Since 2014, Amazon has gone from 0% to 28% of package delivery.
Parcel Shipping 2024
Please consider the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index Report for 2024.
Competitive pricing is intensifying and alternatives are emerging.
To capture a larger market share, carriers are increasingly offering competitive pricing, which is leading to lower revenue per parcel. In fact, revenue per parcel dropped 0.6% in 2024, to $9.09, down from $9.10 in 2023. This pricing pressure is largely driven by the rapid growth of alternative carriers, as well as USPS’ new low-cost shipping option, Ground Advantage. This service has helped USPS grow for the first time since 2020, reaching 6.9 billion parcels in 2024, up from 6.6 billion in 2023.
The Rise of Amazon
Since we began tracking shipments in 2015, the parcel market had been dominated by the Big 3: FedEx, UPS, and USPS. However, Amazon Logistics—once a small competitor—is closing the gap rapidly. In 2024, Amazon handled 6.3 billion parcels, just behind USPS’ 6.9 billion.
By 2028, Amazon is projected to overtake USPS, with 8.4 billion parcels versus USPS’ 8.3 billion. The “others” category comprised of smaller carriers continued growth trajectory and experienced their combined volume grow 22.6%.
This trend indicated a long-term transformation in the economics of last-mile delivery, favoring smaller packages and more affordable shipping options.
Tariff Impact
The newly imposed tariffs are still being fully understood, but they’re expected to affect carrier cross-border shipping costs and disrupt supply chains. with longer delivery times for international shipments.
Disruption presents opportunities for new carriers. New final-mile and regionally-specialized carriers could capitalize on the growing demand for localized, cost-effective shipping solutions in markets where the larger international carriers may struggle to offer affordable services.
UPS to Lay Off 20,000 Workers, Close over 70 Facilities
Please note UPS to Lay Off 20,000 Workers, Close over 70 Facilities
UPS has announced plans to cut 20,000 jobs and close more than 70 facilities as it looks to reduce the volume it delivers for Amazon by more than 50% by June.
“The first phase of our network reconfiguration includes 164 operational closures, including 73 building closures by the end of June of this year,” the firm’s CFO Brian Dykes said.
Dykes also said position changes are not only connected to the buildings it is closing but will also be made across the entire U.S. network.
“Our planned reductions are in line with the total Amazon volume decline,” he said.
Dykes said associated with this volume reduction, UPS is undertaking the largest network reconfiguration in our history.
During UPS’ fourth-quarter earnings conference call in January, CEO Carol Tomé said the company had partnered with Amazon for almost 30 years and that when its contract came up this year, UPS decided to reassess the relationship.
“Amazon is our largest customer but it’s not our most profitable customer,” Tomé said at the time. “Its margin is very dilutive to the U.S. domestic business.”
UPS Cannot Compete with Amazon on Price
Margin is “very dilutive to the U.S. domestic business,” says UPS CEO.
Q: And why is that?
A: USP accepted a Teamster’s Union Contract that USP Could not afford.
CNN report UPS is Cutting 20,000 Jobs. It’s Not What You Think.
Actually, it is exactly what I thought, in advance.
UPS in January announced a “glide down” plan to cut its business with Amazon, its largest customer, in half by the middle of 2026. UPS CEO Carol Tome said Tuesday that most of the Amazon business that it is giving up is “not profitable for us, nor a healthy fit for our network.”
UPS also said it expects to use more automation in its facilities, from sorting packages to label application to loading and unloading trucks, with 400 facilities becoming partly if not fully automated.
The Teamsters union, which represents more than 300,000 UPS hourly workers, said it would fight layoffs of any of its members.
“If UPS wants to continue to downsize corporate management, the Teamsters won’t stand in its way,” said the union’s president, Sean O’Brien. “But if the company intends to violate our contract or makes any attempt to go after hard-fought, good-paying Teamsters jobs, UPS will be in for a hell of a fight.”
If that’s the case, look forward to a UPS bankruptcy.
