Amazon To Build $1.5 Billion Air Cargo Hub In Kentucky, Creating Around 2,000 New Jobs (techcrunch.com)

Straining? by QuietLagoon · 2017-02-02 01:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

...straining the capacities and capabilities of its shipping partners, which include FedEx and UPS...

I'm fairly sure that both FedEx and UPS would be more than happy to build out their respective fleet if they knew that Amazon would not leave them hanging, as Amazon apparently is doing.

Re:Straining? by QuietLagoon · 2017-02-02 02:16 · Score: 1

Just because they would -privately- be 'happy' to expand to suit Amazon, doesn't mean they wouldn't try to extract horrible terms from Amazon to be 'encouraged' to do it....Building a competing air cargo service may be a last resort. ...
Nearly all business deals involve negotiations as each side tries to get the best deal for itself. Amazon is/was a large enough customer of Fedex and UPS to get a better deal than most.
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I don't think it was a last resort for Amazon. I think Amazon looked at the money it spent on shipping, the plans it has to optimize shipping and warehousing, and said, "we can do that better and with less cost." Amazon will probably have significant warehouse savings once they have more control over their shipping. Along those lines, Fedex and UPS may not have wanted to become so entangled in Amazon's shipping process.
Re:Straining? by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2017-02-02 02:25 · Score: 1

>> both FedEx and UPS would be more than happy to build out their respective fleet

Not sure about that. Remember that retailers like Amazon do a disproportionate amount of business around Christmas. If you build a fleet to completely support that capacity, you're likely wasting money on overcapacity (extra planes, too many pilots, etc.) the rest of the year. That's why retailers (and farms, etc.) hire "seasonal" employees that are only needed when things are busiest.
Re:Straining? by FatdogHaiku · 2017-02-02 03:36 · Score: 3, Informative

Having and using Prime, I can't believe the number of items are shipped UPS but when you track it you find out they dropped it in the US Mail...
Surely it would be cheaper for Amazon to just mail the item themselves.
And when it comes to third party sellers shipping Prime items, all bets are off on how the thing will get to my home.
I do agree this is not a last resort thing for Amazon. They have many regional warehouses and if you are going to fly planes around you may as well fill them with restocking items as well as orders.
I also really hope they do the blimp and drone thing over big cities... I have this vision of ordering a package delivery drone and it flies itself down with just the controller in a box... used? No, pretested for airworthiness.

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Re:Straining? by QuietLagoon · 2017-02-02 03:50 · Score: 1

...Surely it would be cheaper for Amazon to just mail the item themselves....
Easy to say, harder to substantiate.
Re:Straining? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-02 04:18 · Score: 1

We already expand our fleet during the Christmas months. Planes come out from the desert, extra linehaul routes get scheduled from the ramps and every transit-sized van from Penske/Ryder/Uhaul gets reserved until the first week of January. We would be more than happy to dedicate a Amazon fleet, but we do not want to spend the money and then get stiffed when UPS/USPS undercut us by a couple of pennies a package and the volume goes over there. Amazon will quickly find out that serving the cities are easy, the rural parts of the country... not so much. Hopefully management wakes up and starts charging them full rate when they stop giving us the profitable inner city routes. //AC because work-stuff.
Re:Straining? by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2017-02-02 04:29 · Score: 1

>> We already expand our fleet during the Christmas months. Planes come out from the desert...every transit-sized van from Penske/Ryder/Uhaul gets reserved

I think we agree then: FedEx/UPS don't actually OWN the capacity needed to fulfill Amazon at peak. For Amazon then, the opportunity is to cut out the middleman (FedEx/UPS) and contract the extra peak capacity itself, provided it can find cost savings managing it itself rather than contracting through FedEx/UPS.

But in any case, I think it's settled that FedEx/UPS would NOT be happy to "build out their respective fleet" if that fleet is going to have to sit on FedEx/UPS's books as an idle asset that they own.
Re:Straining? by msauve · 2017-02-02 05:42 · Score: 1

Often, USPS only handles "the last mile," which is why it's a USPS tracking number (because they're responsible for the ultimate delivery). I often see package tracking show items flowing along some path with each hop indicated as "Departed Shipping Partner Facility, USPS Awaiting Item". It appears that the USPS alllows Amazon (UPS? Fedex?) to update their tracking system. Toward the end, it will show up as "Acceptance. Arrived at Post Office", when it's actually handed over to the USPS at my local PO (sometimes one level up from that - distribution hub?). The USPS may even deliver Amazon packages on Sunday.

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Re:Straining? by jittles · 2017-02-02 06:03 · Score: 1

Having and using Prime, I can't believe the number of items are shipped UPS but when you track it you find out they dropped it in the US Mail... Surely it would be cheaper for Amazon to just mail the item themselves.
Amazon already has trailers upon trailers of packages getting picked up every day by UPS and FedEx. FedEx and UPS are finding it hard to deliver all of these packages that Amazon is shipping. It's not too difficult for UPS or FedEx to add an extra trailer to a truck / train departing from one of their hubs. It's difficult to have enough trucks / drivers to deliver the last mile. So, they give Amazon a price break to have them deliver the package to the Post Office for them. Now UPS / FedEx can deliver a few semi-trucks worth of packages to the main post office in a region and then the USPS decides how to do the last mile - something the Federal government requires the USPS to do Mon-Sat anyway.
Re:Straining? by powerlord · 2017-02-02 06:34 · Score: 1

Having and using Prime, I can't believe the number of items are shipped UPS but when you track it you find out they dropped it in the US Mail...
Surely it would be cheaper for Amazon to just mail the item themselves.
And when it comes to third party sellers shipping Prime items, all bets are off on how the thing will get to my home.
I do agree this is not a last resort thing for Amazon. They have many regional warehouses and if you are going to fly planes around you may as well fill them with restocking items as well as orders.
I also really hope they do the blimp and drone thing over big cities... I have this vision of ordering a package delivery drone and it flies itself down with just the controller in a box... used? No, pretested for airworthiness.
Its slightly more complicated than that.
UPS partnered with USPS a couple of years back.
Basically UPS handles the "major" part of the package transportation and dropships it from pickup, to the "local post office". USPS then handles delivery for the "last mile" to your home.
USPS did this as a way of supplementing their delivery service since so much was going to UPS/FedEx, by allowing alternative delivery services to take advantage of USPS's last mile infrastructure (to cut their own I suppose).
That said, yeah, if Amazon can just replace UPS for the backhaul part, I'm sure they can lower their costs and/or make mint on transit charges.

