Amazon says "Bah to NYC"

[SemiSalt]

Amazon cancels plan for NYC headquarters
The company is ditching its plans to build a new headquarters in New York after facing backlash from members of the community


There is no pleasing some people.

[kdh]

From Ocasio-Cortez:

"Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."


Apparently only the government should be able to provide jobs.

[Benno von Humpback]

From Ocasio-Cortez:

"Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."


Apparently only the government should be able to provide jobs.

She's a complete jerk, but if that deal ended up benefiting the NYC working class it would be quite an anomaly and the infrastructure in the city is near complete failure.

[Panope]

One of my mates (a self employed coffee roaster, espresso machine builder, and bicycle wheel builder) has lived in Seattle for 30 years. He and his social circle feel that Amazon (and a few other successful companies) have ruined the place.

He is heartbroken.

Steve

[Chris Chesley]

Amazon AND NYC both dodged a bullet....

[TheOffice]

I've got mixed feelings on this. Amazon does not need tax breaks. Better them then some sports team building a stadium that gets used 10 days a year, but that's a different discussion.

However, redevelopment will come to that area regardless of whether amazon moves there. It will be slower, displacing lower income residents over time, but in 10 years the end result will be the same. Some real estate developer will buy up the land and Google or the like will move out of mid-town into newer, cheaper digs.

[kdh]

One of my mates (a self employed coffee roaster, espresso machine builder, and bicycle wheel builder) has lived in Seattle for 30 years. He and his social circle feel that Amazon (and a few other successful companies) have ruined the place.

He is heartbroken.

Steve

Boston made a bid for Amazon's HQ2 but didn't include any specific tax incentives.

Industries are thriving here and we really don't need any more, especially the added traffic.

[kdh]

From Ocasio-Cortez:

"Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."


Apparently only the government should be able to provide jobs.

She's a complete jerk, but if that deal ended up benefiting the NYC working class it would be quite an anomaly and the infrastructure in the city is near complete failure.

I wouldn't say complete jerk, just idealistic, not particularly focused on how to pay for the government services and regulations she proposes. At least Bernie has "Wall St" paying for everything (college, health care) through a transaction tax (which would put everyone at my company out of work).

I wish I were wrong but I don't think there's any helping the working class in a global economy with a huge supply of unskilled labor. Amazon has a lot of demand for it, but the work is a miserable warehouse job for little pay.

[BeauV]

A few observations:

First, no company "needs" tax breaks. Neither do sports teams, or not-for-profit organizations, or any other group of people trying to do something. They ask for them because they've been taught that they can get them. This is just negotiating and folks like AOC and others ought to park their morality lectures at the door. The politicians who agree to tax breaks are only trying to look good to the voters by giving away the voters money, something that all sorts of organizations are trying hard to take advantage of. I understand that folks like to find a "bad guy" and a "good guy" in all this, but that's utter tripe. Grown ups negotiate over things all the time, from the price of sugar to a divorce settlement. Amazon and those they negotiated with in NY are adults and if there was a "bad deal" it was because one party didn't do their job very well, not because of some evil-doer who is taking advantage of the poor little cherubs. AOC and the like look like the amateur media suck ups they are, which includes a lot of folks like the President and various senior NY political types.

Second, Amazon is big and now somewhat profitable. However, it's based on a model which requires either extremely low labor rates (to run the consumer retail business) or extremely cheap capital (to support he cloud business). I have no idea why folks think of Amazon as a technology company, AWS is a tiny (in head count) part of their business. Yet, AWS provides about 125% of the profits to the company and is "cool", so folks think of Amazon as a tech company. This is a complete misunderstanding of what a tech company really is. AWS doesn't invent technology it provides a novel way of letting other folks outsource a big capital intensive piece of their IT infrastructure. As such, it has more in common with a warehouse rental company or a tractor operating company than it does with someone who builds warehouses or tractors respectively.

