The months-long lockdown in the city of Wuhan in China's Hubei province - where the coronavirus pandemic started - has been lifted. A light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps? Two and a half months, mind, so maybe two months left for us Brits?
I wonder if we will ever know the actual death toll in China, I bet it's a lot more than three and a bit thousand.
which is why I said: I seriously doubt the veracity of any information released by the Chinese government.
I'm afraid this is pretty incoherent. The system forced them to have a job to survive - um I think that was always the case. You think we can all get by without working in some woolly way? We are all forced to work as we need to eat etc. I don't have a problem with people making more money than me by selling more stuff. Bezos didn't become that rich by paying warehouse staff minimum wage.....I think that situation kinda predated him. He got rich from creating and easier way to get stuff people needed. He is richer than me because he had better ideas at the right time and the ability to make them happen It's not clear what your line of work is that gives you moral superiority over those that buy and sell. but I don't feel any moral wrong in employing people or making a profit, when I can. And moreover I basically lack the jealousy. I might like to have more stuff. Particularly right here and now but it never bothers me that someone that I knew once or another that I will never meet has got some multiple of the amount of stuff I have now. And If that person loses it tomorrow it doesn't make my lot any better or increase my happiness one dot.
Of course anyone can get rich from striking it lucky and hard work, in some cases get a leg up from their parents and some are rag to riches tales however he got seriously rich, more richer than should have been because he avoid paying taxes. The company paid very tiny amount of tax in UK, also paid no corporate income tax in US. I am not a jealous type either, as long as they pay their share of taxes that's fine, if they don't then they don't deserve praise.
Best comments on an article about Britain 'uniting' in clapping for Boris that then showed a video of 3 people clapping: "that Boriis was in intensive care shook me down to my boots like nothing since the shooting of John Lennon in 1981." "Been out with wok and wooden spoon only one neighbour also out. The media need shooting for this." "I didn't, prefer to quietly pray for him." "Clapping sheeple for fake news. Just watched a video of a hospital were they were passing off literally dummies as patients in NY. Where are all these dead people? does anybody actually know anybody with it? not heresay, but personally" To someone who joked in his street the silence was deafening: "racist little hater..."
Meanwhile, in the Colonies, Wisconsin holds its primary... The guy below is one of their politicians, he said that was totally safe to go out to vote...
I can see how it might be, I have a pretty unusual viewpoint on all this. My hobby for the past few years has been developing, or more often collecting, a toolbox of technologies that allows the decoupling of communities from centralised systems - Leveraging automation for a sort of techo-agrarianism. After being embedded in the history of labour and social theory for so long it's easy to forget that not everyone has. He's actually a beneficiary of Metcalfe's law, a telecommunication law that states that the value of a network increases proportional to the square of the number nodes, or users, connected to it. It's the law that ensures there's only one search engine that matters in Google, only one social network that really matters in Facebook, and only one storefront that matters in Amazon. As their value lies in the size of their global network they are impossible to compete with and hold a monopoly in their respective fields, which is why they act like market forces don't apply to them; They don't. Due to globalisation and their multinational nature they can also pick and choose which laws apply to them along their value chain. It's no coincidence that our electronics are Made in China™, it's cheaper, and it's cheaper because of the asymmetry of power and reduced worker's rights that would be illegal in the countries on the end of that value chain. It's not about personal jealousy, or whatever. It's about the twin pillars of our society being Capitalism and Democracy, and globalisation inverting the relationship between the two - Capitalism, specifically multinationals (not small business owners), now being free to operate across multiple jurisdictions, thus pitting workers and their rights against each other. Once Capitalism operated within Democratic structures, now Democracy operates within Capitalist structures and that's significant because it eviscerates the power of the ballot box.
That would be the idea behind Universal Basic Income, yes. Which Spain is implementing, initially as a response to the pandemic but with a view to making it a permanent part of Spanish life. I don't know how hard you work - hell, I don't know how hard Bezos works - but if you crunch the numbers... The median income for the UK is £35,204. Jeff Bezos (probably) makes $78.48 billion a year - that's £63.6 billion. In comparative terms, that's 1,806,612.9x more than the median UK income. Does Bezos work 1,806,612.9x harder than the average person in the UK? Is he 1,806,612.9x smarter? Does he deliver 1,806,612.9x more value? Pulling this vaguely back on topic, the median salary for a Registered Nurse in the UK is £24,816. Does Bezos do more good than 2,562,862.7 nurses? If the answer to any one of these questions is anything other than a resounding "yes, absolutely," then perhaps Bezos hasn't really earned all that money, and wouldn't have so much in a fair and just society. EDIT: Here's a fun extract from the BI piece: Here's why it's extra interesting: without Bezos, that $15-an-hour worker would be earning the same working at a different warehouse; without those $15-an-hour workers, Bezos would be bankrupt. Who's delivering the value there?
Bezos had some good ideas within Amazon, but I'm not convinced his ideas are worth his current bank balance. That said, obviously enough people do think so, as Amazon is constantly slushing his fund.
The $15 an hour worker didn't come up with the concept and put it into practice, build up a hugely successful business over many years, develop new strategies and concepts, revolutionise the industry, branch out into various fields. All of which ensured a world wide business employing close to 1M people. Yeah his wealth is obscene, but why does it bother you so much?
...because it's, in your own words, obscene? Because a decent proportion of that wealth comes from dodging tax that would have been money we could have used to, gee, I dunno, pay for more hospitals, more nurses, more doctors, more ventilators, more PPE... Because yet more of that wealth comes from treating workers like garbage? I guess the question is, why doesn't it bother you? EDIT: This is a fun little way to look at it, if a little out of date now: You Are Jeff Bezos - now spend all your money. G'wan, try.
What he said. They can afford to pay for better working conditions, but they don't. They can afford to pay for delivery drivers to be on 'proper' contracts with benefits like sick pay, holiday entitlement, etc, but they don't. They can afford to not have brutally punishing workloads in their warehouses, but they don't. They can afford for staff to not feel like they can't leave their post to pee because they're afraid of being penalised for poor productivity, but they don't. They can afford to contribute back to the open source projects they use to make obscene amounts of money through AWS, but they don't. (This latter point isn't necessarily legally questionable in terms of the open-source licenses, but it's a case of following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.) They can afford to pay their fair share of taxes without employing complicated schemes which basically amount to tax avoidance, but they don't. EDIT: Ninja'd by @Gareth Halfacree, see his link.
Because Bezos could still be living very comfortably and reap the just rewards of his labours on even one percent of his income, and distribute wealth more fairly amongst his workers.