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Re:Straining? by Nchantim · 2017-02-02 09:08 · Score: 1

Having and using Prime, I can't believe the number of items are shipped UPS but when you track it you find out they dropped it in the US Mail... Surely it would be cheaper for Amazon to just mail the item themselves. And when it comes to third party sellers shipping Prime items, all bets are off on how the thing will get to my home. I do agree this is not a last resort thing for Amazon. They have many regional warehouses and if you are going to fly planes around you may as well fill them with restocking items as well as orders.
I also really hope they do the blimp and drone thing over big cities... I have this vision of ordering a package delivery drone and it flies itself down with just the controller in a box... used? No, pretested for airworthiness.
Its slightly more complicated than that. UPS partnered with USPS a couple of years back. Basically UPS handles the "major" part of the package transportation and dropships it from pickup, to the "local post office". USPS then handles delivery for the "last mile" to your home.
USPS did this as a way of supplementing their delivery service since so much was going to UPS/FedEx, by allowing alternative delivery services to take advantage of USPS's last mile infrastructure (to cut their own I suppose).
That said, yeah, if Amazon can just replace UPS for the backhaul part, I'm sure they can lower their costs and/or make mint on transit charges.
But, of course, it's not really "the last mile". My post office is about 10 miles from my house - and that's a suburban area.
In rural areas, UPS REALLY likes using USPS to deliver to the houses.

Borders. by msauve · 2017-02-02 01:14 · Score: 5, Informative

"will occupy a spot that crosses the Cincinnati and Kentucky border"

Odd, one's city and the other's a state. And the border between them is a river - hard to build an airport across a river.

Turns out that's wrong - they're building a facility at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport. Since the article is just paraphrased from an original by the WSJ (paywalled), I suspect the original said something like "near Cincinnati, across the border in Kentucky", and the person paraphrasing is an idiot (Darrell Etherington).

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Re:Borders. by UberVegeta · 2017-02-02 01:44 · Score: 1

large fleet of at least 40 cargo planes, a group of vehicles it perviously revealed it was leasing under the name of Amazon Prime Air
Since the planes allow fluid to pass through them, I see no difficulty in having an airport straddling a river.

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Re:Borders. by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2017-02-02 02:15 · Score: 1

>> building a facility at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport

^^^ This. Article summary, as usual, sucks.

Good move on Amazon's part, I think. The airport's been a long-time Delta secondary hub, but Delta's been pulling out (e.g., http://www.wcpo.com/money/local-business-news/delta-airlines-confirms-a-14-percent-service-cut-at-cvg-airport-in-northern-kentucky), so there's plenty of local capacity ready to jump on this.
Re:Borders. by habig · 2017-02-02 02:50 · Score: 1

"will occupy a spot that crosses the Cincinnati and Kentucky border" Odd, one's city and the other's a state. And the border between them is a river - hard to build an airport across a river.
I was wondering about that. Not being able to read the paywalled part, my conclusion was: Riverboats are returning! Delivery by paddle wheel, more nostalgic than drones. Seriously though, seems a good move since CVG used to be a Delta hub, but isn't anymore: there's way more airport there than is being used.
Re:Borders. by khallow · 2017-02-02 03:23 · Score: 5, Funny

They're probably using an aircraft carrier and launching cargo planes from the side of the river that has the best tax advantages for that particular flight. I imagine the state of Kentucky has certain tax advantages and the state of Cincinnati has others. The bonus is that they can conduct combat sorties against their many competitors, a necessity in these trying times.
Re:Borders. by guppysap13 · 2017-02-02 04:48 · Score: 1

The airport is located in Covington, KY (which gives the airport its code, CVG) and begrudgingly associates itself with Ohio and Cincinnati, which is about 10 miles away and across the river. Amazon already has a number of facilities in Covington and Erlanger down by the airport (completely in Kentucky) and there's a lot of capacity as Delta winds down operations, so this isn't too surprising.

Little bit of history about the airport: http://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-why-cincinnatis-airport-is-in-kentucky-70-years-after-first-flights/

I moved here a few years ago. It's a very weird area.
Re:Borders. by Osiris+Ani · 2017-02-02 05:59 · Score: 1

And I thought that Chicago, LA, and NYC were the only cities that thought of themselves as being states of their own.
This is more apropos to this discussion than one might think. O’Hare International Airport is only technically in Chicago. It’s physically nestled well within the northwest suburbs, but is connected to Chicago via a very long and ridiculously narrow strip of land that extends the Chicago border just far enough to claim that site.
Re:Borders. by plague911 · 2017-02-02 06:03 · Score: 1

You are right that they are different location types, they however both legitimately have borders. Although, it may be not standard to compare the two, it is still a valid usage.
Re:Borders. by MachineShedFred · 2017-02-02 07:08 · Score: 1

Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky Airport is becoming much more of a cargo hub than an airport for passenger travel. Ever since Delta screwed the airport over by getting lots of construction concessions while using it as a hub, and then basically leaving town except for mostly small regional traffic to other hubs, there is a massive airport with four runways sitting there mostly empty. DHL took up a lot of the empty space in the pattern by building shitloads of warehouses nearby. Looks like Amazon is looking to do the same with their distribution center in Hebron, KY.
Probably a smart move. Lots of available infrastructure sitting there ready to be used (three 10,000 foot runways), in a state that really wants the jobs.

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Re:Borders. by ShanghaiBill · 2017-02-02 07:08 · Score: 1

it's a weird area.
Indeed. Homer Simpson lives in Northern Kentucky. I have relatives in Kentucky, and for a while they thought The Simpsons was a documentary.
Re:Borders. by MachineShedFred · 2017-02-02 07:10 · Score: 1

Begrudgingly? CVG is the second most active airport serving a city in Ohio.
I'm pretty sure they are happy that Cincinnati, with it's passengers and cargo, are right across the Ohio river.