Two things are happening, with the recovery from the crash of 2008 labor rates have been held extremely low; secondly, with the US Gov "stimulating" the economy with extremely low interest rates capital costs have also been extremely low. Amazon, being a pretty well run low-margin company realized that it could build a business capitalizing on both of those facts. Some of us believe that Amazon is a terrific short because as interest rates climb AWS will become MUCH less profitable and with the idiot-in-chief cutting off the supply of cheap labor the expenses to operated Amazon's retail business will climb quickly. I would be short on AMZN if I only knew when the jaws of these major trends were going to close. I believe this explains Amazon's aggressive move into businesses where high margins can be generated, like entertainment.

Finally, I'd point out that there are plenty of folks who told Amazon to pound sand when they went looking for a "deal". Those folks may have been right or wrong; it's not clear that Amazon could or would deliver the number of jobs they forecast. However, the real number for the NY Subsidies is about $500m, not the $3b which folks like to headline their articles with. So both sides are lying about the actual economic terms of the "deal".

As to folks in a city moaning about how companies like Amazon are ruining place like Seattle. Again, I don't have much sympathy. We have heaps of it in Santa Cruz and I'm not very popular when I point out that the same forces which have forced poor folks out have also resulted in a much higher average income, new libraries, more stable tax base, better roads, all sorts of lovely environmental activities which the city couldn't previously afford, and a host of other improvements which people simply choose to ignore in their fantasy litany of how "wonderful" the city used to be. Let's get real about Seattle. The area down where Amazon has re-built the town used to be filled with dive bars, collapsing flop house hotels (one of which Kim's company did a great job of restoring), drug dealers, and all manner of other crud. I have no nostalgia about the great old days of Seattle. But that's because as a young man I worked in that area as a musician. It was ugly, dangerous, polluted, and filled with the poor folks like me. Now it's clean, new, safe, etc.... But, along the way we lost the latex and leather sex shop, the three dozen massage parlors filled with asian women who were forced to work there, and a number of other really lousing features of the old Seattle.

OK, I'll go back to working on financial stuff now and stop ranting.

[Benno von Humpback]

From Ocasio-Cortez:

"Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."


Apparently only the government should be able to provide jobs.

She's a complete jerk, but if that deal ended up benefiting the NYC working class it would be quite an anomaly and the infrastructure in the city is near complete failure.

I wouldn't say complete jerk, just idealistic, not particularly focused on how to pay for the government services and regulations she proposes. At least Bernie has "Wall St" paying for everything (college, health care) through a transaction tax (which would put everyone at my company out of work).

I wish I were wrong but I don't think there's any helping the working class in a global economy with a huge supply of unskilled labor. Amazon has a lot of demand for it, but the work is a miserable warehouse job for little pay.

I agree for the most part, but a city of 10 million people is a lot to give up on. The high-end real estate boom isn't going to turn it into Singapore.

[BeauV]

From Ocasio-Cortez:

"Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."


Apparently only the government should be able to provide jobs.

She's a complete jerk, but if that deal ended up benefiting the NYC working class it would be quite an anomaly and the infrastructure in the city is near complete failure.

I wouldn't say complete jerk, just idealistic, not particularly focused on how to pay for the government services and regulations she proposes. At least Bernie has "Wall St" paying for everything (college, health care) through a transaction tax (which would put everyone at my company out of work).

I wish I were wrong but I don't think there's any helping the working class in a global economy with a huge supply of unskilled labor. Amazon has a lot of demand for it, but the work is a miserable warehouse job for little pay.

I agree for the most part, but a city of 10 million people is a lot to give up on. The high-end real estate boom isn't going to turn it into Singapore.

I read an article that said that Amazon was the #1 customer for warehouse automation robots. Once again, cheap capital eliminating even extremely low paying jobs. An unintended side effect of "stimulating" the economy with cheap capital as opposed to just hiring folks.

Oh, by-the-way, for 2018 Amazon will actually receive about a 1% tax refund from the Fed because of the Trump tax cut. That's a negative number on a revenue of about $11.2 Billion in profits. It turns out that the Trump tax cut didn't close the loopholes which Amazon uses, he just cut the tax rate.

