they presumably reckon they'll make some more cash if public approval boosts their share price and on their business operations in the US.

All in all it's an interesting mixture of conventional and unconventional incentives.

Tax cuts never work! They never result in higher wages!

Starbucks to boost worker pay and benefits after US lowers corporate taxes

Disney giving 125,000 employees $1,000 cash bonuses

JP Morgan Chase to build 400 new branches, raise wages because of the tax cut

Verizon Using Some Tax Savings to Give Each Employee 50 Shares

What does it take for "progressives" to examine their economic beliefs?

As if 8 years of failed "recovery" under Obama wasn't enough. The ONLY President in US history to never see 3% growth in the US economy in any year of his term...

It is a bad thing, because it's just another tax break for companies that are already evading taxes, and it won't actually bring anything back into the US.

Apple, Returning Overseas Cash, to Pay $38 Billion Tax Bill

Portuguese company founded in 1989

But isn't that what we ostensibly already have? Remember, Trump is a "very stable genius" who is "like, really smart" because his "I.Q. is one of the highest". Would he keep challenging people to IQ contests if he weren't a very stable genius?

"'People Who Boast About Their IQ Are Losers': Studies say that bragging about your superiority makes people like you less- so what does Donald Trump hope to gain?"

How would spending millions of dollars running for president and thrust in the political lime light to be alienated by friends, donors, business associates, and politicians be in any way a winning strategy for getting richer? Have you thought this through at all?

Yes. Have you?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/08/11/amid-all-the-craziness-dont-forget-trump-is-using-the-presidency-to-enrich-his-family

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-07/the-art-of-the-trump-enrichment-program

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/trump-already-profiting-2020-campaign

Trump's 2020 campaign has already paid $395,000 for space in New York’s pricey Trump Tower, ensuring the president and his family will profit.

students have been routinely forced to work for Apple during crunch time to get enough iPhones out.

I don't think we really want them to have better conditions either. I don't think we want them to be worse either, if by 'We' you mean consumers in first world nations. We're largely indifferent.

But as for their working conditions, there's no shortages of less than uplifting stories about them. Also, these are masses of Factory workers. They're primed for Unionization but they never seem to do much of it. You probably don't want to think about what the Chinese government does to keep that under wraps. Any more than you want to think about what things were like in America before Unions...

the cost for an EV will probably never come down to a parity with ICE cars

Most experts think that once the cost of a battery comes down, battery electric vehicles will cost less than ICE vehicles. Some people are claiming that BEVs are already cheaper than ICEVs if you take total cost of ownership into account.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric-cars-already-cheaper-to-own-and-run-than-petrol-or-diesel-study

I have seen several people repeating the claim that when lithium batteries for cars drop below $100 per kilowatt-hour, BEVs will cost less than ICEVs and consumers will start switching to them to save money. Elon Musk has in the past said that 2020 could be the year this happens. (For Tesla, anyway, since Tesla built its own battery factory just to get the lowest cost on batteries.)

https://electrek.co/2017/01/30/electric-vehicle-battery-cost-dropped-80-6-years-227kwh-tesla-190kwh/

the only hope is for some type of battery that does not involve lithium

I'll bet you that BEVs will boom in the next few years, still using lithium batteries. The high price of lithium is sending a signal to the free market, and as a result more development of lithium resources is happening. If prices are high enough, lithium and other metals can be recovered from sea water, and we aren't running out of sea water anytime soon. Also, we haven't really started recycling lithium car batteries yet, but that's coming too.

According to this article a Tesla Model S only needs 15 pounds / 7 kg of lithium, about as much as a bowling ball; and experts think that just the lithium available from mining would be enough for 185 years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/

Tons of research is going into batteries, but it is way too early to bet on a winning horse at this point.

For years I have been interested in batteries big enough to run an entire city ("grid-scale" batteries). I was assuming that something unusual like the liquid metal battery technology or flow batteries would be needed, but Tesla has started selling grid-scale lithium battery packs to Australia. So maybe lithium is even getting inexpensive enough for grid-scale. My understanding is that the Tesla battery in Australia can only supply power for a very short time, so I haven't lost interest in liquid metal or flow batteries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/liquid-metal-battery-inventor-questions-lithium-ion-as-grid-scale-storage-solution-2017-03-29

not that you could afford anything a Trump supporter would deign to sell you.

