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Amazon Bows To Pressure To Bring Same-Day Deliveries To Poor Areas (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune:
After pressure from lawmakers, Amazon is revamping its same-day delivery service in response to complaints that it failed to provide service to poor, minority neighborhoods. The retail giant said it would bring its same-day delivery service to all Zip Codes in the 27 cities where its offered, not just in the wealthier areas, according to a Bloomberg report on Friday.
I honestly think things like this is the best for society. Not because it hurts the retailer because its exposed to theft or vandalism. But because it forces society to actually deal with no go zones.
Once they actually exist, they are mapped, and they should be dealt with.
Even if it ends with a escort of armed police to the no go zones to get the package delivered, its a start. I agree that a start isn't a means or a end, but its a start.
Right... I mean, not only should they better themselves, but they should do it without the resources that anyone else has...
omg had to wait extra days, that's like oppression
The Amazon analytics system didn't care either. It only cares about the number of Amazon customers and Prime subscribers in an area. Not enough customers, no reason to offer same day delivery. It shouldn't be surprising that people in poor areas have more important things to spend their money on than an Amazon subscription. That's the cold hard facts, but facts don't matter to SJW's.
Volunteering to be a delivery driver? So easy to tell others how to spend their resources.
It's negative dollars when your product is stolen and your driver was murdered.
But you wouldn't know that. You sit in your mansion on the hill, windows pointed away from the poor...never helping them. You disgust me.
Ahh...but what if there aren't enough dollars being spent in these locations to justify the investment required to enable the 1 day service?
This is a far more likely explanation for the lack of offering the service to these areas in the first place than the discrimination card the article seems to want to play instead.
Yes, because it's RACIST! /s
SWJ's don't let cold hard facts get in the way. Same day delivery must be offered equally, even if it doesn't make financial sense for Amazon to offer it. When this logic is applied to home loans, it should not have been surprising what the outcome was.
They understand it perfectly, which is why they didn't go where there are no dollars.
There are no Maserati dealers in poor areas either. I wonder why not?
Just because you get it faster from amazon does not mean it will be fresh.
Many food items are kept in storage for months before they are shipped out from amazon and typically there is no way to know before buying which amazon seller has the freshest stock or even how long its been sitting there in stock. Chocolate does go bad and twizzlers over a month old are as tough as Goodyear tires.
Amazon doesn't offer same day where I live anyway.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
But you wouldn't know that. You sit in your mansion on the hill, windows pointed away from the poor...never helping them. You disgust me.
I live in a apartment complex in Silicon Valley where my Amazon packages routinely walk off when left behind by the mail carrier. Other than the people in the leasing office, I'm the only white person at this complex. I'm considered "poor" because I make only $50,000 per year as an IT support technician, don't own a McMansion, and take public transit. Boo-hoo!
The people who works minimum wage and speaks English as a second language thinks my situation is hilarious.
I don't think it's so much about whether or not they're minorities so much as it's about those particular areas having very low demand for services that cost more, thus they can't take advantage of economies of scale.
Case in point, I have a friend who lives all the way across the country in Boca Raton who often asks me to order shit for him via amazon prime and he pays me back with venmo. Boca Raton is neither poor nor primarily minority, and in fact he lives in a somewhat upscale area in particular. Yet, Amazon won't do same day service where he lives where they do offer same day delivery in every single zip code I've lived in in the Phoenix area.
As somewhat of an off tangent matter, he's Persian, which means that if he ever fills out a typical questionnaire asking about race/ethnicity in the US, the closest option he can pick to his ethnicity is either caucasian or white, even though neither precisely fit. You may as well call a Native American an Asian at that rate.
They're not going to be earning many dollars if their delivery people get robbed every 30 minutes.
Then Amazon shouldn't be in the delivery business. UPS and FedEx can get the job done.
A low-risk dollar is objectively a better dollar.
If that was the case, Amazon shouldn't be in the delivery business. Not enough low-risk dollars to justify building out a delivery fleet.
How about if we make it our business to not decide how everyone else is permitted to run their business? My memory is fuzzy but I think some people call this concept free market capitalism.
Amazon isn't in the delivery business. They're in the retail business.
You haven't been keeping up with the news.