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Re:Borders. by MachineShedFred · 2017-02-02 07:13 · Score: 1

Yes, Delta has been decreasing service through CVG ever since their merger with Northwest Airlines which got them a shitload of gates in Detroit and Minneapolis. They also have given up their lease on the disused terminal at CVG that was only being used for storing snow removal equipment and training TSA search dogs, which will be torn down this year.
That being said, they just yesterday announced that they will be increasing flights out of CVG.

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Re:Borders. by MachineShedFred · 2017-02-02 07:16 · Score: 1

A lot of that unused airport has been taken up by DHL - CVG is one of their three global hubs. They employ 2500 people there, and just spent $100M to expand the facilities.

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Re:Borders. by Opyros · 2017-02-02 07:24 · Score: 1

It's a very weird area.
You may think so, but honestly, someone should have told us that turkeys can't fly!
Re:Borders. by bengoerz · 2017-02-03 00:27 · Score: 1

The bonus is that they can conduct combat sorties against their many competitors
This explains so much: Amazon's preference for military vets, the drone program, etc.

They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by drinkypoo · 2017-02-02 01:22 · Score: 1, Insightful

They would have to be increasing their shipping output to create 2,000 new jobs. Instead, they are relocating most of those jobs (from other companies, in fact) which means a lot of people are going to get laid off from shipping companies currently doing their work and only a percentage of them will end up re-hired by Amazon. It will save Amazon money by making them more efficient and cutting out the profit going to the middleman, but it's not going to create jobs.

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by msauve · 2017-02-02 01:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

"They would have to be increasing their shipping output to create 2,000 new jobs. Instead..."

Considering Amazon has double-digit revenue growth, and it's reported that they "shipped more than 1 billion items around the world for the holiday season, more than five times its sales last holiday season", it's obvious that they are increasing their shipping output, by a lot.

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by bluefoxlucid · 2017-02-02 01:44 · Score: 5, Informative

It's better than that.
Jobs are a function of what can be bought and technical progress. That is to say: for a person to purchase good or service, a variety of economic activities must occur (business management, transportation, infrastructure, manufacture, retail). These activities are the product of human labor; the technology employed by that labor determines how much is produced per labor unit and, by reciprocal, how much labor is consumed per unit.
Labor incurs wage. Wages and profits in aggregate are the complete price of a good or service--the minimum viable price is the wage-labor cost.
Being that wages are paid from revenue, revenue is obtained from spending, and spending is made out of wages, money is only a mediator for the (uneven) exchange of human labor. Because of this, the amount of money spendable in a given time frame is finite: between two points in time (say, the entire year 2015), only a fixed amount of money can and will be spent. (Unspent money goes to savings to be spent later; inflation erodes its purchasing power, while trade and technical progress further erode the labor-hours it represents but increase its purchasing power.)
Since the spendable money in a time frame is finite and wages are paid from revenue, the number of jobs available in any given time frame under given conditions (trade, technical progress, population) is finite. QED.
You don't "create jobs"; you employ people. When you employ people, you may be consuming the growth in a market (trade, technical progress, and population growth allowing more purchasing, more jobs, etc.), or you may be out-competing a competitor as said competitor's ability to employ people falls (those jobs eventually go away, yours replace them; this may happen backwards because businesses have savings, too).
It's even possible to do it backwards. If you implement protectionist policies and increase the cost of goods, fewer goods are bought, and less infrastructure is needed. The number of purchaseable goods of the sort reduces as factory worker wages increase, reducing the number of factory worker jobs created by "bringing jobs back" as well as the number of jobs in supporting infrastructure. Paying low enough wages can increase total jobs, although even paying minimum wage increases the cost of goods produced and the number of working hours every person at every income level must expend to afford the previously-imported good, making every person at every income level poorer. Paying higher wages increases that wage-hour cost even further.
The punch line here is that the labor market adjusts in a few short years, and the number of jobs sought moves toward about 5% (U3) unemployment, so you can't even affect total unemployment long-term.
We need to focus on creating wealth and stabilizing the economy, not "creating jobs". You create wealth by trade and technical progress; you stabilize the economy by making sure those things don't happen all-at-once so as to reduce the volatility in employment, as well as by having good welfare policies.

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-02 01:44 · Score: 1

Robots. Soon, even those 2,000 won't be needed. As more and more jobs are cannibalized, more and more people will be out of work, and have to shop at places like Amazon and Walmart to get the cheapest possible products. Until, one day soon, it all collapses. The 0.1% will have everything and the 99.9% will have nothing. Will the police state be enough to protect them from the 99%'s righteous vengeance? Some might escape, but they will be hunted down in the after-time. Nowhere will be safe for them. New Zealand won't be far enough for them to run. Even now, operatives are infiltrating the 0.1%'s cadre of "loyal" servants, waiting until the right time to strike.
Re: They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-02 01:49 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, their increases may not be net gains, as numerous other retailers are foundering and more than a few directly attributed Amazon and other online institutions.
So to put it more specifically, they have to increase their shipping over and beyond what they claim from others, and that is not evident.
Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by mesterha · 2017-02-02 18:20 · Score: 1

Labor incurs wage. Wages and profits in aggregate are the complete price of a good or service--the minimum viable price is the wage-labor cost.
What about natural resources. While labor is required to extract and refine them, governments create a market for them by allowing land to be owned. It's even true of things like spectrum. These effect the cost of goods since the value of the land can lower with significant resource extraction. At a minimum there is the cost based on alternative uses of the money that is tied up in the "land".

Being that wages are paid from revenue, revenue is obtained from spending, and spending is made out of wages, money is only a mediator for the (uneven) exchange of human labor. Because of this, the amount of money spendable in a given time frame is finite: between two points in time (say, the entire year 2015), only a fixed amount of money can and will be spent.
OK, but not a surprising claim.

Since the spendable money in a time frame is finite and wages are paid from revenue, the number of jobs available in any given time frame under given conditions (trade, technical progress, population) is finite. QED.
Again not surprising.

You don't "create jobs"; you employ people. When you employ people, you may be consuming the growth in a market (trade, technical progress, and population growth allowing more purchasing, more jobs, etc.), or you may be out-competing a competitor as said competitor's ability to employ people falls (those jobs eventually go away, yours replace them; this may happen backwards because businesses have savings, too).
I don't understand what you are trying to say.