You seem to suggest here that Trump supporters own the expensive properties?

I'm just going to put this here.... (20 to 1 ratio of Billionaire donors to Clinton campaign)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Even if Boeing (who has the knowledge and a successful track record) builds the capsule, fact is SpaceX has yet to have a single fully successful mission (they always had a major problem) and has a track record of ignoring problems.

Ok. There's so much wrong here, I'm not sure where to begin. First of all, Boeing and SpaceX have different capsule systems. Space X is using the Dragon 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_2 on top of a Falcon 9. Boeing is using the Starliner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CST-100_Starliner on top of an Atlas rocket. As for the idea hat SpaceX has yet to have a single successful mission, this is demonstrably not true as a glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches where for example you can see 17 successful launches in 2017 alone. While SpaceX has had some very high profile failures, there success rate at this point is close comparable to other major rocket companies, and the Dragon spacecraft has also successfully returned to Earth. Moreover, one of the major things that people think of a as a "failure" of SpaceX is when one of their rocket's first stages doesn't land successfully. In fact, that didn't happen at all in 2017, and moreover isn't an issue anyways because it isn't an issue for mission success, simply an issue for if they have a rocket available for cheap reuse later.

I suppose one could point to the rumors of failure of Zuma, but it is pretty clear that if anything failed there it was on the Northrop-Grumman payload end, not SpaceX, as demonstrated by the fact that SpaceX did not halt flights after the Zuma launch.

All of that said, there are some signs that SpaceX has been too fast and loose with some safety issues. A recent set of government audits found serious safety and protocol issues at pretty much all the major space contractors but with more issues at SpaceX than any of the others https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-22/top-u-s-space-contractors-cited-for-lapses-by-pentagon-watchdog. However, none of those issues have so far translated into any substantial problem.

Why do people get upset that 1% of the population owns 50% of the world's wealth. And in response they flock to something like bitcoin, where 1000 people or 0.007% owns 40% of the wealth?

We can't accurately predict the weather for 5 days

Can't predict a coinflip either, yet we can predict very accurately the average result of 10,000 coinflips. Same with climate, which is a long-term aggregate of countless individual weather events. But sure, all those thousands of egghead climate scientists from all over the planet are obviously just making shit up, right? And apparently coordinating it all in a massive global conspiracy.

It's not a fact.

Then how do you explain the vast amount of peer-reviewed evidence supporting it that's cited in the IPCC reports? Gonna wave that all away?

There certainly is a huge monetary motivation to say it's NOT a fact.

Fixed that for you. And if you doubt me, let me know if you find any monetary motivation bigger than $33 trillion in stranded assets. Or perhaps just compare salaries.

Everything they do makes it LOOK like they are covering shit up.

According to whom? Certainly the studies cited in the IPCC reports are about as clear as it can get. Every scientific institution and meteorological department in the world endorses its conclusions - are all of them also covering this shit up, risking their reputations and sabotaging everything science stands for? Or perhaps other interests just want you to think so? There's certainly plenty of direct evidence for that.

You want data? Oh we deleted it.

Oh look, found it again.

You have an opinion we don't agree with?

Then provide evidence to back it up, or STFU. That's how science works.

The curves don't match what we said was going to happen ten years ago?

They look OK to me.

Don't get me started on having Al Gore as a spokeman

Haha, nobody elected Gore as any sort of spokesman other than himself, and certainly he has ZERO to do with the scientific case for AGW. That's like saying the entire Republican party are frauds because Trump is kind of a dick.

show me a solution that does NOT put us back into the dark ages

Well first off, the type of solution has NOTHING to do with the existence of the problem. Seriously, are you really going to deny the problem even exists just because you don't like someone's proposed solution to it? Is that rational?