[Benno von Humpback]

Well I guess it'll just take another generation to create a proletariate whose expectations have been lowered sufficiently that they'll work as domestics and shoeshiners and live in cold water walkups again. Problem solved.

[LarryHoward]

From Ocasio-Cortez:

"Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."


Apparently only the government should be able to provide jobs.

She's a complete jerk, but if that deal ended up benefiting the NYC working class it would be quite an anomaly and the infrastructure in the city is near complete failure.

I wouldn't say complete jerk, just idealistic, not particularly focused on how to pay for the government services and regulations she proposes. At least Bernie has "Wall St" paying for everything (college, health care) through a transaction tax (which would put everyone at my company out of work).

I wish I were wrong but I don't think there's any helping the working class in a global economy with a huge supply of unskilled labor. Amazon has a lot of demand for it, but the work is a miserable warehouse job for little pay.

I agree for the most part, but a city of 10 million people is a lot to give up on. The high-end real estate boom isn't going to turn it into Singapore.

I read an article that said that Amazon was the #1 customer for warehouse automation robots. Once again, cheap capital eliminating even extremely low paying jobs. An unintended side effect of "stimulating" the economy with cheap capital as opposed to just hiring folks.

Oh, by-the-way, for 2018 Amazon will actually receive about a 1% tax refund from the Fed because of the Trump tax cut. That's a negative number on a revenue of about $11.2 Billion in profits. It turns out that the Trump tax cut didn't close the loopholes which Amazon uses, he just cut the tax rate.

I'm guessing Trump didn't do that as a favor to Bezos.

[kdh]

Well I guess it'll just take another generation to create a proletariate whose expectations have been lowered sufficiently that they'll work as domestics and shoeshiners and live in cold water walkups again. Problem solved.

Any suggestions? Protectionism? A minimum wage? Do the robots get the minimum wage?

In my hometown of Framingham, MA when I was a kid, union workers at the local GM plant were earning pretty close to what my dad was earning as a highly trained engineer. There were a lot of "executives," what we might now call middle managers, where he worked, along with a lot of administrative help that's now obsolete.

Let's say for the sake of argument that was when America was "great." How do we get back there?

I think the working class of the future will have hot water but likely not two cars, a split-level ranch house on 1/2 an acre, and one parent that stays home with the kids which is what I had growing up, although the 2nd car not until I was 10 or so.

[Benno von Humpback]

Well I guess it'll just take another generation to create a proletariate whose expectations have been lowered sufficiently that they'll work as domestics and shoeshiners and live in cold water walkups again. Problem solved.

Any suggestions? Protectionism? A minimum wage? Do the robots get the minimum wage?

In my hometown of Framingham, MA when I was a kid, union workers at the local GM plant were earning pretty close to what my dad was earning as a highly trained engineer. There were a lot of "executives," what we might now call middle managers, where he worked, along with a lot of administrative help that's now obsolete.

Let's say for the sake of argument that was when America was "great." How do we get back there?

I think the working class of the future will have hot water but likely not two cars, a split-level ranch house on 1/2 an acre, and one parent that stays home with the kids which is what I had growing up, although the 2nd car not until I was 10 or so.

I'm not kidding about the lowered expectations. I think we can support work in a few ways: 1. eduction, 2. family subsides (paid leave, child care, etc), 3. income supplementation for working poor; e.g., increase and extend the EITC to give cash when people don't pay enough tax. That's what I can think of, sitting here.

[kimbottles]

A few observations:

First, no company "needs" tax breaks. Neither do sports teams, or not-for-profit organizations, or any other group of people trying to do something. They ask for them because they've been taught that they can get them. This is just negotiating and folks like AOC and others ought to park their morality lectures at the door. The politicians who agree to tax breaks are only trying to look good to the voters by giving away the voters money, something that all sorts of organizations are trying hard to take advantage of. I understand that folks like to find a "bad guy" and a "good guy" in all this, but that's utter tripe. Grown ups negotiate over things all the time, from the price of sugar to a divorce settlement. Amazon and those they negotiated with in NY are adults and if there was a "bad deal" it was because one party didn't do their job very well, not because of some evil-doer who is taking advantage of the poor little cherubs. AOC and the like look like the amateur media suck ups they are, which includes a lot of folks like the President and various senior NY political types.