It's even possible to do it backwards. If you implement protectionist policies and increase the cost of goods, fewer goods are bought, and less infrastructure is needed.
The net goods bought can go up as the higher salaries increase purchasing power. This includes having less unemployed people.

The number of purchaseable goods of the sort reduces as factory worker wages increase, reducing the number of factory worker jobs created by "bringing jobs back" as well as the number of jobs in supporting infrastructure. Paying low enough wages can increase total jobs, although even paying minimum wage increases the cost of goods produced and the number of working hours every person at every income level must expend to afford the previously-imported good, making every person at every income level poorer. Paying higher wages increases that wage-hour cost even further.
This assumes production goes down. It also doesn't analyze what happens with our current trade imbalance. As money leaves the country, it must return otherwise the value of the dollar would decrease and solve the trade imbalance. Instead the money comes back and is invested, perhaps in the stock market or real estate. These tend to make things hard for the poorer people in society as they don't have the resources to invest. In particular, it raises the prices of things like houses.

The punch line here is that the labor market adjusts in a few short years, and the number of jobs sought moves toward about 5% (U3) unemployment, so you can't even affect total unemployment long-term.
What evidence do you have for 5% unemployment? Historically it's probably not true, and if just looking at more modern times, we don't have enough samples to say anything with significance.

We need to focus on creating wealth and stabilizing the economy, not "creating jobs". You create wealth by trade and technical progress; you stabilize the economy by making sure those things don't happen all-at-once so as to reduce the volatility in employment, as well as by having good welfare policies.

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by bluefoxlucid · 2017-02-03 03:29 · Score: 1

What about natural resources. While labor is required to extract and refine them
That's about where you can stop. You do know you can create gold using a coat hanger and a glass tube, right? The problem is it takes a hell of a lot of energy--it's actually less labor-intensive to mine gold.

governments create a market for them by allowing land to be owned.
Governments are also the product of labor; although that's not the issue here. You're talking about markets, while I'm talking about the actual capacity to produce things at a given price.
Consider cost and price as an exchange of labor, instead of an exchange of money. If you make chairs by the labor of 10 workers each working 1 hour for $10/hr, that's a $100 chair; if the labor of 10 workers each working 1 hour makes 2 chairs, that's a $50 chair. The naive first-pass is that the $10/hr workers worked 10 hours to buy 1 chair before, and now work 5 hours to buy 1 chair.
If we maintain a 2% inflation (we do) and this reduction of labor occurs over 10 years, then that $10 wage must go up. We want that $100 chair to be a $122 chair. With 5 hours of labor, that's $24.4/hr; and still, you will work for 5 hours to buy that chair, whereas when it was a $100 chair you had to work for 10 hours to purchase it.
We can do things to make the model imperfect--wage inequality, minimum wages, taxes, business profits, artificial scarcity, and other market behaviors. All of those things generally operate to a maximum extent: people try to get the most wage they can, and businesses try to pay the least; governments tax what they will tax; businesses take the maximum profit they can get; and so on. In the long-term, you can assume that businesses taking a 10% profit margin will lower their prices 40% if they find a way to make things 40% more-cheaply, simply because the market conditions don't allow them to take a high profit margin; although previously-expensive goods which become quite-cheap can suddenly allow competition on a greater scale, which can push profit margins down on low-demand luxury goods.

I don't understand what you are trying to say.
Re creating jobs: the implication is that an economy didn't have jobs, and you made jobs. The truth is an economy has the capacity to employ some people (rather, to spend some money), and so that capacity will be consumed. If there are 2,000 jobs to be made, Amazon can expand or Apple can expand or Microcenter can expand or someone else can expand or start a new business. A business does not create jobs in a vacuum; an economy as a whole is capable of supporting a given number of jobs, and businesses take advantage of the capacity to employ.

The net goods bought can go up as the higher salaries increase purchasing power. This includes having less unemployed people
No, that doesn't happen.
Higher salaries increase the spending and purchasing power for the individual whose salary is higher. Salaries are paid out of revenues: you sell to individuals who get wages. Prices are ultimately fixed to wages based on the level of technical progress at the time, so wages impact prices.
That means higher salaries for everyone just creates inflation, but no additional purchasing power. Higher salaries for some subset of people concentrates the limited amount of spendable income in the given frame of time into fewer hands, meaning fewer jobs.
Businesses don't create money when they write a paycheck; they use money taken from consumers. You can't account for the ability of a complete population to buy by looking at one person and saying, "Oh, he makes more, so he can buy more; that means the next guy can buy more, because he created a job; and so forth!" You need to look back and say, "Oh, he makes more, so the thing he produces by his job costs more; the people buying the

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by mesterha · 2017-02-04 20:08 · Score: 1

That's about where you can stop. You do know you can create gold using a coat hanger and a glass tube, right? The problem is it takes a hell of a lot of energy--it's actually less labor-intensive to mine gold.
No I didn't know that was possible... What you probably want to say is that those resources, such as land, are really just savings from previous labor. Clearly not all labor is equal.

Governments are also the product of labor; although that's not the issue here. You're talking about markets, while I'm talking about the actual capacity to produce things at a given price.
Governments are necessary to form stable markets. I you want to produce and sell things, you are probably going to want stable governments.

Consider cost and price as an exchange of labor, instead of an exchange of money. If you make chairs by the labor of 10 workers each working 1 hour for $10/hr, that's a $100 chair; if the labor of 10 workers each working 1 hour makes 2 chairs, that's a $50 chair. The naive first-pass is that the $10/hr workers worked 10 hours to buy 1 chair before, and now work 5 hours to buy 1 chair.
I'm not disputing that wages and efficiencies effect the cost of goods. I even agree that an economy should be a way to trade "labor".

If we maintain a 2% inflation (we do) and this reduction of labor occurs over 10 years, then that $10 wage must go up. We want that $100 chair to be a $122 chair. With 5 hours of labor, that's $24.4/hr; and still, you will work for 5 hours to buy that chair, whereas when it was a $100 chair you had to work for 10 hours to purchase it.
Clearly you are trying to make some kind of point with your example, but it's difficult to understand because you example is not based on reality. Perhaps you could make your point first and then give an example.