Second, there are any number of proposed solutions. Pick some that you like. Nuclear is fine by me, if you can make an economic case for it (and certainly in some areas it makes a lot of sense). Solar and wind are obvious choices to be part of the energy mix, particularly in areas where there's lot of sun and/or wind. Geothermal, wave power, thorium - there are plenty of carbon-neutral energy sources to choose from.

And for intermittency, power companies already have to deal with that, since no power plant is perfect - e.g. coal plants are offline 40-60% of the time, so they have to be covered too. The answer is wide distribution and redundancy from a variety of sources ("the wind always blows somewhere") with some storage

Instead of pouring money into this silly exercise, how about fixing a real problem:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-10/the-most-awful-transit-center-in-america-could-get-unimaginably-worse

Likewise - Devin Nunes has nothing to do with Democrats or even Obama.

The reason to bring up Obama in this context is the last President's willingness — nay eagerness — to unmask US Citizens tangled in the surveillance for political reasons. The former Administration officials remain evasive about the process and procedures — they really are to blame for the actual privacy deterioration that took place.

After all, the worry is not so much that the NSA will know, who said something. It is what the rest of the government may do, when they learn about it.

If we aren't willing to block NSA from surveilling the foreigners, we better codify how to treat the cases of US citizens getting recorded incidentally — and not simply leave it up to the Executive, who has and will continue to abuse this power himself or by delegating to low-level unelected flunkies.

Clinton could have vetoed it, but it would have done no good, the veto would have been over-ridden.

Clinton could have vetoed it if he didn't support repeal. Removing his support from the bill and forcing proponents to override his veto may have eroded enough Democrat support to sustain his veto. Your theories deny the history and basic politics.

Instead, Clinton supported repeal of Glass-Steagal, signed it into law, and continues to defend repeal to this day. Please read the following quote that obliterates your fantasy.

Bill Clinton:

On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence. But I can't blame [the Republicans]. This wasn't something they forced me into.

Republicans forced nothing on Clinton. He signed the law of his own free will.

Assigning blame to Clinton for repealing Glass-Steagall is torturing the facts beyond all recognition.

You wouldn't recognize a fact if it tortured you. Project much?

i think they were referrng to this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

I guess you haven't been paying attention:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news...

Funny the changes hasn't even been in effect for a week yet the liberals want to declare failure. Yet they were willing to wait 8 years for Obama to accomplish something and he never did.

Hell, I'd be pleasantly amazed if his administration would just acknowledge market realities instead of pandering to people who can't math.

"The government of Taiwan has embarked on an ambitious plan to embrace the renewable energy revolution. As part of President Tsai Ing-wen’s plan to phase out nuclear power plants and reduce the use of fossil fuels, the government intends to invest as much as $56.6 billion, and to raise the percentage of renewable energy in Taiwan’s energy mix to between 20% and 25%. "
http://www.senseandsustainabil...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

> And it saves me having to carry change, get the right note, update all my
> coins every 10 years when they change the designs (in my country in the
> last 10 years they've changed the 10-pound, 5-pound notes and the 1 pound coin
> at least and that 10 years might even encompass the 2 pound coin, I forget).

Huh? Here in Canada, during my lifetime, there have been multiple redesigns of paper and coin currency, and the $1 and $2 paper bills have been replaced by coins. The government simply stopped issuing the old paper/coins. The old currency remained valid until they eventually wore out. We did not have an India-style de-monetization fiasco https://www.bloomberg.com/view... The only problem was waiting for vending machines to be updated to accept new coins/bills.

The ultimate test will be of energy prices in the US fall dramatically due to Trump's anti-environmental polices.

The real test of all of this has actually happened in the Gulf. The Arabs are actually pumping oil and gas around with solar power because it is cheaper than generating electricity by burning gas, so they stopped burning gas, sold it off and pocketed the difference... that's writing on a wall, ... large amounts of wall street money moving into renewables is writing on a wall. You'll know renewables are winning when the average price of solar & wind per kWh dips below that of gas in Europe and N-America and it is about to do that (according to Bloomberg it already is). What you are seeing in those graphs is the natural gas and coal industries with their ever increasing extraction costs at war with renewables and their ever decreasing production prices due to ever increasing economy of scale and it was Germany who played a large part in setting that off with it's Energiewende. Form the point of view of a renewables enthusiast the fun is only beginning now. Germany and China are going to be the biggest players in the renewables techology scene and from their point of view Donald Trump and his presidency is a 4-8 year grace period to leave their American competitors behind as they struggle to defend themselves against Trump's efforts to put them out of business. Just watching the US delegations show up at these energy technology and climate conferences and giving presentations about how coal and gas are the future are regarded as comedy performances, people are actually laughing at these people.