Second, Amazon is big and now somewhat profitable. However, it's based on a model which requires either extremely low labor rates (to run the consumer retail business) or extremely cheap capital (to support he cloud business). I have no idea why folks think of Amazon as a technology company, AWS is a tiny (in head count) part of their business. Yet, AWS provides about 125% of the profits to the company and is "cool", so folks think of Amazon as a tech company. This is a complete misunderstanding of what a tech company really is. AWS doesn't invent technology it provides a novel way of letting other folks outsource a big capital intensive piece of their IT infrastructure. As such, it has more in common with a warehouse rental company or a tractor operating company than it does with someone who builds warehouses or tractors respectively.

Two things are happening, with the recovery from the crash of 2008 labor rates have been held extremely low; secondly, with the US Gov "stimulating" the economy with extremely low interest rates capital costs have also been extremely low. Amazon, being a pretty well run low-margin company realized that it could build a business capitalizing on both of those facts. Some of us believe that Amazon is a terrific short because as interest rates climb AWS will become MUCH less profitable and with the idiot-in-chief cutting off the supply of cheap labor the expenses to operated Amazon's retail business will climb quickly. I would be short on AMZN if I only knew when the jaws of these major trends were going to close. I believe this explains Amazon's aggressive move into businesses where high margins can be generated, like entertainment.

Finally, I'd point out that there are plenty of folks who told Amazon to pound sand when they went looking for a "deal". Those folks may have been right or wrong; it's not clear that Amazon could or would deliver the number of jobs they forecast. However, the real number for the NY Subsidies is about $500m, not the $3b which folks like to headline their articles with. So both sides are lying about the actual economic terms of the "deal".

As to folks in a city moaning about how companies like Amazon are ruining place like Seattle. Again, I don't have much sympathy. We have heaps of it in Santa Cruz and I'm not very popular when I point out that the same forces which have forced poor folks out have also resulted in a much higher average income, new libraries, more stable tax base, better roads, all sorts of lovely environmental activities which the city couldn't previously afford, and a host of other improvements which people simply choose to ignore in their fantasy litany of how "wonderful" the city used to be. Let's get real about Seattle. The area down where Amazon has re-built the town used to be filled with dive bars, collapsing flop house hotels (one of which Kim's company did a great job of restoring), drug dealers, and all manner of other crud. I have no nostalgia about the great old days of Seattle. But that's because as a young man I worked in that area as a musician. It was ugly, dangerous, polluted, and filled with the poor folks like me. Now it's clean, new, safe, etc.... But, along the way we lost the latex and leather sex shop, the three dozen massage parlors filled with asian women who were forced to work there, and a number of other really lousing features of the old Seattle.

OK, I'll go back to working on financial stuff now and stop ranting.

Beau’s comments about the changes in Seattle are SPOT ON.

[kdh]

Well I guess it'll just take another generation to create a proletariate whose expectations have been lowered sufficiently that they'll work as domestics and shoeshiners and live in cold water walkups again. Problem solved.

Any suggestions? Protectionism? A minimum wage? Do the robots get the minimum wage?

In my hometown of Framingham, MA when I was a kid, union workers at the local GM plant were earning pretty close to what my dad was earning as a highly trained engineer. There were a lot of "executives," what we might now call middle managers, where he worked, along with a lot of administrative help that's now obsolete.

Let's say for the sake of argument that was when America was "great." How do we get back there?

I think the working class of the future will have hot water but likely not two cars, a split-level ranch house on 1/2 an acre, and one parent that stays home with the kids which is what I had growing up, although the 2nd car not until I was 10 or so.

I'm not kidding about the lowered expectations. I think we can support work in a few ways: 1. eduction, 2. family subsides (paid leave, child care, etc), 3. income supplementation for working poor; e.g., increase and extend the EITC to give cash when people don't pay enough tax. That's what I can think of, sitting here.