Common Dreams Blames Greed
If you want to read leftist BS (to which now Trump subscribes), please consider Laid Off UPS Workers Hides Key Factor: Stock Buybacks and Wall Street Greed
UPS, like every major U.S. corporation, is in business to extract as much wealth as possible and shovel it to its shareholders and top executives in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. And like every major corporation, UPS will pay for that wealth extraction by laying off as many workers as possible. That may reduce the production of goods and services, but so be it, if it generates more money for shareholders and executives. In big business today, wealth extraction always comes first.
Let’s look at some of UPS’s numbers. In 2023, the company authorized $5 billion in stock buybacks, starting in 2024 with $500 million and another $5.5 billion in dividends. In 2025, UPS plans to spend another $1 billion on stock buybacks, as well as $5.5 billion more in dividends. In 2024, not incidentally, UPS posted $8.5 billion in profits. This is not a company struggling to make ends meet.
In the last 10 years, UPS went from nearly 40 percent of market share to 21 percent.
Common Dreams’ clowns don’t understand why.
Sean O’Brien and the UPS Layoffs
The Wall Street Journal comments on Sean O’Brien and the UPS Layoffs
President Trump is pressing CEOs to announce new U.S. investments, but has he spoken with his friend Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters boss? United Parcel Service on Tuesday announced 20,000 job cuts and 73 facility closures this year in no small part thanks to Mr. O’Brien.
Last year UPS announced 12,000 job cuts, mostly in management, owing to falling package volumes and rising labor costs from its 2023 Teamsters agreement. That contract raised average compensation for full-time drivers to $170,000 from $145,000 over five years. Teamsters at UPS get up to seven weeks of vacation and don’t pay healthcare premiums.
But fewer workers will now get this as UPS’s rising labor costs have forced cutbacks and prompted more automation at sorting centers. Mr. O’Brien on Tuesday said UPS “is contractually obligated to create 30,000 Teamsters jobs under our current national master agreement.” He’s misleading his members.
A Teamsters summary of the agreement says “UPS will offer part-time employees the opportunity to fill at least 22,500 permanent full-time job openings throughout its operations covered by this agreement,” which “shall include the obligation to create at least 7,500 new full-time jobs from existing part-time jobs” in the last three years of the agreement.
In other words, UPS agreed to make some part-time jobs full-time and give part-time employees a chance to fill some full-time openings. But the rich labor agreement Mr. O’Brien struck is now pricing workers out of jobs. It’s not the first time. His militancy helped drive trucking firm Yellow Corp. into bankruptcy in 2023, costing some 22,000 Teamsters their jobs.
Mr. Trump named Teamsters favorite Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor secretary in return for Mr. O’Brien’s non-endorsement last year. At least the union chief has protected one job.
UPS Slashes Jobs, Losing Business to Amazon, What’s Going On?
On February 5, I commented UPS Slashes Jobs, Losing Business to Amazon, What’s Going On?
Am I the only one who thinks driving a truck and making deliveries is not worth $170,000?
But that is the contract, forced by the idea of “collective bargaining”.
There are about 330,000 UPS driving jobs are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
There are about 335 million people in the US who pay more for deliveries than they should.
In Praise of Amazon
As one of the 335 million, I endorse Amazon’s decision exit business and do their own deliveries.
Common Dreams and the average union clown blames management instead of ludicrous $170,000 contracts with five weeks off to deliver packages.
The lead chart tells the story.
I praise Amazon. So do 335 million thinking customers who get package deliveries.
Trump Got in Bed With Teamsters
This is the result.
In case you missed it, please note Trump’s Nauseating Pick for Labor Secretary Is the Teacher’s Union Favorite
She was confirmed.
Meanwhile, please note Consumers Face End of De Minimis Tariff Exemptions on $800 Packages
The trade provision that allows consumers and resellers to avoid duties on shipments worth $800 or less is ending for products made in China.
Hooray!? 40% to 100% Higher Prices
Who wants that? (Exclusions for cultist parrots who cannot think).
The idea we are going to bring shoe or clothes manufacturing back to the US (or that we would like the price result if we did) is of course ludicrous.
