The BBC reports Amazon Protests Erupt Across
Germany
- Workers at six Amazon distribution centres in Germany have staged a Black Friday walkout in a dispute over pay and conditions. The union Verdi, which called the strike, said its members’ hard work could not be bought for “knock-down prices”.
- German workers walked out overnight at Amazon centres in Leipzig, Bad Hersfeld, Koblenz, Rheinberg, Werne and Graben. The strike is due to last all weekend, with employees at some centres staying away until early Tuesday morning.
France
- At the online retailer’s depot in Bretigny-sur-Orge, south of Paris, dozens of climate change activists blocked the path of lorries trying to enter the site.
- Other protesters converged on Amazon’s French headquarters in Clichy, north of Paris. The activists held banners with slogans including “Stop Amazon and its world” and “Amazon: for the climate, for employment, stop expanding, stop overproduction”.
Ban Black Friday
- An “anti-waste” bill was amended to include a proposal to prohibit Black Friday by a French legislative committee on Monday. France’s former Environment Minister Delphine Batho tabled the amendment, which will be debated next month in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
- “Black Friday celebrates a model of consumption that is anti-ecological and anti-social,” said MP Mattieu Orphelin, a former member of President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party.
- Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is considering implementing new regulations to protect the climate, including a tax on deliveries to ease traffic jams and pollution caused by Amazon and other companies.
GMB joined by Labour Party Candidates Lou Haigh and Oliver Blake this morning outside Amazon @GMB_union @GMBCampaigns @LouHaigh @OliverBlake17 @RixyieOrganiser @leeparkinson14 pic.twitter.com/DZvOrBcbod
— Sue Wood (@SueWood09373512) November 29, 2019
A freezing dawn on #BlackFriday outside the Rugeley @amazon depot with the @GMB standing up for the rights of @amazon workers. One young man with his child nearly in tears just sacked. A 21st century company! More like a 19th century millowner. Shame on you, @JeffBezos pic.twitter.com/751vK7YFNY
— Jack Dromey MP (@JackDromeyMP) November 29, 2019
Billions of Satisfied Customers
Amazon ships around 10 billion packages per year
But environmentalists accuse Amazon of accelerating climate change through its rapid delivery services, which they say contribute to greenhouse gases emissions.
Amazon a Godsend
Amazon is a godsend. It is popular for a reason. Billions of buyers and deliveries prove it.
Banning Black Friday is of course the exact sort of proposal one would expect from French MPs.
I strongly suspect some of these people protesting Amazon also protested the gas tax hikes by president Macron that led to Yellow Vest French Riots that went on for months.
Recall that Macron raised gas taxes to save the environment then was forced to roll them back.
US Corporations for a Reason
France has zero of the Top 25 Technology Companies. The US has the top four (Facebook is ahead of Tencent in that list).
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Intel are US corporations for a reason.
France and the EU would bust up all of those companies in the name of competition, resulting in inefficiency and more than likely increasing carbon emissions as well.
Regardless, rest assured the world will not be saved by stopping Amazon.
Great Strength of the US
For further discussion of innovation, ideas, and the great strength of the US, please consider Trump’s Impossible Fight to Stop Theft of Ideas.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Wasn’t this what happened to Walmart in Germany as well? they never went back I believe.
As someone who is de facto stuck at home for health reasons, it is more than just a convenience, it is indeed a godsend. And I’m all for Amazon availing itself of legal tax avoidance to the greatest possible extent, since that is one of the factors keeping its prices at a low level. To my mind this is a greater benefit than handing more loot to politicians and faceless bureaucrats.
When you put it like that …
Starving The Beast, is always a the right thing to do.
Cosmic scale stupidity anchored in earth worship dogma. I’d bet that a room of third graders could answer the following question correctly, “Is it friendlier for the environment to have one truck deliver 500 small packages locally or for 500 vehicles to make individual round trips?”
With increased online sales volume, I do not think that is a problem anymore. If 500 trucks each deliver 500 small packages to 500 single neighborhoods or post offices, vs each delivering 500 small packages to 500 single brick and mortar stores where people drive from their homes to get the items (250,000 total packages in both cases with similar number of miles driven in both cases), then it works out close to the same.
It only works out the same, if the last-mile delivery trucks can’t come up with a more efficient route to reach each 500 end users, than to repeatedly return to a fixed “hub” in between delivering to each one of them. You’d hope UPS have access to logistics staff better than that.
Good point. Direct-to-customer delivery could theoretically be more efficient than the brick and mortar model, provided the trucks do not burn too much fuel and provided the logistics software plans an efficient route.
Dont forget repeat journeys. It would be interesting to know what the average number of times they have to try and deliver something because the buyer is away from the home. My guess would be twice on average, does anyone have any figures?