I can get behind that. I wish we could do more.

I have a hard time with the idea that our country won't be the land of opportunity that it was for me and my generation. That our kids and grandkids won't have what we had.

[Benno von Humpback]

Well I guess it'll just take another generation to create a proletariate whose expectations have been lowered sufficiently that they'll work as domestics and shoeshiners and live in cold water walkups again. Problem solved.

Any suggestions? Protectionism? A minimum wage? Do the robots get the minimum wage?

In my hometown of Framingham, MA when I was a kid, union workers at the local GM plant were earning pretty close to what my dad was earning as a highly trained engineer. There were a lot of "executives," what we might now call middle managers, where he worked, along with a lot of administrative help that's now obsolete.

Let's say for the sake of argument that was when America was "great." How do we get back there?

I think the working class of the future will have hot water but likely not two cars, a split-level ranch house on 1/2 an acre, and one parent that stays home with the kids which is what I had growing up, although the 2nd car not until I was 10 or so.

I'm not kidding about the lowered expectations. I think we can support work in a few ways: 1. eduction, 2. family subsides (paid leave, child care, etc), 3. income supplementation for working poor; e.g., increase and extend the EITC to give cash when people don't pay enough tax. That's what I can think of, sitting here.

I can get behind that. I wish we could do more.

I have a hard time with the idea that our country won't be the land of opportunity that it was for me and my generation. That our kids and grandkids won't have what we had.

Boy, I wish we could do more too and maybe we can.

With the ongoing upward redistribution of wealth and the means of getting it, I actually think our kids and their kids are going to have huge advantages and privileges and many benefits handed to them. Of course the global level of wellbeing may decline, but they'll still feel rich.

[SemiSalt]

Stamford, Ct, where I live, is considered to be a successful small city. When we moved here in 1976, the HQs of 50 Fortune 500 companies were in either Stamford or the neighboring town of Greenwich. A lot of the big ones, like Xerox, have left. There had been an big urban development program beginning a bit before we got here that leveled a 'working class neighborhood'. Where did the residents go? Bridgeport. That space is all big office buildings now.

Sometime in the 1990s (IIRC), UBS was lured to Stamford by incentives from the state government. They cleared some space downtown and built a huge building including a greatly ballyhooed "largest trading floor in the word." There were a lot of good jobs held by highly educated people. For some reason I don't actually know, UBS fell on harder times. This may have been mostly due to problems in Europe, I'm not sure. There is still some UBS employment here, but the big building is mostly empty and the trading floor is looking for some new use. I think I heard something about drone racing, or similar fancy game use.

The Royal Bank of Scotland built another huge building across the street from UBS with similar incentives from the state. They fell on hard times while the building was still under construction due to the kleptomaniac tendencies of the CEO (or maybe Chairman). Their employment here never reached the expected levels.

Both banks keep their employment here in Stamford just at the levels needed to not have to pay back the tax breaks they got for coming. When those tax breaks expire, they will be gone. Stamford is still doing OK, but the downtown has a 30% vacancy rate in office space.

The GE HQ was a few towns down the Merritt Parkway. At one time, GE Capital rented a lot of space here, then it when poof. GE itself has tried to move HQ to Boston. At first, they said they would build a big building, but I'm told today that they have bought or rented an existing building.

To me, the lesson is that even these big business aren't so very stable. When you have them, it's good, but they can easily disappear, even the real big ones. The business can fall on hard times, or they can be lured by incentives elsewhere, or they can get a new CEO.

[BeauV]

Semi,

I was around Xerox when the old timers still remembers, quite bitterly, that the executives had moved to Stamford CT just to avoid the NY personal state income tax that the executives had to pay in Rochester NY. There was quite literally no other reason to move the HQ from Rochester to Stamford.

Now fast forward to today with people ranting about companies moving their headquarters to Ireland because there is a lower tax rate. What a gaggle of squawking hypocrites. The states were playing the "we've got lower taxes" game for decades before other countries started to do it to the US. The only reason that companies like Google, Microsoft, AmazonHQ, and Apple are located in high tax states is because these are great places to live and a vey specific type of labor wants to live here. Highly valued labor has tremendous leverage, low value labor has none.