But some analysts believe that Amazon is putting together the pieces across the globe to launch a package-delivery service that will one day compete with UPS, FedEx and others. In addition to the Colis Prive deal, Amazon acquired the right to purchase 4.2 percent of Yodel, a United Kingdom parcel-delivery company, in 2014. Last month, Amazon announced adding thousands of trucks to its U.S. fleet to handle the growing load of packages it is shipping.
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-delivery-ambitions-take-on-industry-giants/
Not enough low-risk dollars to justify building out a delivery fleet.
How, exactly, do you know that? Are you privy to Amazon's Prime subscriber maps and same day delivery sales figures?
Or did you just make that up to fit your preferred conclusion?
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The drug dealer living at his apartment complex makes more than $50k, and he's probably the one stealing his Amazon shit too.
My memory is fuzzy but I think some people call this concept free market capitalism.
It's called redlining in the financial industry, where banks don't open branch offices in poorer neighborhoods and those residents pay outrageous interest charges to payday lenders because they don't have access to basic banking services. Bernie Sanders had proposed letting the postal service offer basic banking services to all Americans. Something that the post office used to do a long time ago.
In fact, Sanders's idea is quite sensible. "Postal banking"—which just means that post offices run savings accounts, cash checks, and perform other basic financial services—is common in most of Asia and Europe, and only about 7 percent of the world's national postal systems don't offer some bank-like services. Postal banking is a really good way to reach people who haven't had access to standard savings accounts. One estimate figures that more than 1 billion people have used post offices for making deposits.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-lets-turn-post-offices-into-banks/411589/
To Amazon it's all the same regardless because either way they're in the red. The up side for them is that any competition basically has to follow suit. It's just another way to raise the barrier to entry, for them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not engaging in blatant racial discrimination is nothing like intentionally writing bad loans because you have no skin in the game.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How, exactly, do you know that?
Because building out brick-and-mortar infrastructure is expensive.
Or did you just make that up to fit your preferred conclusion?
I recently had a half-dozen packages stolen from my post office box. An obvious inside job. The postal inspector inspector launched an investigation. I informed the vendors what happened, they sent out replacement packages. Because they had to offer free shipping to compete with Amazon and postal insurance pays a pittance, they had to eat the cost of $500 in merchandise. If the vendors are lucky, the postal inspector can recover the stolen packages. Amazon will have to absorb all the costs and risks that comes from delivering packages.
Making only $50k doing IT in Silly Valley? Sounds like you're doing something wrong.
Like what exactly? Not everyone in Silicon Valley is a newly minted millionaire.
Like doing tier 1 support for COMCAST.
I'm a senior system administrator for government IT.
Except this whole article is about SAME DAY delivery, which no, UPS and FedEX can't do for Amazon - that's the WHOLE POINT.
They can already get 1-2 day delivery from UPS/FedEx/etc, but same day is done via Amazon couriers, and basically, they are hesitant to deliver to certain neighborhoods. It's basically like an Uber Black driver picking up in South Central LA. Will someone do it? Maybe, but they are going to charge $$$.
The drug dealer living at his apartment complex makes more than $50k, and he's probably the one stealing his Amazon shit too.
When I first moved into my apartment 10+ years ago, you could walk around the complex and smell 20 different kinds of weeds. Drug dealer moved out a long time ago. Today you could probably smell 20 different kinds of curry.
Same day delivery is a luxury. As a business you want to please as many of your customers as possible as it correlates to making a profit.
Wealthier neighborhoods order more stuff. Those customers in effect do get (and rightly so) more of a consideration when it comes to service. Smaller areas that correspond to more business. You need fewer drivers than for servicing an entire city. Those customers are paying for better service by doing more business with amazon.
I will give better service to customers that deserve it. Period.
And why do those local retailers over-charge? Because of low demand and higher rates of theft. The market prices things fairly, let it work.
Same day delivery is a luxury. As a business you want to please as many of your customers as possible as it correlates to making a profit.
Wealthier neighborhoods order more stuff. Those customers in effect do get (and rightly so) more of a consideration when it comes to service. Smaller areas that correspond to more business. You need fewer drivers than for servicing an entire city. Those customers are paying for better service by doing more business with amazon.