We can do things to make the model imperfect--wage inequality, minimum wages, taxes, business profits, artificial scarcity, and other market behaviors. All of those things generally operate to a maximum extent: people try to get the most wage they can, and businesses try to pay the least; governments tax what they will tax; businesses take the maximum profit they can get; and so on. In the long-term, you can assume that businesses taking a 10% profit margin will lower their prices 40% if they find a way to make things 40% more-cheaply, simply because the market conditions don't allow them to take a high profit margin; although previously-expensive goods which become quite-cheap can suddenly allow competition on a greater scale, which can push profit margins down on low-demand luxury goods.
That's the strange thing about the "science" of economics. These kinds of details are actually the important details. While you can come up with a simple model, it's not like physics where you can just apply the ideas of the general model to solve new issues. In economics, things fall apart.

Re creating jobs: the implication is that an economy didn't have jobs, and you made jobs. The truth is an economy has the capacity to employ some people (rather, to spend some money), and so that capacity will be consumed. If there are 2,000 jobs to be made, Amazon can expand or Apple can expand or Microcenter can expand or someone else can expand or start a new business. A business does not create jobs in a vacuum; an economy as a whole is capable of supporting a given number of jobs, and businesses take advantage of the capacity to employ.
A business will hire someone if the feel they can make a profit off that persons labor. That's probably a function of the economy but it also depends on other things. (Unless you define the economy is some overly broad way.)

> The net goods bought can go up as the higher salaries increase > purchas

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by bluefoxlucid · 2017-02-06 02:50 · Score: 1

No I didn't know that was possible... What you probably want to say is that those resources, such as land, are really just savings from previous labor. Clearly not all labor is equal.
Those resources are really just one way of producing a thing, and happen to be the cheapest way. Making certain things out of metal was the cheapest way to do it until we figured out how to make plastic--although it was impossibly-expensive to make cheap metal work before inventing modern hot-blast furnaces.

Governments are necessary to form stable markets. I you want to produce and sell things, you are probably going to want stable governments.
That's true; my point is you can't magically wave away economic foundations such as the time required to make a thing and the wage of the laborer working for that time by talking about other factors such as governments and markets. Those other factors can change prices around, but they can't magic away costs: if you need to pay some guy $10/hr for 10 hours to make a thing, somehow you need to get $100 into his hands.
Because money is ultimately a proxy for labor, trying to just print more eventually gets you into a situation where you presume someone worked 1,000 to make 100 things, but that hasn't actually happened--so those 100 things don't actually exist, and can't be used. Fat lot of good owning a week's worth of food on paper if you can't actually put any of it in your mouth.

Higher salaries for some subset of people can be beneficial. For example, increasing the minimum wage can boost consumption and stimulate the economy. In many ways it's just a transfer of wealth from the richer to the poorer. Fortunately, the poorer are better consumers and they stimulate the economy creating need for more stuff and maybe more jobs.
This is actually not true.
Higher minimum wages are required because inflation reduces the purchasing power of wages--that is, the minimum wage is actually decreasing at all times, as the minimum-wage worker must work more hours to purchase the same goods. This creates more jobs as a side-effect; increasing minimum wage loses those jobs, and is necessary to keep the minimum-wage worker's buying power in line with the goals of minimum wage (that is: to keep their buying power from decreasing).
Increasing minimum wage may temporarily boost consumption only because it takes a short period for the economy to catch up and adjust. We don't fire people the day their wages go up. When purchasing slides back a bit, we start cutting people because we don't need them.
Most minimum-wage outputs are not things the rich buy in anywhere near as great a proportion to their income as the middle-class. Middle-class and poor are over 90% of this country--the top 10% salaries start at $150,000. As a proportion of income, middle-class eating the same number of meals at McDonalds will spend more of their buying power on McDonalds food than a high-income rich-class person, meaning their actual buying power is reduced more-significantly than the rich guy's.
In short: rich people buy stocks, yachts, golf clubs, mansions, servants, high-end food, and other goods that draw higher than minimum-wage salary in much of their supply chain with most of their money. A greater proportion of middle-class incomes goes to buying minimum-wage-input goods, and the middle- and lower-class make up a much greater proportion of the population.
You're right that minimum wage raises are a transfer of money (and, in fact, buying power) from the richer to the poorer; the problem is the "richer" here make $12/hr, and the "poorer" just got bumped from $7.25/hr to $8.25/hr. Minimum wage isn't incorrect; but it doesn't magically create jobs. It concentrates income into fewer hands.

I don't know what this means or how it is connected to reality

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by mesterha · 2017-02-10 18:27 · Score: 1

Higher salaries for some subset of people can be beneficial. For example, increasing the minimum wage can boost consumption and stimulate the economy. In many ways it's just a transfer of wealth from the richer to the poorer. Fortunately, the poorer are better consumers and they stimulate the economy creating need for more stuff and maybe more jobs.

This is actually not true.

Give some research that backs up your claims. https://www.bloomberg.com/news... http://www.epi.org/publication... https://www.washingtonpost.com...

You're right that minimum wage raises are a transfer of money (and, in fact, buying power) from the richer to the poorer; the problem is the "richer" here make $12/hr, and the "poorer" just got bumped from $7.25/hr to $8.25/hr. Minimum wage isn't incorrect; but it doesn't magically create jobs. It concentrates income into fewer hands.

I never said how much I would increase the minimum wage. At a minimum, one needs to increase it to a living wage, so tax payers stop subsidizing the companies that exploit these workers. Since Bernie's done the research, let's start with $15/hr and set increases based on inflation.

Shorter version shot from the hip [slashdot.org].

https://9to5mac.com/2016/06/13...

In the short term, the problem's actually the same: it's cheaper to get humans to do a lot of things, and humans employ technical means to reduce their labor. For the foreseeable future, elimination of human labor is an amusing fantasy taken too seriously by delusional people.

So it will happen, but we just shouldn't worry about it. There should be a term for that, maybe AI denier.
Well it's been fun, but I probably will not read another response. Even if I don't accept your novelty or follow your logic, I do admire your spunk. Keep at it.

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by bluefoxlucid · 2017-02-13 03:08 · Score: 1

So it will happen, but we just shouldn't worry about it.
It's not guaranteed to happen; it's unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. That is: it's as likely to happen tomorrow as it was yesterday; it's as likely to happen in 500 years as it is today. The transition requires entirely-new technology of a form largely different from what we have today, and technology is not something that happens by brute force; it's a constant gamble with results mediated largely by luck.