Trump’s Plan to Make Manufacturing Great Again
On April 14, I commented Trump’s Plan to Make Manufacturing Great Again in Pictures
The share of manufacturing employment keeps declining. What role did NAFTA play?
A Trump Cult member gave the expected 5D nonsensical counter.
“The game is not about making shoes in the US. It is much a much bigger game about power and preventing a debt spiral in the US. Trump or Bessent needs to go on Rogan to explain this,” said a cult member on my blog.
But exactly how does making everyone in the US pay more for clothes, shoes lawn mowers etc., prevent a debt spiral in the US?
Excuse me for pointing out Congress controls the debt and the fed the overnight lending rate.
And speaking of debt, the bond market is increasingly likely to revolt over Trump’s proposed budget.
“Instead of looking at this as a glass half full thing, Mish, you are just determined to be negative. There are adjustments that will be made to this new reality.”
Dear Trump cultist: You are brainwashed by the cult. Nonetheless let me point out the math again.
There are 335 million consumers all of whom benefit from lower prices.
Manufacturing employment is 12.7 million. Yet we produce more output now than when employment was 20 million.
But ta da I am now on your side. I will wave my wand and double manufacturing employment to 25 million. TA DA!!!!
Now we have shoes that cost 3 times as much, Appliances that cost 3 times as much and exports of which head to zero.
But hooray!!! No HOORAY!!!! because an extra 13 million people are creating shoes that no one can afford (Unless of course we raise the minimum wage at McDonald’s to $45 an hour.
Instead of being the richest country in the world with the highest standard of living, you want to be more like Vietnam.
Now what the flying F do you and the cult you are in fail to understand about this amazing setup that you want?
James Carville said basically the same thing last week except his was about underwear. There are about twenty American companies making shoes in the US. Their markets are small of course but nothing says they can’t expand and they will. In all they now make over 25 million shoes per year. These shoes do use some some imported material like cloth but the fabrication is American. Till now they left the low-end to the Chinese but now perhaps that market is up for grabs with a modest tariff of 20%. Likewise there are US companies that make sophisticated shoe-making machines along with many European ones as well. By the way the largest one USM just announced that they are moving their Montreal operations to New Hampshire. USM is a very high-tech company in the shoe machine world so it hurts Canada.
Automation still gives some counties a cost advantage just because they pay their workers a fraction of what we pay ours and not because they are more efficient. That cost advantage is decreasing since everyone uses the same machines and these machines use less and less labor to make more and more shoes. Today a shoe made in Vietnam using automation has a cost advantage of 7% of the US retail price compared to a US shoe company using automation. Things are changing rapidly with the introduction of AI which will lower the labor component even more.
Shoes and clothes used to be a good example but that is no longer the case. It’s outdated. A better example is needed to make the argument.
We don’t have shoes that cost x3 times more. Don’t re-educate us.
Reading comprehension, Michael, go back to his post and find your mistaken interpretation of his theoretical/hypothetical.
Anybody over 77? If so, you remember the 1970’s, Nixons dual wage and price controls, stagflation, lousy job market and union prosperity. It won’t be exactly the same, but history seems to be resonating. I can’t wait to pay 100 grand for a union made economy car that fails on the way home from the dealer.
“Now we have shoes that cost 3 times as much, Appliances that cost 3 times as much and exports of which head to zero.”
Since when? If I am in the cult, why don’t I have to make things up? But you have to make things up because you have TDS where everything is Trump’s fault.
If you want to bet on the inflation rate over the next 6 months since you are so certain it is coming, I will be happy to do that. Then we’ll see who is in the cult or who is rational.
Given that everything is going to triple in price, inflation should easily be over 10%. I repeat, do you want to bet on that?
Amazon cherry picks the high margin business. It makes sense that UPS and FedEx have pulled back from the low margin and loser routes.
I think it’s odd that Amazon doesn’t pick up returns themselves. You need to take them to an Amazon return facility or UPS store.
Few people remember when Fed-Ex ended its contract with Amazon. From their perspective it was obvious that Amazon was replacing the higher margin work in more urban areas with low or even negative margin work in rural areas.