I will give better service to customers that deserve it. Period.
Out of curiosity, does that position include other luxuries such as cable and internet service?
I bet those companies could roll out good service to "selected" areas that give a great profit, and ignore the marginal profit areas.
Or how about phone service? The per-person infrastructure cost for people in rural areas is staggering!
Maybe we should let the phone company dial back their service in unprofitable areas.
Or how about electricity? Same thing.
I suspect that packages may be more likely to be stolen from rich neighborhoods than poor neighborhoods -- because they're much more likely to have something valuable in them. I live in a low income apartment complex project. and nobody has ever stolen any of my amazon packages, which are often left outside by my door for a day. Thieves and neighbors probably realize I can't afford any orders worth the risk of stealing.
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This is more accidental, racial discrimination. Amazon is discriminating upon something other than race (average income of a residential area) but which happens to have a correlation with race, and thus can give the appearance of racial discrimination. But that is not their intention.
There's a popular conspiracy theory that says Planned Parenthood is secretly carrying out a eugenics program. The theory survives for much the same reason: Planned Parenthood does try to focus resources on low-income communities, and low income communities in the US do tend to be black communities, so it gives the impression of an attempt to contracept or abort an ethnic minority out of existence. The real reason has nothing to do with race: Low-income communities just need the service more. That unplanned pregnancy might be a surprise blessing to a middle-class couple, but when you're already struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table then hard decisions must be made.
It is silly that the politicians prioritized this as a way to "help the poor". Here is a handy checklist to help them prioritize better:
Priorities for helping the poor:
1. Jobs
2. Decent education
3. Affordable housing
4. Unleaded drinking water
Not a priority:
1. Expensive same-day delivery for junk that they don't need and can't afford.
These neighborhoods are poorly served and over-charged by local retailers.
Then why don't the people living in these neighborhoods open competing shops, and drive the bad retailers out of business while making a nice profit?
Organised thieves might also recognise the disparity in investigation though. Steal packages from the slums, the police couldn't care less - even if the crime is reported they'll just fill in the form and file it away. Steal packages from a rich enough district that the people there actually have influence and you risk instigating an actual investigation - the sort where they look at CCTV footage and numberplate recognition records, or even station an unmarked car and some bait packages. A thief would need to estimate just how valuable a district they can safely target. Low-income district thefts are more likely to be crimes of opportunity: See package, take package.
Persians are Caucasian and Native Americans descent from Mongoloids who left Asia a long time ago, so why would you call them Asian?
As a next step, they will be forcing Starbucks to open the exact same number of stores in poor, depressed areas as in the center of the city.
Also, city servants will have to spread their living quarters evenly across the cities.
In related news, touristic tour operators will change their sightseeing routes so that an appropriate amount of time is devoted to the dreariest parts of the city. The legislature is divided on the issue of forcing the tourists to take an equal amount of photos in every area, because the egalitarian push will clash with the desire not to offend inhabitants of the slums with the feeling that they are into some kind of zoo. The delicate balancing of these opposing traits is what keep your tax dollars at work.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
"Then why don't the people living in these neighborhoods open competing shops, and drive the bad retailers out of business while making a nice profit?"
That is the point of cooperatives, though for some reasons they are not popular in the US for setting up retail and grocery stores as elsewhere in the world. I grew up in a small remote town with one town cooperative grocery store. This was to ensure there was an accessible grocery store that did not price gouge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_cooperative_movement
One of the dynamics that allow price gouging in poor neighbourhoods is lack of transport options. If you don't have a car or can't afford to run it and have to take public transport then your options are limited. It's what you can walk to, what you can easily get to on the bus, or what gets delivered to your door. It's not like the middle-class suburban lifestyle of being able to easily drive to a number of difference retail and grocery options without thinking about it.
This actually applies to other stuff as well - there are many products that actually do have an "expiry date" and just because it's on Amazon, doesn't mean it's actually all that recent.
I know I found a neat glow-in-the-dark hardhat on Amazon which I was going to use for a halloween costume. So I bought it, and the date on the hate was 2012. Now, this was fine for me (I'm not needing it for safety purposes), but I do know that hardhats need to be typically replaced after about 5 years, and being 2015, with a hate dated to 2912, well, I'd be pissed if I was using it for its intended purpose. (Heck, the bag it was packed in was already falling apart)
More specialty stores rotate their stock enough that it won't be more than a year old.