Also, if you go shopping, do you do lots of little shops, or one big one, to save time? So which type of shopping does it take the most journeys to get the same amount of stuff simply because the order quantities are lower? My guess here is that when you buy online you buy smaller and more often.
Does anyone know for sure?
Also, I want to point out there are many assumptions being made here. Do most customers live near the brick and mortar stores where they shop, or do they all have to drive a significant distance? Do most customers consolidate their shopping for multiple items into one trip, or do they make separate trips for each item? Do the customers drive fuel-efficient vehicles that get 10x the fuel economy of a delivery truck, or do they drive their own trucks? Do the customers make fewer trips to the store because of their online purchases, or do they make the same number of trips to the store for the fewer items they still need? At the end of the day I just shrug and guess, “First order, it’s probably about the same.”
I suspect people are rational. If they need a large number of items, they are more apt to go to the store. If they need a couple small things, why drive to, and browse, a huge store? Thus, the current mixed model (some Amazon, some local shopping) may well approximate the most environmentally efficient option.
For far and away most people, I suspect the most striking difference is simply that they don’t have convenient access to a local store, or mall, or city, with anything even resembling the selection of Amazon nor any other big online retailer/aggregator.
Ever since Adam Smith, it has been recognized that specialization is the key to increased economic efficiency, hence wealth. Wrt retail, that has led from barter to local shops to department stores to malls to Big Box stores to Amazon to, in the future, direct end user access to order directly from individual Chinese (or other) manufacturers.
When you need/want to buy something, you want access to the best product (for your specific needs), at the best price. Both from across as wide a domain as possible. Not being limited to only what some dude down the street guessed you may be interested in.
Over-here most people agree Amazon to be a great improvement in order to be able to find products we cant find in local stores at an acceptable price .
However as far as I am concerned I buy regularly at Ali-express and Ali-Baba where I usually can get a lot of good quality products often at less than half the price shipping and import (VAT 21 per cent) included.
Indeed most products are now produced in China and a lot of these ones are bought by middle-men who sell them back at Amazon or E-bay with a huge margin.
These days Amazon is its own worst enemy.
They were a godsend when their search algorithms did an excellent job of sorting relevant products and product reviews. I could almost always find product I was looking for in the first or second page of results. Today that is not true. I can enter detailed keywords and not find what I want in any of their results. Yet, if I then type an exact make and model, the product often appears where it was previously invisible. Something in their search has been seriously broken. I heard a rumor they did this to selectively sell higher margin products. Okay, I understand they want to increase their margins, but what good is that when customers can no longer find what they are looking for?
They also push their own branded products above others in search results. This was always the end game. There is a reason Bezos looks like Dr. Evil these days.
I have seen this as well. I tried to reorder something, and entered the exact name, but could not find it. I went back to my prior orders, and found it, and clicked on it, and it was still for sale, but the search engine could not find it.
I agree, their search engine has deteriorated. Thankfully their customer service hasn’t – in Europe it is peerless.
I personally use walmart delivery for the most part. I have a lot of animals and an elder to take care of and work fulltime. On top of that, I live rural and closest store is 16 miles away and they are too expensive and closest walmart is over 20. It’s been a godsend. I still shop for food, but sure is nice having 50lb bags of dog food, among many other items, dropped off at the door. Seems more efficient as well.
People can oppose consumerism, but at some level one MUST consume to live.
Mish your devotedly committed to anti reality and propoganda. Even American fake news reports the horrible working conditions at Amazon
The environmental question is interesting. Which uses more energy:
A. A big warehouse, a shipping system to get the goods to the end city, and tens of drivers to deliver the packages.
B. A number of smaller warehouses, a variety of smaller shipping systems to get the goods to various stores in the end city, operating various stores, fuel used by the retail employees to get to said stores, fuel used by thousands of customers to get to various stores, buy the merchandise, and then to bring it to their homes.
My guess is that A is much more environmentally efficient than B.
Stop giving AOC a headache! That does NOT compute in the libtard calculator.
In my own business I have moved away from brick and mortar stores, and having customers come to me, and instead I increasingly deliver to them. I have no doubt that it is far more environmentally efficient.
…and Greta wants to know what Amazon is going to do about climate change LOL
They’re only mentioning climate change for the green-wash, just like all the corporate ads. What they’re protesting is E X P L O I T A T I O N. The same dynamic that has gutted Main Street all over US towns, and turned aging shop-keepers into minimum wage Wall-Mart greeters selling Chinese stuff.
Yes Yes Yes, I know the theory. In a free society where property rights are the highest form of worship, exploitation is theoretically impossible — everybody is freely choosing to live in an 8 m² apartment for $1500/mo and all of us love Wall-Mart and Chinese crap.