Jamie and Eric are talking about what we could do about a situation where our kids will have fewer opportunities than we had. I think that's silly. There are literally tens of thousands of empty jobs looking for people who are trained in the right skills. As a guy with a Philosophy degree I can guarantee that there are zero jobs for me given what I chose for an education. Whose fault is that? One hundred percent MINE. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because I've been reading financial reports all day, but I can't see feeling sorry for folks who study poetry, music, or a host of other things for which there is no demand. I spend decades kicking myself for not getting a degree in something that was in demand. How stupid was I? Really stupid.

I strongly believe that the best thing we can do for our kids is to explain the realities of supply and demand to them. Then tell them that they are in charge of continuously and aggressively learning skills that are in demand and ignoring things are that aren't in demand. School isn't intended to let you learn what your passion is and then try to find a job that will let you follow your passion - what rubbish. School should be used to give you the foundation to be able to learn new things faster than the competition. All that other stuff, it's called developing a hobby. Once you can afford a hobby, knock yourself out.

I read philosophy books now as a hobby and love it; I go sailing when I want to and love that too. I earned those luxuries. For a kid in school now, they need to learn that they don't get luxuries without earning them and hobbies like sailing and poetry are pure luxury.

[kimbottles]

Semi,

I was around Xerox when the old timers still remembers, quite bitterly, that the executives had moved to Stamford CT just to avoid the NY personal state income tax that the executives had to pay in Rochester NY. There was quite literally no other reason to move the HQ from Rochester to Stamford.

Now fast forward to today with people ranting about companies moving their headquarters to Ireland because there is a lower tax rate. What a gaggle of squawking hypocrites. The states were playing the "we've got lower taxes" game for decades before other countries started to do it to the US. The only reason that companies like Google, Microsoft, AmazonHQ, and Apple are located in high tax states is because these are great places to live and a vey specific type of labor wants to live here. Highly valued labor has tremendous leverage, low value labor has none.

Jamie and Eric are talking about what we could do about a situation where our kids will have fewer opportunities than we had. I think that's silly. There are literally tens of thousands of empty jobs looking for people who are trained in the right skills. As a guy with a Philosophy degree I can guarantee that there are zero jobs for me given what I chose for an education. Whose fault is that? One hundred percent MINE. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because I've been reading financial reports all day, but I can't see feeling sorry for folks who study poetry, music, or a host of other things for which there is no demand. I spend decades kicking myself for not getting a degree in something that was in demand. How stupid was I? Really stupid.

I strongly believe that the best thing we can do for our kids is to explain the realities of supply and demand to them. Then tell them that they are in charge of continuously and aggressively learning skills that are in demand and ignoring things are that aren't in demand. School isn't intended to let you learn what your passion is and then try to find a job that will let you follow your passion - what rubbish. School should be used to give you the foundation to be able to learn new things faster than the competition. All that other stuff, it's called developing a hobby. Once you can afford a hobby, knock yourself out.

I read philosophy books now as a hobby and love it; I go sailing when I want to and love that too. I earned those luxuries. For a kid in school now, they need to learn that they don't get luxuries without earning them and hobbies like sailing and poetry are pure luxury.

As some of you know, when I was young I was a very underpaid bicycle racer. Then I found a wonderful gal, we got married and had two sons. I worked as a mechanic in a pump company to support them as bicycle racing did not pay well.

One day my very smart wife suggested I go back to college and get a degree in something that might further our prospects along. So I asked a college counselor “what is a degree that will ALWAYS be in demand.” She told me to become a CPA. I didn’t even know what a CPA was at the time, but I went to college at nights and became one.

Accounting and finance were never my passion, but they sure worked out well for us and I certainly don’t regret my college accounting degree or my career.

My story kind of supports Beau’s comments.

[Olaf Hart]

I agree with your comments Beau, but would add another variable for young folks and education, that is rate of change of job substitution.