Once again, those poor stupid incompetent minorities are rescued from having to better themselves in any conceivable way, thanks to us heroic progressives who are always around to babysit and control them for their own good.
Amazon has just hired a specialist to handle deliveries to difficult areas.
His name is Aaron Hernandez.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If you can't see the difference you are being deliberately dense. If Amazon offered NO service to an area, that's one thing, however same day delivery service is a pure luxury. Not only is it not necessary to get something same day, you can always get it next day or later, it is something you cannot get in all areas period, or on all items. Not every city or state has same day delivery, and even if your area does, only some items have it as they have to be stocked at the local warehouse.
So trying to argue that not bringing it to some area is somehow the same as not having electricity is asinine.
Further, you discover that in fact some services are NOT available in all areas. Move to a really rural area and try to get cable service. You'll find out the cable company will just flat out say no. The cost is too far in excess of the returns, they won't run the wire. You have to settle for satellite.
Also things like electricity and phone are different in that they are public utilities, specially regulated and subsidized. You generally have no choice in who your electric transport provider is, there's only one grid, and so the government regulates it. Part of that regulation can be provisions for access to difficult areas, paid for by taxes and fees. Part of your phone bill is fees to pay for phone service to remote locations where there is tens of thousands of dollars in radio links and long-haul lines so that the person who gets the service can pay the same as you.
So if you are arguing Amazon should be a regulated utility ok, but that is a different argument, also a pretty nonsensical one given that they are a retail goods store, just one of many.
Not engaging in blatant racial discrimination is nothing like intentionally writing bad loans because you have no skin in the game.
Banks had no skin in the game because the government took all the risk. They did this purposely to enable the writing of mortgages to low income people who otherwise might not be able to qualify. At the time, banks were being charged with racism for not qualifying more low income people. So it was a political move by the government in the name of helping the poor. It was motivated by serving the poor, just as is the pressure on Amazon to serve the poor.
Now, if you want to read racism into that, if you view the world through the lens of race, you can.
It's not your memory that's fuzzy. It's your capacity for thinking. Free market capitalism is an imaginary superhero that doesn't and shouldn't exist without reasonable oversight and regulation. It is the theoretical "solution" that people who don't want to think too hard invoke, in a desperate attempt to feel like they're contributing to a conversation.
"But .. but .. the free market!"
"Old man yells at systemd"
I bet if righties looked back at the history of their respective countries they'd see a lot of formerly poor people helped out by being given a helping hand, whether by government our charity or just by an employee who wasn't a robber baron.
Any subject can be viewed through a racial or economic lens, but does that mean the argument has legitimacy or merit? Methinks not. Step 1: Pick a historically disadvantaged minority or a currently underperforming group. Step 2: Data mine some negative, unique aspect of said group. Step 3: Start a crusade to right the perceived wrong. Example: Pick a group like Native Americans. Point out that they don't have the same access to the myriad varieties of pasta sauce as everyone else. Write a Bloomberg article about the injustice of Prego's distribution strategy and then watch the ad dollars roll in from the click bait piece. This absurd example is effectively what Bloomberg did with its analysis. Good grief. Amazon would be happy to make money off of quadriplegics if it could. Race has nothing to do with its strategy. Leave the company alone.
How many ghetto denizens use Amazon to begin with, much less wanting to/being able to pay extra for same day delivery?
Right... I mean, not only should they better themselves, but they should do it without the resources that anyone else has...
You're kidding, right? When has "giving" instead of "earning" ever worked? It doesn't matter if its a poor neighborhood that receives excessive tax payer and government attention (free school lunch, no income tax, significantly higher usage of police, fire, and ambulance, neighborhood redevelopment tax credits, Medicare, disability, planned parenthood, free cell phones, protection from getting utility cutoff for non-payment, EBT/food stamps, etc) - poor remain poor due to poor decisions, not lack of resources. The same "hand-out" instead of "hand-up" or "tough love" mentality also fails in the affluent households - think of upper middle class parents with lazy, drug addicted adults still jobless and living at home where the parents think continually giving them things actually helps their kids better themselves - it's never worked.