Give some research that backs up your claims.
It's generally complex, but shows a trend of minimum wage increase causing job loss. The studies to determine if it does are statistical, and have problems with confounding. The analysis I use is mathematical based on supply of income, which is only representative of the trade of working hours.

How do we summarize this evidence? Many studies over the years find that higher minimum wages reduce employment of teens and low-skilled workers more generally. Recent exceptions that find no employment effects typically use a particular version of estimation methods with close geographic controls that may obscure job losses. Recent research using a wider variety of methods to address the problem of comparison states tends to confirm earlier findings of job loss. Coupled with critiques of the methods that generate little evidence of job loss, the overall body of recent evidence suggests that the most credible conclusion is a higher minimum wage results in some job loss for the least-skilled workers—with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.
Basically nearly all studies detect a loss of jobs; and narrow geographical studies show little to no localized impact. San Francisco may not suffer unemployment by raising minimum wage to $15/hr, while somewhere else in the country jobs are lost because that total flow of income has to come from someone's labor hours purchasing fewer things.

I never said how much I would increase the minimum wage.
Any increase has the same general effect; it's a matter of magnitude.

Since Bernie's done the research, let's start with $15/hr and set increases based on inflation.
Bernie likes to start sentences with, "You don't need to have a Ph.D. in economics to know..." and then say something that's totally fucking bonkers and doesn't align with objective reality. He doesn't know a god damned thing about economics and is approximately the political equivalent of Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola.
Bernie and Trump have the same position on trade and economics in general.
Inflation is actually slower than wealth growth, by the way.
Say you have 10 workers working $10/hr making 10 chairs per hour. That's $10 per chair. Now you find a way for them to produce 20 chairs per hour, that's $5/chair. You have deflation!
The first observation you should make: the old way meant one worker worked 1 hour (1h) to purchase 1 chair. The new way meant one worker worked 0.5 hours (0.5h) to purchase 1 chair. That chair costs half as much.
So we want to keep a 2% inflation rate. Assume the above occurs over 10 years, the $10 chair should cost $12.19. Well, that chair costs 0.5h because 10 workers make 20 per hour. For those wages to adjust to this inflation, the workers must make $12.19/hr; but to have chairs cost $12.19/hr, we must pay workers $24.38/hr. It's impossible for wages to not exceed inflation in general.
Something like a Universal Social Security automatically adjusts for this because it just takes a percentage of the per-capita income and levels it. No human intervention required. This also has the bonus effect of moving the income outside the wage structure, which

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by mesterha · 2017-02-15 19:11 · Score: 1

Success, you pulled me back in.

It's not guaranteed to happen; it's unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. That is: it's as likely to happen tomorrow as it was yesterday; it's as likely to happen in 500 years as it is today
There is an argument to be made here, but you need to make it. Instead you try to say something clever that on inspection is either wrong or very wrong.

The transition requires entirely-new technology of a form largely different from what we have today, and technology is not something that happens by brute force; it's a constant gamble with results mediated largely by luck.
But you are not an expert in this technology as so you are in no position to make these claims.

It's generally complex, but shows a trend of minimum wage increase causing job loss [frbsf.org]. The studies to determine if it does are statistical, and have problems with confounding. The analysis I use is mathematical based on supply of income, which is only representative of the trade of working hours.
This looks to be a good unbiased reference. He gives some empirical studies which show a somewhat negative outcome. Notice this doesn't address consumption, which might go up significantly, or the tax impact of not having to subsidize these low skill workers with government benefits. It's a complex issue with many possible metrics for success or failure.

Basically nearly all studies detect a loss of jobs; and narrow geographical studies show little to no localized impact. San Francisco may not suffer unemployment by raising minimum wage to $15/hr, while somewhere else in the country jobs are lost because that total flow of income has to come from someone's labor hours purchasing fewer things.
Your own claims contradict you. You claim stable 5% unemployment and clearly the minimum wage has fluctuated based on decreases from inflation and increases by law, therefore you've made the empirical claim that the minimum wage does not effect employment.
However, in the context of the cited paper, you are probably right, a nationwide increase in minimum wage is probably not the right thing. In principle, minimum wage should be tied to local cost of living, but this is probably hard to implement and might have some unintended consequences.

Bernie likes to start sentences with, "You don't need to have a Ph.D. in economics to know..." and then say something that's totally fucking bonkers and doesn't align with objective reality. He doesn't know a god damned thing about economics and is approximately the political equivalent of Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola.
I looked into it, and his $15 has not been studied and is probably too high. However, when negotiating it's always best to start high. As for his knowledge, I'm sure he knows more than you or me.

So we want to keep a 2% inflation rate. Assume the above occurs over 10 years, the $10 chair should cost $12.19. Well, that chair costs 0.5h because 10 workers make 20 per hour. For those wages to adjust to this inflation, the workers must make $12.19/hr; but to have chairs cost $12.19/hr, we must pay workers $24.38/hr. It's impossible for wages to not exceed inflation in general.
You keep saying this as if you are saying something insightful, but I'm just not seeing it. It's clear that it's not what happens and is practically flawed in many ways.

Refuge in ignorance. You don't understand, so you plug your ears. The truth must be uncomfortable for you.
Look I've been a bit rude, but honestly I find you a bit annoying. You phrase things as if you are trying to teach me something and you need to simplify it. Maybe you actually believe what looks to be a fairly naive picture. Look I've known for a long time that a simple picture of the ec

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Chris Mesterharm
Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by bluefoxlucid · 2017-02-16 03:57 · Score: 1

There is an argument to be made here, but you need to make it. Instead you try to say something clever that on inspection is either wrong or very wrong.
The argument is that we're not sitting right on the edge of deployable technology that requires less human labor to accomplish all the things humans do today and will want to do with the new technology. We're refining existing technology (which is itself producing new technology--better $OLD_THING is $NEW_THING) and making it cheaper to use it, reducing jobs required to produce the outputs of that technology; and that means people can more-easily afford luxuries like fast food (instead of cooking your own food, you pay servants) or Tesla cars.
The pattern thus far has been that the greater availability of goods leads to more purchasing. How many things would you be able to buy with infinite money? You could get yourself a really, really high-end car, right? Well, the car you drive today could be produced in 1970, roughly, aside from some of the silicon (although transistor radios existed); and it would cost you the equivalent of millions of today's dollars instead of just $20k. The same is true of continuously-shrinking labor costs in providing high-speed Internet, gas, oil, solar panels, and the like.
For us to enter a post-scarcity economy, the cities have to plan themselves; the power grid has to plan itself; the factories have to build themselves; the robots have to be built by other robots; the vegetables have to pick themselves; the cars have to maintain themselves--and design themselves, for that matter. If it's just human operators and human engineers making and using this stuff to produce with 1/30 as much labor, then you just have the difference between 1790 and 1990.
Don't think so?
In 1790, 90% of the American workforce were farmers. In 1990, 2.6% of the American workforce were farmers--and we export over half our agricultural outputs now.
More-fundamentally, the technology you need in the end is essentially human-level intelligence--which will probably demand civil rights.