The examples (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Intel) are all quasi monopolies who never skip an opportunity to not pay taxes or engage in anti-competitive practices if the penalties are feeble enough, anti-democratic and exploitative to the core, the hell with any law if it is expedient to break it.
It’s not Amazon employed jackboots, who will tear down the 9 m^2 shack you build if you get tired of overpaying for 8. Instead, it’s jackboots in the employ of same specifically not-al-all-quasi monopoly which prevents you from setting up shop in front of Walmart’s entry door undercutting them by a cent by sourcing goods from China yourself, if you reckon you can do it cheaper.
E X P L O I T A T I O N, when it comes right down to it, requires an enforcement apparatus. Muscle. Guns. A warehouse full of Chinese stuff, just isn’t going to do it, unless there are, at some point, guns backing it up.
So, focus in getting rid of the guys with asymmetric access to guns. Then, compete against, route around, disregard Amazon, usury rent seekers, overpriced Chinajunk peddlers etc., to your hearts content. Safe in the knowledge that your guns are just as big as theirs, and just like you, they are entirely on their own, should they try to E X P L O I T you.
They protest their jobs instead of quitting. Interesting.
Might not last for much longer. Democrats sound much worse than any French MP I’ve heard.
Amazon are a pain in the arse. We are the only retired couple in the close, which means we are more likely to be in during the week. The drivers used to knock on our door and see if we would look after the parcel or whatever. It stopped when I decided to say yes but wanted £10, payable immediately, for services rendered.
“Let’s break up the big technology companies”. I vaguely recall hearing that in the US recently. Nah!! Must be my mind playing tricks with me.
It does not matter if Amazon has the lowest price. What matters is people like the convenience. Amazon won in the marketplace because people like it.
It’s worth noting that if it wasn’t for AWS, Amazon would be bankrupt.
If Tesla can live off of little but freshly printed handouts, I have a real hard time seeing Amazon not being able to avail themselves of the same, were they under the gun.
It’s certainly not the same as claiming that they are successful solely because of customer preference.
Amazon actually is a PITA, and becoming more so. It used to be a convenient place until it became a virtual monopoly, and started to behave like one. Now they hiked prices above brick-and-mortal with online presence. And did I mention China Direct?
Amazon started to slow walk deliveries for non-Prime members. I switched to Walmart.com for their 2-day delivery on most items. Prices are very competitive.
The ideal US corporate tax rate is zero.
Instead we have zero or very low tax rates overseas (encouraging capital flight, production flight, etc), and higher taxes in the US.
It’s nuts. At a minimum the tax rate ought to be lower in the US than outside the US.
Only if it applies to everybody. If it only applies to some, it’s the same as government choosing winners and losers.
The ideal, heck the only even remotely reasonable, rate for any activity tax, always has been, and always will be, a permanent zero.
Doesn’t AMZN pay zero taxes? What business couldn’t be successful not having to pay taxes? Besides gov’t.
You may just be onto something there, as a strategy for facilitating American business, hence America in general, becoming more successful…..
“Doesn’t AMZN pay zero taxes? “
No.
Under GAAP they PROVISIONED for $0 (actually negative $1.197 billion) in income taxes in 2018.
GAAP accounting and tax accounting are not the same. Publicly-traded companies keep 2 sets of books. One is for investors and one is for the IRS.
The folks that do these studies are using the GAAP documents because that is what is publicly available. They also tend to cherry-pick specific cases that feed a narrative.
I’ve seen both Amazon and FedEx used to “show” how the 2017 tax changes reduced their bill to 0. But these are PROVISIONED rates, not what was paid to the government. I could play the same game with Exxon and Walmart to show how the tax cuts raised their taxes. But I wouldn’t do that because I understand how useless this type of analysis is and thus it would be dishonest.
Much of the time, what people think are taxes that aren’t paid are just taxes that have been deferred (from the POV of GAAP) and sit on the balance sheet as a deferred tax liability. These are taxes that are “owed” under GAAP but not yet required by the IRS because of accounting differences. Companies that had a deferred tax liability got a benefit from the TCJA because they had provisioned for these deferred taxes at a higher rate. With the TCJA lowering rates they got a one-time GAAP benefit in the form of an adjustment to the deferred tax liability (it was reduced). The adjustments can be substantial and reduce the provisioned rate to 0 or lower. But it is a one-time phenomenon under GAAP. FedEx was one of those. Their provisioned rate was negative in FY 2018. Then in the next fiscal year their provisioned rate bounced back to 17.5% and in the first quarter of the current (2020) fiscal year the provisioned rate was back over 25%.