This means that Amazon is effectively going to subsidize delivery business into areas where they are making a loss. But now that they are forced to deliver there, they are effectively going to compete with local businesses at those subsidized prices, and they are likely going to skim off their most profitable customers. It's the local equivalent of what politicians always complain about in international trade: dumping.
The net effect is going to be that these areas are going to be more dependent on a corporate behemoth, small businesses are going to disappear, and poorer people are going to have even less choice. Progressive lawmakers like Ed Markey are really doing everything they can to drive up prices, kill minority businesses, and generally impoverish minority communities.
As somewhat of an off tangent matter, he's Persian, which means that if he ever fills out a typical questionnaire asking about race/ethnicity in the US, the closest option he can pick to his ethnicity is either caucasian or white, even though neither precisely fit. You may as well call a Native American an Asian at that rate.
News flash, most people don't get to pick their ethnicity. Caucasian is a race, not an ethnicity. Hispanic ethnicity is made up of a lot of people of the Caucasian race, etc. The whole ethnicity/race thing has been completely blurred by the 70's and 80's PC introduction of "African American" which is not a race and certainly confusing to people who actually come from Africa that could be of Negroid (black), Mongoloid (Asian) or Caucasian (white) race. When does "American" become and ethnicity anyway if we're all supposed to be equal in the end.
There's a popular conspiracy theory that says Planned Parenthood is secretly carrying out a eugenics program. The theory survives for much the same reason: Planned Parenthood does try to focus resources on low-income communities, and low income communities in the US do tend to be black communities, so it gives the impression of an attempt to contracept or abort an ethnic minority out of existence.
Maybe that theory comes from the founder of Planned Parenthood - Margaret Sanger -
from Wikipedia "After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the societal need to limit births by those least able to afford children. The affluent and educated already limited their child-bearing, while the poor and ignorant lacked access to contraception and information about birth-control.[98] Here she found an area of overlap with eugenicists.[98] She believed that they both sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit." They differed in that "eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her duty to the state."[99] Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aims to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit.[100] In "The Morality of Birth Control," a 1921 speech, she divided society into three groups: the "educated and informed" class that regulated the size of their families, the "intelligent and responsible" who desired to control their families in spite of lacking the means or the knowledge, and the "irresponsible and reckless people" whose religious scruples "prevent their exercising control over their numbers." Sanger concludes, "There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped"
with the wage depression in active full-out attack on engineers (if you are h1b, you are fine; if you were born here, you can go die in a cardboard box down by the river for all the ceo's could care) - its FULLY understandable that even skilled and experienced software guys will be at poverty level in this area.
I can directly speak to that. been out of work for a while now, my savings are dangerously low and I'm not sure what is going to happen if I can't find work before the money runs out.
h1b is destroying the workers who depend on WORK to pay the bills. the rich who depend on their royalty payments or other forms of recurring 'do no work, get it automatically' income are fully ok, of course.
if you are an h1b, you will likely share a room with a roomate and if you are in a house, the house will be packed with people from your country. no one can afford to live well here unless you are connected or priviledged. and being white is actually against you, as the bulk of the hiring is only for asian and indian. if you were born here, you are skipped over by all the foreign born managers.
and so, I can fully understand someone being skilled, born here and trying to work their ass off to make ends meet and still being in poverty level, relatively. I'm nearly there myself; and not proud to admit it, either.
the war on middle class americans is VERY real. please have some compassion.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
That's certainly a part of the theory - though even the quote you give there makes no reference to race (in the ethnic sense). There's only one from her that does speak of racial targeting, and that was her expressing concern that the black community might be distrustful of a white-run contraception campaign and seeking the support of black leaders. It wouldn't matter anyway - an organisation is not bound to enforce the views of a long-dead founder, and her views were not at all out of the mainstream in the 1920s.
Uncomfortable thought: Name any cultural hero prior to around 1940. It's almost certain they would be an intolerable racist by today's standards.
She did target the low-income though - and was entirely open and proud about this, simply regarding those who could not shoulder the financial burden of properly raising and educating a large family as those who most desperately needed the services she promoted.
I agree with you completely, except about what exactly represents reasonable oversight and regulation.