At the time I remember wondering whether UPS would face the same decision at some point. I’m guessing that it took a few more years while UPS held onto decent margins, but either their contract is up for renewal and negotiations aren’t going well OR they’re seeing that they’ve basically been empowering their future competition built on the backs of a complex systems of contractors who take on debt and liability while being easily replaced en-masse. This has allowed Amazon Logistics to expand using other people’s money and made unionization much harder since instead of one huge logistics network with tens of thousands of drivers there’s a large network of warehouses who server thousands of contractors who mostly have under 50 employees… and thus classify as small business without requirements for insurance, leave, and retirement offerings that larger companies have.
UPS was once a place where someone could work summers and pay for college and live on their own. Better for Bezo bucks now…
In my area, all of Amazon’s orders are now delivered by random individuals in their private cars (they used to have Amazon-labeled cars years ago, no more). This is the case for both packages of all sizes and groceries. I do not think that these people are “employees”. These seem to be all individual contractors.
Who can then write off depreciation, fuel, Oil changes, etc. The model works. I went from Employee to owner in the very same way by innovating. We also FINISHED the Product, made in Taiwan, with MORE than 75% of the C.O.M.’s which then allowed us to stick a “Made in America” tag on each Motherboard. That made our OEM buyers HAPPY. The finished PC’s were materially STILL made off-shore but the game was played that way back then.
My partners and I went public and I retired. I was MADE IN AMERICA as well and proclaimed a Genius. It is ALL a game of visuals.
I would like to know the actual hourly rate of the UPS drivers. It is difficult to tell what the $170,000 annual wage covers. Does it include benefits (healthcare and sick leave, etc.) and the average overtime of a driver? The average truck driver makes $30/hr for $62,400 per year. That doesn’t include benefits such as healthcare but it would include vacation which would typically be between 2 to 4 weeks per year.
Great questions.
I thought UPS was headed for bankruptcy when they signed that union deal. $170k for truck drivers is an unreasonably high cost for that business. Unions often sink the company they target.
Interesting because Amazon does NOT deliver to this area. The small things come by way of the post office, UPS does the larger. FedEx covers the area too, but I don’t know who ships using them. No one I buy from does.
It’s the others category that’s amazing. Shipping from China is now using the “others” category.
China has no shippers in the US delivering packages.
Other has nothing to do with China per se.
Buy stuff directly from China and you’ll see what I mean. They no longer use USPS/UPS/Fedex. China’s been building warehousing and shipping infra in the US.
Can you please list which Chinese companies are building US warehouses and delivery systems.
I have bought items directly from China. They typically use either the USPS or DHL to deliver inside the United States. Delivery to the United States from China They use China Post to ship from China to the US.
Not in my area, it’s unmarked and only trackable in their own system. They used to use USPS/UPS, but that stopped a couple years ago as they built their own infra.
is your “area” bejing? China ships via China post, which transfers to US post when it enters the united states. google logistics and look up how carriers work.
the guy that hands you the package isnt’ the chain that brought it from wherever it was shipped from.
make an effort to educate and understand or remain in the darkness.
BS. You didn’t give us a shred of evidence that Chinese firms have set up their own US warehouse and delivery infrastructure. It’s all just a fantasy in your head till you prove it.
How about some evidence?
Give a name of a US based delivery company owned by the Chinese. Also give an example of the product that you bought (i.e. provide a link to that product).
You are talking about TEMU.
I have never purchased anything from TEMU. But it is similar. https://www.shipbob.com/blog/temu-shipping-guide/
Unions are a display of the same problem of power in politics: Once someone does something to improve something, they feel compelled to keep fighting harder. Eventually they go from being helpful (protecting factory workers from dangerous work place conditions) to a hindrance (jobs are lost because negotiated higher wages are less elastic than estimated).
power is a function of human behaviour, whether the power is in the hands of unions or banks or politicians. Inertia is the property of a system to remain stable until destabilized by outside forces. Power uses inertia to try to preserve it while destroying power in others.
its a constant battle for a stable balance, this creates social strife. it is a fact that can’t be corrected by more power.
