Comments by "Newbie Prepper" (@newbieprepper8451) on "Amazon Exec Goes After Bernie u0026 Gets Pummelled" video.

@cliffgaither McDonalds has no obligation to show how many billions and billions it has served, but im guessing they stopped because it became a nuisance to update signs on so many restaurants. they do put out press briefings though. trucking companies tend to pay their workers a decent wage, which cuts into their profits, and they dont raise their prices so they stay competative, thats why they are so barely profitable. they offer a low cost product and fair wages at the cost of profitability. and yes, movie theaters are a good example, they make their money off concesion sales, and maybe commercials and ads too, im not sure, but i am positive they dont make money off the ticket sales. so if you go and purchase 2 tickets, and sneak in snacks and drinks, the theater only made money off you based on the ads they showed you that they were paid for, and if an advertiser pays a theater $100k to show an add, and it runs for a couple of months and is seen by 100k people, then the theater made $1 off you that they need to use to pay for building rent and upkeep and utilities and taxes.
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im not so sure it would impact Bezos wage that much or at all, most of his money is tied up in stocks, those tens of billions he has are stocks and stock options. apparently his salary is only about $82k a year, with all his money being tied up in Amazon shares. Unionizing the company would be good for the workers, but it would lead to higher prices for good purchased on there and disruptions in service and deliveries due to strikes.
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@cliffgaither if a company unionizes, then that union will be asking for higher wages and more benefits, which will raise costs. im not saying they dont deserve it or they dont need it, of course they should get it and of course they deserve it and of course they need it.but dont tell me that it wont affect prices because the owners can do this or they can do that, what the owners can do and what owners have historically done are two different things. secondlu, we are not talking about what Bezos has access to, we are talking about his salary, which is not much. the rest of his fortune is tied in stocks, and while yes, certainly he has access to a vast fortune, that would entail him selling those stocks, and too much sales of stocks can have drastic effects on the company as a whole in various complicated ways. as an example, a too dramatic dip in share price of a company could jeapordize their ability to get standard operational loans, called a credit freeze. a large part of the 08-09 crisis was caused by a credit freeze from banks to most companies because most companies opperate on daily or weekly short term operational loans. thats just an example. thirdly yes, if workers are treated well, then there is no need for a strike, but there are instances of where workers are treated well and the union still goes on strike because they want concessions that are either unreasonable or unatainable. i have seen it happen before, i was in the teamsters union. what happens if a union decides they are worth $30 or $50 an hour, and the company simply can not afford it and the union goes on strike because they want it. does that mean the workers were treated bad or does it mean that they wanted unrealistic items that were unnatainable? give the workers everything they want and it wont matter how much the owners give up, it wont be enough to cover what the workers get and eventually prices will have to rise. im not against unionizing, but i also lok at all the aspects from every side.
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@cliffgaither taking their case to the public does not seem to work as well as you would think. do you know what the profit margin is on most restaurants? you have the common phrase of "if a company cant be profitable and pay its workers a living wage, then that company should go under", but most restaurants operate at a 3-6% profit margin, some go up as high as 10%. do you feel that the profit margin of 3-6% on a business making $1million sales a year is decent? thats $30-$60k profit per year. and yet those restaurants pay their workers low wages. but you still have the blanket statement of pay a living wage or go under. so how does a business like a restaurant pay a living wage and not raise prices by a large margin and still not go under? of course some companies can afford to pay their workers more, but things are not always so simple to be covered by a blanket statement such as that and a justification for that statement such as there are billionaires out there. things need to change, things have to improve, but those things are complex and need complex answers and solutions that the general public can not solve. funny line from the MIB movie. "a person is smart and intelligent, people are dumb and panicky animals."