Today, you don’t just pick vocational training for a particular job, you now have to predict if that job will still be around in some form in ten to twenty years.

I went to University in the late sixties, even then my educational opportunities were determined by my high school scores, so becoming a doctor started when I won my first scholarship in year six.

Most people who did an arts degree did so because they had no other options, not because they were into philosophy.

So today, this problem is much worse. I spend time talking young people into doing a trade, rather than accepting a University place in something they don’t want.

I certainly wouldn’t wast my time doing medicine again, talked my kids out of it, intelligent people can do much smarter things than being paid peanuts and expected to work 24/7 just to keep people alive...

[BeauV]

...snip... another variable for young folks and education, that is rate of change of job substitution.

...snip...

I was interviewed to join a Board of Directors a while back. The guys on the nominating committee had pulled my LinkedIn profile and were stunned that I've basically changed jobs about every 4 years and changed fields at least five times in 45 years. They asked: "Why did you change jobs so often?" I answered: "Stock options in start-ups are 4 year vesting. Only a fool would stay after than instead of moving to the next hot start-up and vesting stock in more than one company. No wise investor ever puts all their money in one company. I don't want all my start-up stock in one company either." While the first guy pondered that another one asked: "But, why did you change fields from Software, to Semiconductor Hardware, to Disk Drives, to Graphics, to Private Equity and financial services?" I replied: "Well, about ever five to ten years markets level out and the explosive growth rate of 50% per year in that area of the market cools off to about 5-10% per year. There's no point in working in a moribund market. So I went and found a rapidly growing market and climbed in."

I got the job.

It is simply not possible to stay in one field in the tech world for longer than a decade. Sure, one can be a carpenter or plumber, but even those folks are using technologies today that simply didn't exist when I was a carpenter while in college. The world is changing constantly and the real opportunities are on the flame-front of change, not in the scorched early after the fire has burned by.

[Panope]

...............As to folks in a city moaning about how companies like Amazon are ruining place like Seattle. Again, I don't have much sympathy. We have heaps of it in Santa Cruz and I'm not very popular when I point out that the same forces which have forced poor folks out have also resulted in a much higher average income, new libraries, more stable tax base, better roads, all sorts of lovely environmental activities which the city couldn't previously afford, and a host of other improvements which people simply choose to ignore in their fantasy litany of how "wonderful" the city used to be. Let's get real about Seattle. The area down where Amazon has re-built the town used to be filled with dive bars, collapsing flop house hotels (one of which Kim's company did a great job of restoring), drug dealers, and all manner of other crud. I have no nostalgia about the great old days of Seattle. But that's because as a young man I worked in that area as a musician. It was ugly, dangerous, polluted, and filled with the poor folks like me. Now it's clean, new, safe, etc.... But, along the way we lost the latex and leather sex shop, the three dozen massage parlors filled with asian women who were forced to work there, and a number of other really lousing features of the old Seattle.

OK, I'll go back to working on financial stuff now and stop ranting.

Beau,

No question that Seattle is cleaner.

The complaint is that Seattle is no longer affordable for the working class and also that congestion is a disaster no matter what color your shirt.

I've no dog in this fight as I left Seattle 30 years ago. However, I'll take the "old Seattle" over the present. I like a diverse population. I like a little grittiness. I like to be able to drive at a reasonable pace.

My mother moved to Seattle in 1976. Single. Uneducated. Unskilled. Raised in Southern Idaho. She was able to buy a house while selling advertising for a local radio station. The place was at top of Queen Anne Hill, overlooking downtown. As a 10 year old, I used to walk downtown, passing all those bums, peep shows, etc. Never had a problem.

Our next door neighbor was an old retired guy from Alabama. Salt of the earth. He pushed a broom around a Boeing factory for 30 years. We got along great. I used to fix is lawn mower for him. He (and the other neighbors) got a real kick out of my antics. No chance this stuff would be tolerated today. A real shame.

[Olaf Hart]

There are similar storys for most large cities Steve, especially those on the Pacific Rim.

It’s the same story down here in Oz, in Enzed, in BC, and many Asian cities.