Notice this doesn't address consumption, which might go up significantly, or the tax impact of not having to subsidize these low skill workers with government benefits. It's a complex issue with many possible metrics for success or failure.
WAGES ARE PAID FROM REVENUES.
In the fast food industry, management calls in additional workers and sends workers on break or home for the day to keep point-of-sale labor costs at 14% of revenue--that means for every $1,000 brought in per hour, the franchise pay a total of $140 of wages, on average. They actually fail at that: the real fast food cost of wages in the U.S. is 25.4%.
The fast food industry brought in $198.9 billion in 2014, with a total wage load of $47.02 billion.
So let's say you bumped the minimum wage fro $7.25/hr to $8.25/hr. Imagine the average customer pays $8, and the wage cost is 25.4%. At $7.25/hr, that's $2.03 in wages; at $8.25/hr, it's $2.31. You're looking at that $8 meal becoming $8.28. No big deal, right? 28 cents.
What we're looking at is $47.02 billion being bumped to $48.67 billion--an extra $1.65 billion to buy the same amount of food. In terms of $7.25/hr wages, that's 113,793 jobs.
So here's the thing: if Americans spend $198.9 billion on fast food, they'll be able to purchase 3.38% less food at the $8.25/hr wage. That means you go from 3,242,758 million jobs to 3,133,154 jobs--109,604 fewer jobs. If Americans instead spend $200.55 billion on fast food, they spend $1.65 million less elsewhere because they simply don't have it.
So you keep saying, "Hey, consumption might go up, because the fast food workers have more money." The other side of this is there will be fewer workers, either fewer in fast food or fewer doing something else. The total wages paid in the United States in that given span of time--the year 2014, t

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Re:They are not creating 2,000 jobs, duh. by mesterha · 2017-02-16 17:29 · Score: 1

You've got some good ideas and a compelling presentation. I think you need think through some issues a bit more, but that's what makes this stuff fun. I've been guilty of some hypocrisy on the whole teaching thing, but live and learn. Anyway, this has caused me to think through a bunch of issues, which was my purpose, so thanks for that.

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Chris Mesterharm

Re:Amazon jobs by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-02 01:27 · Score: 1

we're better off going back to living off the grid.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

Isn't there a river? by gatkinso · 2017-02-02 01:56 · Score: 1

I thought the Ohio River separated the two states.

Not that this would stop them, but it seems mighty inconvenient.

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So basically almost no jobs by gweihir · 2017-02-02 02:03 · Score: 1

Considering the size of the investment. Not a surprise, there will not be any significant job-creation in the US industry ever again. That is unless a total collapse happens.

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Re:So basically almost no jobs by losfromla · 2017-02-02 07:15 · Score: 1

Thanks for the great idea, I'll work on setting up a highly automated factory to create these very necessary products. I'll do it in the US so tRumpF will give me subsidies. I'll claim all the jobs during construction and the jobs that exist at the companies that make the machines I'll use all the way back to the ore mining, 10,000 jobs!

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Only I can judge you.

Re:Amazon jobs by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-02 02:07 · Score: 1

Don't worry. Fewer and fewer people are being exploited by Amazon. Amazon is on a fast track with robotics and automation to eliminate these
menial jobs. No more exploitation of workers! This facility will be automated.

Seismically active? by Hognoxious · 2017-02-02 02:24 · Score: 1

Amazon is planning to build a $1.5 billion air cargo hub in a spot that crossed the Cincinnati and Kentucky border

I'd have thought it was quite difficult to build on land that moves around like that.

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Re:Seismically active? by iggymanz · 2017-02-02 05:46 · Score: 1

it didn't move, silly, it made the border mad by breaking a deal

Margin leakage by sjbe · 2017-02-02 02:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm fairly sure that both FedEx and UPS would be more than happy to build out their respective fleet if they knew that Amazon would not leave them hanging, as Amazon apparently is doing.

I'm sure they would. Problem is that they necessarily have to make a profit and Amazon would rather keep that money for themselves if they can. This margin leakage is why companies sometimes find it valuable to vertically integrate. Unless the supplier can provide the service at a substantially lower cost then there is no reason to outsource the work. Most companies don't find if worthwhile to build their own delivery networks but for companies like Amazon or Walmart it can make very real fiscal sense. You need a certain minimum scale for it to be economically worthwhile but the savings can be substantial.

Honestly I'd expect Amazon to continue to vertically integrate their delivery and logistics systems as they continue to grow. It will make it harder and harder for anyone to compete with them because they can move product cheaper than anyone else. Walmart has used basically the same tactic for decades now. They invested in their logistics while their competitors ignored it until Walmart had an almost insurmountable price advantage over most of them.

Re:Margin leakage by losfromla · 2017-02-02 06:54 · Score: 1

Also both Amazon and Walmart destroy average wages for their low-level employees and leave their healthcare and general welfare as externalized costs. I am very torn about this as a frequent Amazon shopper. I was able to stay out of Walmart but Amazon sucked me in early, before it became clear how evil they were/are.

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Proof is in the Pudding by sycodon · 2017-02-02 02:39 · Score: 1

Just try to call Customer Service.

Robots answer and when you do get a biologic, they answer like robots.

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Re:2000 jobs? by SirSlud · 2017-02-02 02:50 · Score: 1

They are. They ones dumb enough not to see it can only work shitty jobs anyhow, advantage or no advantage, but couch their bitterness with failure in racism.