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@cliffgaither i agree, but you have to be able to look at both sides of a problem to find the solution. if a pipe breaks in your house, to dont replace all the pipes because the pipe is evil, you figure out why that particular pipe broke and fix it and examine all the other pipes. if a plane crashes, you dont throw out all other planes, you examine why it crashed, and should you fix other planes, do they even share a common failing part. this problem is more complex than a simple broken pipe or a crashed plane, and it requires a more complex examination across all businesses and complex solutions tailored to various industries as they are not all the same. Andrew yang had a wonderful idea during his campaign, taxing companies for robot workers in large amounts to offset the human workers that would lose their jobs to the robots and automation, and use that money to subsidize or give a universal income to those people affected by automation. i say its a wonderful idea because it identified a problem and tailored a solution that fit that exact problem without affecting other industries that didnt have that problem. for example. i have always worked my entire life, ive worked regular blue collar jobs such as warehousing or factory or regular office jobs, i was never a CEO or even management, i simply didnt want that responsibility. and i did own my own company for a short time with no employees. the thing is, i have amassed a decent fortune by simply investing the little scraps of money i had left over. most of my money was made in a very early investment in bitcoin, although i sold it all a while ago, im not a filthy rich multimillionaire. would you praise me that i was able to rise up and better my life? or would you just simply look at me and relegate yourself to the belief that i am evil because i have tons of wealth and it must have been gained through nefarious deeds while standing on the backs of impoverished workers? i was one of those impoverished workers, and i rose above my station by taking risks, ha, if you can call them risks, $10 bucks once in a while is laughable as a risk. but still, i took some risks simply because i paid attention to fringe news. CHIA NETWORK, thats your free tip, check it out.
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@cliffgaither i understand, i used the restaurant example and the Coke example becaue i am more familiar with the numbers behind them a good restaurant will make up to 10% profit, but those are more of the large international chains like Mcdonalds or Burger King. the reason why they make so much is because of volume, Mcdonalds hasnt put up numbers on their signs in a decade or two with how many billions and billions served. another industry i am familiar with is trucking, i currently work in the logistics industry so i know about trucking. UPS and FedEx are major truckign companies, what they specialize in is small parcel shipping, along with various other companies that are called LTL carriers, LTL = Less Than Truckload. most of these LTL carriers operate at -2 to +4 cents per mile profit margin, meaning there are some packages that they can potentially lose up to 2 cents per mile it travels from origin to destination. but truck drivers and those warehouse workers tend to make a decent living, but the company as a whole is barely profitable. funny how a small 5 pound package can travel very fast over 2000 miles and cost around the same as treating a family of 4 to a night at the movies. speaking of movies, theaters make absolutely nothing on the ticket sales themselves, movie theaters make all their money on the popcorn and pop and stuff they sell.
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@BasedRedemption i completely agree about the taxes part, the way stocks and bonds are taxed right now is laughable. if you buy stocks you only get taxed on them when you sell them, which allows people to use them as collateral for securing loans or what not. stocks should be taxed on a yearly basis based on their rise in value, not necessarily their value as a whole because that would be unfair to most middle and lower income people. i can afford to buy a few shares of a company, should the government keep taxing me per year on how many shares i have and how much value they hold or just on how much they appreciated over a year. but that is an argument for tax reform at the government level. now as to running a company while paying a living or a good wage, most companies cant do that. a company moking cars for example, pays most of its workers a good living wage, but the car itself is overpriced compared to the materials cost to make the car. look at constuction companies, the workers make a decent living, but a house that costs $20-$30k in materials costs around $100k to build, most of that is tied in teh salaries of the workers, with some being profits for the companies. for most companies if not all, the labor costs of production are over 50% of the total costs of production, and far exceed the raw materials costs. i used to work for Coca Cola. i know it cost the company $0.04 raw material cost to produce each 2 liter of coke or whatever drink. about $0.83 was tied up in labor costs, and $0.19 was tied to operational costs (electrricity/building maintenance/taxes/etc) this was back when 2 liters would sell for around $1.29 average at stores. the rest was profit. so the workers made a decent wage, but that brought up questions of was a 2 liter bottle that cost $0.04 in raw materials worth $1.29 sales price? i dont work there anymore, but to my knowledge, only a few years ago, the raw materials on a 2 liter bottle now cost around $0.07 per bottle, and each bottle sells for roughly $2.XX at stores now, with the majority of the price going to the workers. Bezos is not making his billions off the profits of Amazon, he is making his billions off the price of the shares he owns. he was worth $20b before his divorce, and he gave up half to his ex, and then somehow shot up from $10b in net worth to $60b in net worth? i know Amazon did not make $50b profit in the past year to put in Bezos pocket. its kind of like saying all those people who bought shares of the gamestonk and made tons of money made it because the company generated so much profit. i'll agree, Bezos is disgustingly rich, obscenely rich, and it begs to question should anyone hold that kind of wealth, but you also have to examine how that wealth was accrued and was at accrued at the intentional and direct suffering of others (employees).
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im not going to defend Amazon, yes, they treat their workers bad, and thats just one thing out of many complaints. but dont raise Sanders as some god of fairness when during his campaign his staffers wanted a $15/h wage and he refused. he goes around complaining that companies wont treat their workers fairly while at the same time he refuses to treat his workers fairly. kind of hypocritical if you ask me.
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