ITEP, which did the study that started the AMZN and FDX claims, doesn’t appear to know that companies often, though not always, disclose supplementary cash flow information that shows how much cash the company actually paid in income taxes. During 2018, while AMZN provisioned at a negative GAAP rate they actually paid $1.184 billion in cash for income taxes. That isn’t debatable unless one wants to claim the filings are falsified. I do not see the same info for FDX in the interactive data and I am not going to comb the 10-K to see if they disclose it elsewhere. Not all companies do.
Now that we know AMZN paid income taxes the next problem arises: To whom were the AMZN taxes paid and in what amounts between the US government, the states and /or foreign governments?
The answer is: we don’t know. External entities don’t know unless they see the actual tax filings and that is between the company, their accountants and the taxing authorities.
“Amazon is a godsend. It is popular for a reason.”
It depends on the viewpoint. Amazon doesnt compete fairly as they collect information on what sells and sell something amazon branded by the same manufacturer for less. Amazon is not a level playing field. It needs to be broken up because it is becoming a virtual monopoly. No venture or investments are allowed to compete against any of the FAANG companies. This is the also part of the reason why small businesses are flailing during a supposed boom.
The only meaningful “monopoly”, which incidentally does need to be broken up, is government.
Along with all it’s restrictions. Including those preventing absolutely anyone, anywhere, anytime, from setting up shop wherever he darned well pleases, and competing with Amazon in any which way he feels like.
Artificially low interest rates are to blame for the likes of Amazon, and a whole pile of profitless companies, being able to attract endless amounts of investor money.
That, bailouts and financialization in general, software patents, labor laws, health care meddling, land use laws, and arbitrary laws in general.
The more mindless drivel potential competitors are forced to deal with, the more the landscape favors large incumbents. A bunch of guys at an Amazon warehouse can’t just walk out and set up competing shop in a tent across the street the next day, bringing the best underpaid employees with them, if Amazon really is “exploiting” them.
To do that, they need to pay for permits, lawyers, lobbyists, “finance” and the rest of the rabble. So instead, they’re stuck. Misguidedly blaming “Mexicans,” and what they have been indoctrinated to believe has anything whatsoever to do with “free” anything.
No doubt. That is the macro view and underpins everything. Rates are headed to 1% soon.
I wonder if any of these “climate” protesters have stopped to ponder what the chances are, that each and every current Amazon customer instead driving to the store/mall by themselves to pick up their goods, will combined somehow manage to beat UPS et al in fuel efficiency….
Exactly. Where are the facts for comparison? None.
In general, almost absolutely all excuses for government invention and restriction, is founded solely on failure to consider what Bastiat so long ago referred to as “the unseen.”
Amazon is rarely the lowest price.
I usually go there first to get benchmark … and then find it (usually MUCH) cheaper elsewhere.
Amazon practices dynamic pricing (as many other online retailer) which I find utter BS.
Where exactly can you find prices lower than Amazon? Do tell.
haha
Amazon shareholder?
You are correct but it has become cumbersome to get everything at one place. Only Walmart or target come to mind . I also believe they are slowly building shipping prices into the price even for prime customers. The cost of a prime membership cannot cover free shipment for an entire year.
I am not Prime member as I consider $10/month very high for nothing. I simply ship everything for free, no matter how long they say it will take, since I rarely care. It usually comes in a day or two anyway. Perhaps once a year or so I actually care when something arrives, and pay for fast delivery, so my total shipping with them in a year is perhaps $5.
As for their expense, they have put lots of people into the delivery business, leasing them trucks and software, but the deal is, Amazon pays by the route, not by the package. At busy times, those guys have to bust their butts for no extra pay, and worse, if they don’t get the boxes delivered, they might lose the route (but be stuck with the truck lease). This gets around the hefty overnight charges of major carriers. Some of the newly created carriers will make money. Others will bust their butts and end up bankrupt.
I have been burned by Amazon’s China Direct service. No, they don’t call it that, but that’s the essence of it. You never know where the cheap c.r.a.p is coming from until you click the order button, at best. I am diversifying away from Amazon, going directly to local, usually cheaper sellers.
Amazon has so many click thru rating sites that are actually fake it’s criminal. They have been busted for manipulating product reviews something that they deny. I agree they aren’t the cheapest but they have monopolized many branded products. i.e. tech products
The people in France always seem to need a reason to complain and bitch about something.
They need no reason but the easiest, if they do need one, is that it’s not French.
In the 90s I remember South African apples they were seizing and destroying. Why? Because they have French apples.
When asked what would they do if the South Africans burnt French perfume the answers was the South Africans wouldn’t. “Why” was the next question. Answer, “because it’s French”.
France has long been a written-law country, having nothing do with common law. As such, it is normal and expected for the government to define winners and losers; and more of the latter than the former.
But people hate being predefined losers. So they protest.
For a good early protest by someone who realized who contrary written law was to natural law, read Bastiat “The Law”.
As he wrote it, he knew he was dying of TB.