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Replacing DHL? by Sporkinum · 2017-02-02 02:55 · Score: 1

I looked at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on Google and saw that there is already a large facility for DHL there. Is Amazon buying it out, or are they going to build an additional large facility there?
https://www.google.com/maps/pl...

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Re:Replacing DHL? by wagnerrp · 2017-02-02 03:26 · Score: 1

CVG expansion plans say Amazon is going to be building in the field west of DHL's facility, as well as the infield between runways 36C and 36L.
Re:Replacing DHL? by Sporkinum · 2017-02-02 03:54 · Score: 1

Thanks. I was wondering about the infield area as a possibility. With all the airbase closings, like Rantoul/Chanute in Illinois, I wonder why they didn't use one of those instead. I guess the logistics of what is already available, and proximity to freeways?

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Re:Maybe Amazon can do some cargo ship innovation? by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2017-02-02 03:08 · Score: 1

How do you put a solar roof on this?

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/6...

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Why is it Going to Cost 1.5 Billion? by mrmaster · 2017-02-02 03:15 · Score: 1

What's so special about this facility that would make it cost $1.5 Billion?

Re:Why is it Going to Cost 1.5 Billion? by losfromla · 2017-02-02 07:26 · Score: 1

Cool, now there's something to be done with all the mountains being topped for coal mining in the Appalachias etc. Maybe they'll be able to keep just a bit of that toxic shit out of our rivers and streams.

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Only I can judge you.

check those bridge crossings first... by Thud457 · 2017-02-02 03:17 · Score: 1

Ground Effect container carriers, that's why they need access to the river.

Now I'm wondering if a 200-ton robot WiG craft could successfully HOP the bridges on the Mississippi. Not sure if that would be impressive or terrifying. Probably both.

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Woot! by AndyKron · 2017-02-02 03:31 · Score: 1

Woo Hoo! 2000 shitty paying jobs in slave-like working conditions. Woot!

Re: Amazon jobs by dreamchaser · 2017-02-02 04:15 · Score: 2

Obama didn't create any jobs, nor will Trump. The President's policies and legislation he signs can affect job growth, certainly, but they themselves, the Presidents, don't create any private sector jobs. Presidents get credit and blame because 'the buck stops here.'

Re:Amazon jobs by losfromla · 2017-02-02 05:46 · Score: 1

lol

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Re:Amazon jobs by losfromla · 2017-02-02 05:51 · Score: 1

Except for the elites he has constructed his cabinet from, corporatists every last one and believe me, they don't give a shit, let alone two shits about us natural humans. It has also been quite bad in other ways as he has ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to allow the Dakota Access Pipeline to continue. His election has emboldened the extreme right here and abroad, witness the murders in a Canada Mosque by a tRumpF supporter. There is the extreme corporatist Judge he selected as his nominee to the Supreme Court, I hope the Dems have the balls to reject that and all his attempts at an appointee.

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Floating warehouse? by uncoveror · 2017-02-02 05:52 · Score: 1

Do you know what spot crosses the Cincinnati and Kentucky border? The Ohio River. Are they building a floating warehouse? The author should have done some more homework before writing that they will build on land that does not exist. The source of the confusion may be that the airport that services the Cincinnati region is in Kentucky. Local politicians fighting kept it from being built in Ohio. It is like the New York football stadium which is actually in New Jersey. Another thing that makes that airport confusing is that its abbreviation is CVG, which stands for Covington when the airport is in Florence, but Florence really wasn't a thing yet when the airport was started.

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Re:Thank you Trump by losfromla · 2017-02-02 06:59 · Score: 1

The fire hoses and police dogs were called on Blacks and Chicanos, have the balls to post with your name and stand up proudly for the racism you really want to project. Don't hide behind the bullshit convolution of calling out for wiping out of hippies when what you really want is to attack minorities. Shithead.

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Re:No new jobs in total by losfromla · 2017-02-02 07:05 · Score: 1

I somewhat look forward to it, mostly due to the expectation I have that UBI needs to be implemented unless the 1% want to face down a resonably armed mob armed with pitchforks, AKs, and iPods.

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Re:Thanks Trump by losfromla · 2017-02-02 07:11 · Score: 1

Please use the sarcasm tag, it is hard to distinguish whether you really mean it or mean it so much you're being sarcastic. I'd give you a +1 sarcastic if I had points and the tag existed. Otherwise -1 troll for you.

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Re:HillBilly Haven is Kentucky by losfromla · 2017-02-02 07:21 · Score: 1

What kind of name is Kentucky, anyway!

From Wikipedia:

Etymology
In 1776, the counties of Virginia beyond the Appalachian Mountains became known as Kentucky County,[5] named for the Kentucky River.[citation needed] The precise etymology of the name is uncertain,[6] but likely based on an Iroquoian name meaning "(on) the meadow" or "(on) the prairie"[7][8] (cf. Mohawk kenhtà:ke, Seneca gëdá’geh (phonemic /ktakeh/), "at the field").[9]

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Re:Amazon jobs by don2545 · 2017-02-03 16:00 · Score: 1

You would rather take a chance on having a train wreck carrying crude oil rather than doing it more efficiently via pipe? Or maybe you prefer buying oil from the mid-east and shipping it in boats, subject to ocean storms and pirates? Perhaps you like shoveling coal into your basement furnace and hauling the ashes to the landfill? Sometimes I wonder what happened to common sense with today's protesters.

Re:Amazon jobs by eric_harris_76 · 2017-02-03 23:28 · Score: 1

Yeah. If your situation sucks so bad that an employer as bad as Amazon as described here offers you a job ....

Well, you should take it anyway.

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Re:Amazon jobs by Coren22 · 2017-02-16 02:27 · Score: 1

They think that if you stop the oil pipeline, suddenly the world will no longer need oil. It is a really short sighted image of the world.

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Re:Amazon jobs by Coren22 · 2017-02-16 02:32 · Score: 1

How is it racist? Are you saying it is anti-white to buy canned food?

https://www.fema.gov/blog/2011...

The government suggests you stock up some on food, it is good preparedness for any possible disaster to have about a week of food on hand.

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Slashdot Mirror

Amazon To Build $1.5 Billion Air Cargo Hub In Kentucky, Creating Around 2,000 New Jobs (techcrunch.com)

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