Are you posting from a mobile phone? Why?

Is there any possibility that you can write and post clear and concise thoughts in a nicely formatted & easily readable manner so everything does not look like the above "almost run-on" sentence?

"A huge amount of subsidized renewables."

The latest batch of offshore wind turbines are not subsidized at all, the companies didn't want the money.

"Offshore Wind Farms Offer Subsidy-Free Power for First Time"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

The ultimate test will be of energy prices in the US fall dramatically due to Trump's anti-environmental polices.

The real test of all of this has actually happened in the Gulf. The Arabs are actually pumping oil and gas around with solar power because it is cheaper than generating electricity by burning gas, so they stopped burning gas, sold it off and pocketed the difference... that's writing on a wall, ... large amounts of wall street money moving into renewables is writing on a wall. You'll know renewables are winning when the average price of solar & wind per kWh dips below that of gas in Europe and N-America and it is about to do that (according to Bloomberg it already is). What you are seeing in those graphs is the natural gas and coal industries with their ever increasing extraction costs at war with renewables and their ever decreasing production prices due to ever increasing economy of scale and it was Germany who played a large part in setting that off with it's Energiewende. Form the point of view of a renewables enthusiast the fun is only beginning now. Germany and China are going to be the biggest players in the renewables techology scene and from their point of view Donald Trump and his presidency is a 4-8 year grace period to leave their American competitors behind as they struggle to defend themselves against Trump's efforts to put them out of business. Just watching the US delegations show up at these energy technology and climate conferences and giving presentations about how coal and gas are the future are regarded as comedy performances, people are actually laughing at these people.

I don't know, it seems strange, especially when there's so much actual news related to SpaceX, such as the recent government audit which found some pretty serious problems with their manufacturing and test protocols ( See article here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-22/top-u-s-space-contractors-cited-for-lapses-by-pentagon-watchdog, actual report https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/22/2001860659/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2018-045_REDACTED.PDF). On a more positive note, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is still on schedule, and we've now seen pictures of the fully-assembled Falcon Heavy https://www.space.com/39164-elon-musk-unveils-falcon-heavy-rocket-photos.html. But apparently, out of all the important things happening, a satirical letter is what is apparently what gets posted.

https://translate.google.com/t...

In the question of permanent jobs for refugees, hopes are increasingly resting on medium-sized companies and craft enterprises. As a survey of this newspaper revealed, the vast majority of companies listed in the German stock index (Dax) has not yet hired refugees. Only the German Post stated to have until the beginning of June 50 refugees and thus a significant size hired.

And the link goes to this page

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wir...

Which says "Dax companies hire only 54 refugees"

Also look at this

"Most Dax companies also point out in the FAZ survey that language skills and qualifications of the refugees do not correspond to the requirement profiles. That is why many Dax representatives are involved in corresponding projects. Probably the biggest one is probably the network "Wir zusammen", which the founder and founder of the German Internet corporation United Internet, Ralph Dommermuth, called into being through his foundation. The initiative currently involves 96 companies, including 15 Dax companies. A total of 1,800 refugee interns and 400 permanent immigrants currently work in the "we-together" companies. The will was there, the internships in permanent jobs to convert, said a spokeswoman, but this step always depends on the qualification."