In other words, it will work itself out but 90% of the final verdict is controlled by LOBBIES, Politicians and the Media. We have become a centrally controlled mess just like China. We have to become LIKE them to KILL THEM.
Trump has had eight years to pull together fine-tune how he and whomever he hires to bring manufacturing back to the USA where is his plans hasn’t he been working on it for 8 years?? instead it’s tariffs and cutting funding from agencies and healthcare A side note I think his biggest error is to cut funding for medical research thus handing new technologies and new manufacturing of such medical advances to other countries
But my point today is: What about the peasants?The news that dosent hit the big headlines Here’s an example: and this happening all over the country Metro-east plant closure will cost 110 jobs as some work moves to Mexico
Read more at: https://www.examiner-enterprise.com/story/news/2025/04/30/price-tower-sale-mcfarlin-bankruptcy-court-bartlesville-oklahoma-frank-lloyd-wright/83355374007/ Whose ‘fault’ is all this? We need only to look into ones mirror.
if you think Trump has had “8 years” as your opening premise, your math is faulty and therefore your assumptions are wrong.
try to at least pretend to have a provable argument, before you fall over your own shoes and face plant in public…
Trump was elected in 2016, by my math he has had about 8 and 1/2 years to figure out how he wants to President. How long do your records say it was since he was first elected, mr perfectly researched everything?
My last two ‘three day’ ground advantage parcels took 10 and 14 days. Warrendale, PA and Sanford, FL I believe are being self-sabotaged. Boxes just sit around for many days, no information, no nothing. I cannot run a small business like this so off to UPS to pay $6 more and get two day delivery. Expect UPS to gain business back as critical business packages are forced to flee the USPS.
two data points do not a trend make, as my mom used to say…
Your Mom was smart. She waited for NUMBER THREE and was then convinced. 2 and 3 are the same. JUST MORE of the same and then you got your trend with smoke and mirrors. This is THE TRUMP GAME….he is pretty smart but stupid the rest of the time because he knows the game, plays it well and then profits. He did that in his building businesses and pushed small subs out.
We live part time in a Coastal city and the USPS does final delivery here – most of the time on the smaller parcels. UPS and FED-X deliver the rest. There are no “side hustle” delivery people here. That people delivery business has gone from UBER to LOCAL COMPANIES who bought Hybrids to shuttle sick people 55 miles in-land to Bigger hospitals. It was just announced that our local Samaritan Hosp is being bought out by a large hosp operator who will whittle the local costs for health care away over time, paying 8-year trained Specialist LESS who are now quitting. I suspect that the large CORPS will own it all in less than 20 years and we will be like Canada, waiting in line for poor treatment options. THIS IS WHERE AMERICA IS GOING with everything and The TrumpCo people WANT that because THEY GET LOBBIED by these Corps to whittle away small businesses.
Vertical integration is the new way to increase efficiencies. “The world is no longer flat” to parody a popular business book of former times.
China has been building the vertically integrated supply chains for the last two decades to gain a competitive advantage.
Clothing is an example.
Raw materials: From the production of textiles, button, zippers, etc, China produces all the raw materials needed for the manufacture of clothing. The US does not.
Production: Large modern factories, automated where possible, plus a highly skilled workforce willing to work long hours for $3/hr.
There is no way for the US to copy this. It would take more than a decade to replicate what China did, and no one wants to become highly skilled to earn $3/hr.
Then extend this to hundreds of other manufacturing areas.
Many US companies are already using vertical integration and many more are moving that way.
Lol! Many already? And yet you said it was the “new” way.
Care to name a few examples of companies that are 100% vertically integrated in the US?
Maybe a lemonade stand? Oh wait. The US imports 27% of it’s sugar. And 7% of it’s lemons. So be careful where you source those inputs.