I never pay for "next day delivery" because that could never happen in my small, far away town.
"Same day delivery" sounds like either a miracle or a lie.
The point of that was how ultimately useless those race/ethnicity surveys are.
It is now truly discriminating to the underprivileged because we are letting people who don't have the funds to pay for "same day", have the option to use it. Sort of like the Lottery.
Two thumbs up to the people who love to keep the poor man down..
You are winning the game.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
Utterly unqualified new college grads are making $100k+ these days.
Must be a bachelor degree. I only got two associates degrees. The first one is A.A. degree in General Education after I graduated from eight years of Special Ed, skipped high school, and went to community college. A decade later I got A.S. in computer programming to get into IT.
For fuck's sake either ask for more (you seem sharp enough!) or stop complaining.
I'm not complaining. I don't have a problem living in Silicon Valley on $50,000 per year. Everyone else has a problem that I'm living in Silicon Valley on $50,000 per year.
if you are an h1b, you will likely share a room with a roomate and if you are in a house, the house will be packed with people from your country.
The H1Bs that I know are single males living alone in a brand new condo that they bought. They complain about the high ceilings all the time. Almost as bad as the hipsters complaining about their 30 minute commute from San Francisco.
I can fully understand someone being skilled, born here and trying to work their ass off to make ends meet and still being in poverty level, relatively.
Most people get into trouble because they want the big house, big cars, big women and big kids. That's very expensive to do in Silicon Valley. If you live a modest lifestyle, you're considered "poor" for not keeping up with the Jones.
You are misconstruing two different types of access - physical access and creditworthiness.
Redlining in the financial industry is a well know problem that's been going on for decades. You're more likely to find multiple payday lenders than a bank branch in a poor neighborhood. You're also more likely to find more liquor stores, fast food restaurants, and industrial plants in a poor neighborhood. If the poor have no money, why are these business located here in an abundance?
I'm okay with the concept of postal banking, though in an age of online banks, I'm not sure what real advantage it serves.
You expect poor people to own a computer to access online banking? Oh, wait. I forgot the Obama phone. They can do online banking when they're not surfing the net and watching porn on the Obama phone. The crap some people believe in — and vote for.
The guys serving fries at McDonalds are making more money than you. Find another job.
I make a lot more than minimum wage ($15 per hour).
The real crime is that someone has to pay for these surveys and it's either the taxpayer collectively or the group that is suffering from an unfair disproportionate application of the law. It's a crime because the surveys sweep a problem under a rug and it's costing that community money.
Why do we elect these knuckleheads?
Retail is the wrong word. For some reason we all forgot this stuff is called e-commerce.
Second Amazon is in the business of selling everything and logistically shipment is the last bit to be truly optimized with the kinds of data analytics that they are running in the rest of the distribution chain.
They can predict you will buy something before you buy it. The parcel companies can't optimize for that because they don't have the data.
I don't think it's so much about whether or not they're minorities so much as it's about those particular areas having very low demand for services that cost more, thus they can't take advantage of economies of scale.
I don't think this has as much to do with economies of scale because the way in which deliveries are routed can be optimized if there are only a few deliveries in a low-demand zone.
The reasons cities want equal access for low-income areas are many and they include, for sure, non-discriminatory access. But they also include the preservation of future urban revitalization (aka gentrification). If highly-moblie affluent residents choose where to live based on amenities such as walkability, entertainment, restaurants, parking, cleaning services, etc, you can bet that same-day Amazon delivery will be one of those amenities.
If same-day Amazon delivery is not available in an area, it will be one more reason an affluent resident will not choose to live an a neighborhood despite that it may be more affordable in terms of rent which in turn would me revitalization efforts would be stymied.
So far, there are dozens of comments expressing confusion and anger that poorer neighborhoods would be guaranteed the availability of same-day delivery and much of that confusion and anger seem to signal race as problem (e.g. snide references to "SJW"s). To my mind, the issues of class and race have people so inflamed they cannot see that arguments that deprive citizens of access, for whatever reason, are actually bad for the economy, period.
Members of the socioeconomic middle class are not having a rough time because the Federal government is taking all their money and doling it out to poor people. They are having a rough time because they are shouldering the economic burden that the wealthy have shirked.