I.e. the companies pointed out that the migrants were unemployable given their language skills and qualifications. After a lot of nagging from the government and pro migrant NGOs they agreed to the '1,800 refugee interns and 400 permanent immigrants currently work in the "we-together" companies' scheme but these are still not large numbers when you realise one million migrants arrived. You're talking about 0.22%

And as I linked elsewhere even the most optimistic people - i.e. German government spokespeople trying to explain to Bloomberg why the whole thing isn't a complete clusterfuck - think the migrants will have 70% unemployment even in 15 years time. E.g.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

According to labor agency projections, it will take as long as six years for a refugee to complete German classes, vocational school and internships to be considered a skilled worker, and potentially a lot longer to find a job. After 15 years, refugee employment is estimated to average about 70 percent.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

"As long as companies create more jobs than the number of refugees entering unemployment, that balances out the overall rate, even if it's not necessarily refugees taking up the positions being created," said Stefan Kipar, an economist at Bayerische Landesbank in Munich. "If growth in new positions slows down, you could start to see it feed through."

At the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, the Germany's Labor Ministry predicted an increase in joblessness already for last year. Instead, the number of people out of work has fallen.

Forecasts compiled by Bloomberg show economists predict unemployment will remain unchanged at 6.1 percent this year, before picking up to 6.2 percent in 2018. The Bundesbank is more optimistic. It sees the rate falling to 5.8 percent next year.

As for refugees in integration and language classes, they're filed away as job seekers and will probably stay off the unemployment register for years to come. Part of the explanation lies in Germany's apprenticeship system -- a combination of classroom education and on-the-job training -- that serves as an entryway to the country's labor market, and also represents a high barrier for foreigner with little or no knowledge of the local language.

According to labor agency projections, it will take as long as six years for a refugee to complete German classes, vocational school and internships to be considered a skilled worker, and potentially a lot longer to find a job. After 15 years, refugee employment is estimated to average about 70 percent.

Gee, that sounds super!

Funny, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is based in Hong Kong as is Binance and he's talking in this interview about post-Beijing ban of cryptocurrencies. Hong Kong is NOT China. Now, I know to most ignorant Westerners like you, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan/South Korea/Thailand is all "Asia" and all "China", but the reality is that Hong Kong is NOT China. Hong Kong has its own laws, legal system, passports, visas, currency, language (Cantonese - not officially supported in China), and they even drive on the wrong side of the road.

Likewise, Bitfinex is a brand of iFinex. And who is iFinex? Well, iFinexis a British Virgin Islands company and operates out of Hong Kong. And what did we just cover above? HONG KONG IS NOT CHINA. Different laws, different currencies, different passports (for example, no Visa needed for an HK citizen to come to the US; one required for a Chinese national, and a Chinese national needs a special visa to go to Hong Kong), etc. Neither Bitfinex nor Ninance are based in China. Period. Full Stop.

Who's talking out of their ass? I welcome your apology.

Brietbart is not a reliable source of information.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

More than 54 have jobs, and many of the rest are in training to prepare them for work. See, Germany doesn't just invite them in and then ignore them, it deals with the situation actively.

"Cheapest to produce (overall costs to install and maintain equipment / power actually produced) is different than 'It costs less to the consumer because it is highly subsidized by the government'."

No. In Germany, the latest off-shore Wind turbines declined any subsidies, they no longer need them.

"Offshore Wind Farms Offer Subsidy-Free Power for First Time"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Currently stats say that only less than 10 percent of people in the USA have diabetes, if that number was closer to 50% then hell yes you would be able to get all your supplies at the dollar store.

"Only 10%"? That's over 30 million people. WELL past minimum efficient scale for production and distribution. Anything that affects double digit percentages of the US population is a gigantic market for a single drug.

The reasons medications are expensive is because in the US we have a completely retarded system for buying them that gives all the power in the relationship to the drug company. They charge a lot because they can. Most countries solve this by having a single payer system so drug prices get regulated to reasonable prices. Evidently we aren't so smart in the US so we pay far more than almost anywhere else.

So, internet regulation is now back to what it was from circa 1980 - 2015? The horror .... the horror ....

The Internet Had Already Lost Its Neutrality

. . . the major problem with the FCC’s move: It forced ISPs into an 80-year-old framework designed for the telephone monopolies of a much different era. Those regulations were more concerned about things like controlling market power than, say, promoting innovation. And while the advocates for net neutrality stressed the benefits for competition among content providers, the critics asked what would happen to competition among ISPs, since heavy-handed regulation often acts as a barrier to entry for new startups, which can’t afford to negotiate the regulatory apparatus. Those of us old enough to remember the telephone service looked like in the 1970s, before the FCC unwound a little -- which is to say, pretty much like the service our parents had when they were children, down to the astronomical prices for long distance calls, and the chunky plastic rotary telephones -- can see why critics were concerned about giving the FCC that kind of power to block innovation.