I wonder how many decades it will take the US auto industry to be 100% vertically integrated in the US like Trump wants? Care to hazard a guess?
action of accomplishment is usually directly tied to the desirability of the outcome, especially when tied to incentives.
if the incentive is to not live under the economic thumb of an unfriendly communist government like Red China, the timeline may prove to be more rapid than you are able to comprehend.
you live in the now and believe the world is concrete, but the world is always in transition, China was farmers starving in the 1960’s that was less than 100 years ago.
it changed.
guess what?
it will change again……
Lol! Yes. Trump is “trying” to turn the US into Communist China, by dictating that all things must be made here in a completely integrated supply chain. Which would take a decade or more to implement.
He has a few problems in his way.
First, is that the US has a somewhat free enterprise system where individual companies get to decide where to source their inputs. Not the President.
Second, is that he has a very short time frame to accomplish this. Two years till the midterms. Four years till he is gone.
Third, there is going to be a lot of pain over the next two years and Americans won’t put up with it. Many of the 33 million small businesses will be impacted severely.
Trump is going to cave, over and over again. He will claim victory with a few small insignificant deals. He will not succeed in vertically integrating the US supply chain.
You’re nuts if you think he will.
love that “there is no way for the US to copy this” while laying out exactly how the chinese did it.
if one man can make it, another can copy it.. you mistake lack of desire often accompanied by legal and profit motives, for the impossibility of action.
you ignore history or lack an understanding of it, both of which erode your arguments rapidly.
Gwako, they did NOT vertically integrate with willing people. Those starving in the country side moved to big cities, complete with smog, and streams of heavy metals where they dismantled our PC boards and did it next to the streams used for irrigation. CHINA IS A CESSPOOL. My best friend went there and made $10 Million (now retired) helping the Chinese understand water treatment…
…..then they fired HIS company and he retired but made his money teaching THEM how to do it.
This is the way of the world now. There are always victims of “progress.” Politicians DECIDE who dies first and then on down the line until EVERYONE IS DEAD but the UNIONS, the willing laborers (where are they? They need $170,000 with BENE’s to drive CARS and TRUCKS. WHOA!
America has to go backwards to move forward and our young Gen-ZERS will not put up with it for long, right?
Papa: it will only be vertical here when the kids realize, finally, that being influencers will no longer be profitable. There is GOOD money in YouTube videos, for example. That model will be whittled away by Google finally.
It will never be vertical here as long as we remain a mostly open and free economy. I don’t think Trump will manage to turn us into a full blown dictatorship where he gets to tell everyone what to do and who to buy from.
As far as “influencers” go, as long as they are pulling in millions, I don’t think they are too worried.
MAGA’s say you’re wrong and “hold my beer”
What’s wrong with the USA again?
The unsaid question here is how long until the teamsters force a union vote on the Amazon delivery guys in order to obtain their labor monopoly on delivery services.
But exactly how does making everyone in the US pay more for clothes, shoes lawn mowers etc., prevent a debt spiral in the US?
Of the $70 pair of sneakers, if you use USA labor, that would add about $24 to the cost of the shoes if you paid 10X the labor costs.
However, $35 of the $70 is added from the wholesale to retail price. So if the shoe maker sold directly to the consumer versus say a Foot Locker, the price of shoes could possibly be less.
Furthermore, if you bring manufacturing home, IMO, Americans will innovate and likely create better and longer lasting products.
Instead of looking at this as a glass half full thing, Mish, you are just determined to be negative. There are adjustments that will be made to this new reality.
If there is an alternative plan to trade deficits, I would love to hear it. Do you have anything other putting down Trump and his supporters?
Allowing China and other nations to export things to our country and pay nothing in tariffs, which was the majority of their shipments, is and was insane.
New Balance is a USA company that makes sneakers in the USA. They cost $199. Costco imports sneakers from China and they sell for $20. You can buy 10 pairs of “bad” China made shoes before you make up the cost of 1 USA pair.
No one holds a gun to the American consumer and forces them to buy Chinese goods, the consumer decides what they are willing to buy and at what price point.
Imposing tariffs (i.e. taxes) on American consumers because you don’t like where they are manufactured is the insanity. You are a central planning communist and that has never worked out anywhere. You want all Americans to pay $199 for shoes when $20 would be otherwise available. That’s insane.