One day, all members of the middle class may realize that depriving the poor access to good actually accelerates rather than retards the economic disenfranchisement of the middle class. But given that the leveraging of racist and xenophobic sentiment by elites to pit the middle class agains the ranks of the poor, such a realization seems distant at best.
More likely, much of the middle class will continue to rage against the poor, arguing that the poor should be allowed to suffer and that the poor don't deserve access to the benefits of modern civilization. Unfortunately, these members of the middle class may all too soon find themselves among the ranks of the poor and disenfranchised and they may wonder why they deserve to suffer so and why they do not have access to the benefits of modern civilization all around them.
blog
Really, is it so far removed? I'm quite sure that 99% of Amazons revenue is not from diamond rings and yachts. Maybe not from necessities like water, but the exaggeration merely illuminates the point.
Do we want to live in a society where everything depends on money? Are we homo sapiens, or homo economicus?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Well said, the race to the bottom is not one we want to win.
Cheap storage VM.
Wow, It saddens me that this was modded +5. The poor aren't asking for a handout, their asking for a hand-up and a level playing field. Not everyone has your opportunity, although I'm sure you'll tell us all how hard you had it, a great story about how you started out with nothing. Plenty of people would be glad to start with nothing, instead of deep in the negative.
Cheap storage VM.
Because the free market is a convenient fiction (convenient for some people).
Cheap storage VM.
Wow, It saddens me that this was modded +5. The poor aren't asking for a handout, their asking for a hand-up and a level playing field. Not everyone has your opportunity, although I'm sure you'll tell us all how hard you had it, a great story about how you started out with nothing. Plenty of people would be glad to start with nothing, instead of deep in the negative.
And I'm sure your answer to all of this is more government "help". The real question is, if you actually care, then what are YOU personally doing to help someone "deep in the negative"...if you care to define what that means in the US anyway. It's not like we're born into a caste system or communism here. Again, a faceless "handout" from the government is not a hand-up. A hand-up can only come from an actual personal interaction of help that includes humility and appreciation from the receiver...not the entitlement handicap that government handouts have created.
The "welfare state" gives more hand-ups then any private social program out there. I could enumerate the many ways I try to make the world better through helping my fellow man, I start by NOT poisoning the well and/or begrudging the social safety nets that do exist.
Here's a quick reference article, in case you think private charities are some panoply that meets even a fraction of the need.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/mar/19/frank-keating/does-catholic-church-provide-half-social-services-/
Cheap storage VM.
It's interesting and that you refute my claim by assuming I'm referring to giving to charity - which I made no reference to. You've provided absolutely no evidence to refute my original assertion that the continual stream of government help is actually hurting more than it's helping. And you completely side stepped my request for you to clarify how someone in the US could start from below nothing. So, I guess this fruitless discussion is over. Maybe this would be worth a read http://jasonrileyonline.com/me...
I made a broad assumption about giving to charity, to what where you referring? The time I helped an old guy push his car out of the street and bought him gas when I noticed him rummaging for change in his floorboards? My point was I give and don't begrudge others the help they need. Government social programs are the most efficient way to help the most people.
As to hinder more then help, there may be some truth in that. Policies that break apart families or prevent people from getting work because they can't afford the gap in benefits. Most of these issues are because someone in the right place wanted to cause harm. There are many subtle ways to flip a helpful program to hurtful, and unfortunately there is an army of people who do just that. Look no further then Kansas to see what happens when ideology trumps compassion. Truly, look no further then your own heart.
I'm going to educate you on starting below zero, with the assumption you've just never considered it. I'll start with foster kids who age out of the system, what sort of support system do you think they have? Many end up homeless. Next we have the children of the poor, some are unfortunate enough to have parents who steal their identities to open credit or turn on utilities. Imagine if you rented your first apartment only to find out you had to pay the electric company an old $400 bill before you could get your electricity turned on? Or you could have your parents prosecuted. Maybe you just have to take care of an sick parent, who has no other safety net? Maybe you have a child before your ready, either through your own poor decision, or because you have been raped. I could go on.
The world is full of struggle, I fail to see how it hurts me to help them. I want my children to live in a better world, not a bitter world.
Cheap storage VM.