Federal meddling can't improve the Internet.

Let's take this tripe one by one.

it had nothing to do with his policies

This one is true. Obama told everyone what he wanted to accomplish which then allowed Republicans to state unequivocally their top priority, make him a one-term president. And thus they became the party of No, obstructing everything, even if the people wanted it.

how he enacted those polices

Not sure what you mean by this one. Oh wait. You mean those executive orders and signing statements, don't you? The same ones George Bush and every single president has done since George Washington. Yeah, I can see how that would be an issue. After all, if you do the exact same thing as your predecessor, only you are in the wrong. Not the guy who came after you and does the exact same thing.

his attitude toward the opposition

You mean like reaching out and trying to find common ground? How horrible!

his repeated mishaps (Fast and Furious as example)

You claim multiple mishaps yet cite only one. I'm guessing those 3,000 dead that happened when George Bush ignored months of daily warnings of an impending attack doesn't come close this one issue, right? Nor the financial collapse which was the worst in 80 years. Nor the invasion of Iraq which cost us over 4,000 soldiers and over $4 trillion in costs. How about handing over $700 billion of taxpayer money to Wall Street and banks so they could pay out their bonuses? Forcing phone companies to install illegal wiretaps? Does any of this ring a bell?

his moneyed ties to Wallstreet

You mean unlike the current administration who as as his Treasury chief a person who came from Goldman Sachs, right? Or that he had, until recently, Carl Icahn who is lousy with connections to Wall Street. Here's a list of the Goldman Sachs employees the con artist has in his administration. This is only Goldman Sachs employees. This doesn't include all the other firms people have come from.

This article talks about how the con artist doesn't want to enforce rules against Wall Street and the banks. Instead, he wants them to "self report" whenever they commit a crime. This of course is in no way a sign the con artist has moneyed ties to Wall Street or is doing their bidding. None whatsoever.

his repeated power grabs at various government agencies

Like signing statements above, the same as previous administrations. Were you whining when Bush did this? How about Reagan?

his cozy relationship with MSM

Non sequitor. MSM is a nonsense name, a fake name if you will, made up by those trying to claim the high ground because they have nothing to offer. If you think Breitbart and the Fox tabloid are somehow better news sources than the New York Times, BBC or CNN, it's quite clear facts don't enter into your daily life.

his continuation of Bush policy

Isn't this a good thing? Everyone knows how great things were under Bush what with the financial markets collapsing, the worst recession in 80 years, 14 million people losing their jobs, millions losing their homes. This doesn't even take into account the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history which occurred on Bush's watch. Make up your mind. You criticize Obama for doing his own thing, and you criticize him for doing the exact same thing Bush did. You can't have it both ways.

his lackluster foreign policy

This is the only legitimate issue and is a continuation of your first comment. Obama was lackluster when it came

How big a factor is the wages of doctors and nurses in the bottom line? The cost of drugs and supplies is much higher in US, driven up by collusion between pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and government. You also have leeches like Martin Shkreli pumping up the cost.

Drugs are 14% (or 17%) of the cost of health care. Maybe costs can be cut there. Do you think you can get huge savings without significantly cutting costs in the other 83-86% of health care spending?

Politicians run on cutting drug costs all the time. How does that work out?

You also have leeches like Martin Shkreli pumping up the cost.

What if we wanted to accomplish something besides scoring political debate points?

You completely misunderstood everything in my post, but hey.

I'm not saying the US subsidizes in terms of sending drug companies cash (perhaps we do, but it wasn't my point). When we pay $x for a drug, and the rest of the world pays $x/10, we are subsidizing the rest of the world.

Looking at Pfizer, they spend $3 billion per year in advertising (source https://www.statista.com/stati...), with revenue of $52 billion. That's not trivial, nor is it a "very large cost per pill". It is about 5% of revenue. Meanwhile they spend almost $8 billion in R&D (source: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/p...).