As for trade deficits, you reduce them by competing. Someone may eventually figure out how to use robots to make shoes and once that happens they will be the winner until a better robot comes along.
yes, an economic gun has been held to our heads for decades..
The difference isn’t about ‘wear’, but YMMV.
Unfortunately, this is simply the beginning of things to come………..
an optimist..
USPS delivers AMZN last mile at a loss. On Sun 95% empty USPS trucks deliver AMZN Prime paying overtime. USPS are federal workers. Ilan wants to privatize them, but the union resists. Trump will move them to the Commerce Dept. He nominated a new CEO. If u glue all four by weight they deflated since 2018 . Warren Buffett retires in Dec 2025
when usps delivers packages for amazon, they do so because Amazon has a contract with USPS. its not charity, they have the ability to negotiate new terms for those contracts. Mispelling elon doesn’t make you witty or especially insightful, but does help one perceive your biases more easily.
To persuade people, one must 1st, try not to antagonize them by using corrupted language.
Tacking on spurious meaningless phrases like “Warren buffet xxxx” adds nothing to your points and merely makes it look like you lack the ability to focus on your points. (which lessens the viability of any valid points made)
All signs point to not a recession but a depression.
a broken clock is still right twice a day. keep posting that thought, sooner or later you will be correct by virtue of persistence alone. That however does not qualify as insightful or useful, but it does show industry on your part, which points to strong character, but without purposes it is squandered…
hopefully somehow we can turn this into a discussion about donald trump.
We def don’t have enough of that yet /s
Mish, I can’t decide whether I like you or loathe you. Your analysis sometimes seems prescient and considerate and deeply thoughtful, and other times. I think you’re trolling me and others. The issue of Labor versus Capital in a civilized society is never ending and it requires a deeper appreciation for the context and the goal, or even if there is a commonly understood goal. Wealth extraction unfettered has obvious consequences and leads to a Piketty predicted implosion (I believe). Dialectically opposing that ideal similarly leads nowhere, and in a world with 36 trillion of debt, neither extreme is tenable.
Solutions are always harder than rock-throwing. Please offer us, at least on occasion, something in the direction of a solution.
The “solution” is obvious. Get rid of unions and drive down wages as low as possible. There are employers out there right now that think the federal minimum wage of $7.25 is too high. Workers can afford to work for $2 an hour if they live in cardboard boxes and eat grass clippings. That’s where we need to take things I guess.
meanwhile Another sign of China’s dominance in high technology.
Ericsson and Nokia were cutting 20,000 jobs as Huawei grew https://www.lightreading.com/5g/ericsson-and-nokia-were-cutting-20-000-jobs-as-huawei-grew
This might explain the pivot to India by Vance and Trump. But none of that means Americans first. Remember the US had trch innovators long before any immigration and labor visa programs existed. So did Nokia and Ericsson. At some point governments in Scandinavia will have to step in. Most of Huawei’s wireless technology was all stolen from a hack on Nortel in the 2000s. Those patents are now owned by Ericsson and Nokia. The Canadian government did nothing and let a company that sold all its assets for close to 30B go bankrupt.. The WTO is an absolute disaster and joke as are the enforcement of patents.
Canada arrested Huawei ceo daughter Meng Manzho
The Ripple Effects of Shrinking U.S. ScienceSevere cuts in research funding will cause a complex cascade of effects across the United States and the world.https://undark.org/2025/05/01/opinion-shrinking-science-jenga/
Hopefully we will get less safe and effective science pushed by autocrats.
Thanks for the analysis, Mish. When I saw that $170,000 compensation figure, first thought was “Looks like the government employee contracts negotiated around here”. My state is essentially under government employee union control with the expected performance and cost issues. We also crapped out DeReemer from our political cloaca…and Don took the bait. Very few MAGA folks supported that move here. Unions are negotiating themselves out of jobs in all sectors. Big cuts coming in Oregon, the Covid stank funding is gone.
Is it time to short UPS?
FedEx?
How about trains?
I like trains, especially Lionel.