Fully 50% of their revenue is from the US (source: https://www.statista.com/stati...). And we pay more for drugs (source: https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...). So looking at the financials, let's say that Pfizer takes a 25% reduction in revenue (if the drug prices in the US cut in half). There goes the R&D budget, the advertising budget, and more.

So to keep the R&D going we'd have to raise drug prices everywhere, or subsidize R&D.

How big a factor is the wages of doctors and nurses in the bottom line? The cost of drugs and supplies is much higher in US, driven up by collusion between pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and government. You also have leeches like Martin Shkreli pumping up the cost.

It is ludicrous to believe that somewhere in the $125k range of ads purchased on Facebook caused an election loss for a candidate that spent $1,184m dollars not to mention colluding with 90% of all media outlets to cover up everything she did wrong while they were trying to destroy Trump such as the Washington Post hiring 20 people to dig up dirt on Trump.

http://www.thedrive.com/aerial...

The controversial drone policy introduced by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015, requiring recreational drone users to registers their UAVs, was constitutionally overturned in May of this year, but it may end up being enforced again next year by being included in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act of 2018.

According to Bloomberg, both the House and Senate agree on slipping the unmanned aerial vehicle registry into the defense bill, as demand for regulation in the drone industry is at an all-time high. Most recently, the White House expanded drone-testing regulations to presumably push toward standardizing nationwide UAV delivery. The current administration may deem a nationwide hobby-drone registration as a necessary first step toward that.

The previous policy was overturned

http://www.thedrive.com/aerial...

In 2015, the FAA officially announced that all owners of drones heavier than 250 grams (which is about as light as a cup of water) must be registered as "drone operators" in a national database. This, of course, startled some, as it seemed this regulation could mark the beginning of the end for freedom of use regarding hobby drones. Others felt it was a fair deal in the right direction, as we reported on last year. However, in a twist of turns, the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals overturned this legislation on Friday, May 19th, as its compatibility with a previous FAA ruling from 2012 is far from symbiotic.

The 2012 "FAA Modernization and Reform Act" rules that the FAA has no right to "promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft", and as Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh sees it, the 2015 ruling clearly interferes with this established law. He adds, "Statutory interpretation does not get much simpler. The Registration Rule is unlawful as applied to model aircraft." Essentially, recreational drone users have been exempted from the aforementioned registry, which according to Popular Science, over 800,000 people have joined since 2015. This is something we at The Drive keep a close eye on, and an issue we regularly report on.

So Congress put a paragraph into the 2018 NDAA to restore registration

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned the FAA drone registration system in May, finding that earlier legislation passed in 2012 didn't give the agency legal authority for it. A one-paragraph addition to the defense bill said that the registration system "shall be restored" as soon as the legislation becomes law.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

(d) Restoration Of Rules For Registration And Marking Of Unmanned Aircraft.-The rules adopted by the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in the matter of registration and marking requirements for small unmanned aircraft (FAA-2015-7396; published on December 16, 2015) that were vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Taylor v. Huerta (No. 15-1495; decided on May 19, 2017) shall be restored to effect on the date of enactment of this Act.

The rich want us to eat whole, crushed insects while they eat steak.

The rich want us working class slobs to abandon affordable gasoline vehicles, while they drive around in luxury Teslas, partially paid for with generous $7500 subsidies.

The rich warn us of rising oceans, but then buy $9 million mansions on the coastline.

Global warming is an artificial religion cooked up for the purpose of driving down the standard of living for the 99%, while the 1% buy carbon indulgences. Environmentalism is just the velvet glove over the iron fist of misanthropy.

The cryptocurrency hysteria is starting to look more and more engineered based on the revelations of the Trump election: "They seem to be in the mood to do exactly the things we tell them are bad". Bitcoin is really being hyped in the news, negatively, ambivalently, and positively (less often).

Obviously the financial market is very bullish and this can't go on because the economy itself is not growing at anywhere near that pace. There's definitely a bubble being engineered especially in the stock market. And everyone knows interests rates are going to be jacked up severely in a few months and probably keep rising for the next year or so. So it seems like it's going to pop soon.
For mortgages the banks are not going to be generous with fixed rate options and variable rate options are proven to throw the average middle-classer for a loop. It seems like a trap.

And the crypto-hysteria is spreading: to Ethereum and Litecoin especially.
The very odd thing I can't figure out is that Litecoin is up 100% on the day but the only currency trading more Bitcoin than the dollar is Litecoin....seems like Litecoin shouldn't be able to sustain that price against the dollar for any amount of time....I have no idea what's going on with that.

My guess this is because of the rumblings of the Fed severely jacking up interest rates and everyone with a brain wants to get rich off the naive hype buyers before 2Q 2018.

After this bubble pops there is going to be huge sustained growth with altcoins as the market decides the roles of the various crytocurrency technologies in the decentralized banking economy that is coming in the next decade. Hopefully there are enough independent small businesses left (besides drug dealers) to spark this decentralized economy into a roaring flame that cleans up our society a bit.

You missed the big one, Retail. Retail is predicted to be the cause of the next recession when all their loans start coming due in 2018. Read this article from Bloomberg "America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning"

https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...

You won't get more than 6 hours of productive work from a knowledge worker. They can be there for longer, but they could do their shit faster and head home, and there would be no difference in output.

This is indeed true and backed up by studies and experiments.

The 8 hour work day is by and large a remnant of the industrialization when factories needed to be ran in 3 shifts. When you're talking about a monotonous, assembly line type of a job, 8 hours lets you get by with just 3 shifts instead of 4 which saves cost and the productivity difference in those kinds of jobs was not too noticeable.

However, when you start talking about anything that requires more than performing a simple manual task over and over again, 8 hours starts to be too much. When you combine this with the fact that the need for time-consuming manual tasks is going down as automation and AIs increase it starts to make even more sense to cut down the length of the workday.

Personally as a project manager on almost all days I can get the relevant stuff done in 6 hours or under, the main exceptions being the days when there happens to be several meetings that require travelling between locations, and even then the extra time is spent on the road instead of doing something productive. I'd happily have my work time reduced to 6 hours provided the pay stays the same. And herein lies the core problem with this situation: we know that cutting down work time will increase efficiency, but we still evaluate and pay workers based on 'time spent at workstation' so the intuition of corporations is that if worktime is cut, pay must also be cut.

In other words: the basic assumption that people are paid 'for their time' needs to be done away with in knowledge work especially and replaced with paying people for working outcomes.

Bezos doesn't have any issues selling a Billion or so of amazon stock each year. He does that with regularity to finance Blue Origin.

Here is a great explanation of how the financial industry looks at Bitcoin. What is not explained is how the exchanges will deal with limit moves, but the contracts are relatively small. If Bitcoin goes up, they will probably reduce the amount of Bitcoin per contract. The power demand curve doesn't look good either considering the the amount of electricity consumed by Bitcoin mining.

I would not be too surprised to see Bitcoin go to $50,000 or $100,000 per coin. But in 5 years it will probably be worth less than $100. Then someone will add a chapter to this book.

Hey, we broke up Ma Bell and that worked! Oh, wait...

If you held 100 shares of Ma Bell stock prior to the breakup and reinvested the dividends from the Baby Bells until 2002 (when the Bloomberg article was written), ~$6,000 would turn into ~$50,000. With many of the Baby Bells merging back into bigger Millenial Bells today, I'm not sure if you would have more or less money after 15 years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2002-07-07/ma-bells-extended-family

Regardless how you look at Uber they are criminals, they are screwing employees, they are screwing customers, they are screwing authorities and more!

I will never use Uber even if they are the last company on Earth.

If the decision goes in the wrong direction for the appellant in this particular case then getting a decent hooker or a flop in Marshall might become affordable again at least for rough necks. Ever since the trolls and their constant parade of lawyers took over the place the price of the finer things in life in East Texas within a hundred miles of Marshall has gone through the roof. Though I must say the quality of the services rendered has improved drastically, also as a bonus finding a decent lawyer if you get busted is no longer a problem.