Everyone wants to live on the coast within walking distance of a large CBD.

[kdh]

Adele said to Ann and me last night that she “doesn’t like science.” I think mostly she doesn’t like her teacher, but I told her we should talk about the relationship between what she knows and its potential for helping her earn a living.

Eric and I were discussing future prospects for the working class relative to the past. To me the primary driver for the wealth disparity is the supply/demand picture for the skilled vs the unskilled

[Benno von Humpback]

Adele said to Ann and me last night that she “doesn’t like science.” I think mostly she doesn’t like her teacher, but I told her we should talk about the relationship between what she knows and its potential for helping her earn a living.

Eric and I were discussing future prospects for the working class relative to the past. To me the primary driver for the wealth disparity is the supply/demand picture for the skilled vs the unskilled

...and I was on about the political, economic, and cultural barriers to the acquisition of skills, as the meritocracy becomes hereditary. I am much more worried about the deteriorating environmental and sociopolitical climate my daughter will inherit than her economic prospects.

Keith, I agree, it’s all about the teaching and the learning environment. Math tutoring can also be magical and helped turn my daughter, who was anything but a natural and struggled in high school, into a happy quantitative scientist. Perfect example of how culture and economics perpetuate the meritocracy.

[BeauV]

Keith, great teachers can make an amazing difference. I attribute my own modest success to five folks. These folks decided to help. My parents were sort of supposed to, but many don't. The others were just wonderful and I thanked them profusely.

Adele seems to be a very bright and personable young lady. I don't know her well enough to advise you at all, but I'd suggest to you that a key feature of the folks I know who have done well has been a relatively insatiable curiosity and willingness to learn new things. I've found that personality type throughout the tech industry, sailing, financial services, and the law. Now, whenever I'm considering working with a start-up company, a key threshold for me is answering the question: "Does the leadership team love to learn?" If they do, I'm much more inclined to join in.

"Life is a box of chocolates." (You never know what you're going to get and you need to deal with the world being different from your expectations. That's my interpretation.) I can't predict what they best new area of knowledge will be for making money. I know now that I've been wrong too many times. I can predict that whatever is "hot" right now probably won't be "hot" in 20 years. People need to prepare themselves for continuous change and learn the skills it takes to learn new things repeatedly. I'm saddened by all the folks I meet who believe that they're done learning when they leave school, expect to stay in the same job all their life, and have never developed a deep sense of curiosity about how things work. Those folks expect the box of chocolates to all be raspberry truffles (my fav.) when the world is clearly not like that.

[SemiSalt]

Adele said to Ann and me last night that she “doesn’t like science.” I think mostly she doesn’t like her teacher, but I told her we should talk about the relationship between what she knows and its potential for helping her earn a living.

Eric and I were discussing future prospects for the working class relative to the past. To me the primary driver for the wealth disparity is the supply/demand picture for the skilled vs the unskilled

A lot of what I hear pushing students to major in stem subjects seems misplaced to me. I was a math major. I assure you that I never saw a job ad like "Wanted mathematician. BA including 4 semesters of calculus required." The same might be said of chem, physics and bio majors. For anyone actually interested in these subjects, a PhD plus post-grad work is the entry level.

That said, I did get a job as a Mathematician with an MS, and I worked in operations research and management science for about 15 years until I got sucked into the software world. The first company did work on submarine search for the Navy. I left after 4 years for personal reasons and went to PepsiCo. The old complany grew like a banshee for a few more years until the end of the cold war when Navy funding dried up, so the old job would not have lasted for ever. I left PepsiCo when the rise of the personal computer triggered the demise of internal management science departments. As noted above, the world pushes you around, like it or not.

[Jamie]

To echo the great comments made above. Markets and people are terrible at predicting future demand. When I was a college major, students of Chinese were doomed to careers of studying obscure poetry and the students of Russian and Japanese had the bright future. Who would have guessed what was going to happen next? Even a CPA is no longer a guarantee of a good career because of automation and shared services.

..and I was on about the political, economic, and cultural barriers to the acquisition of skills, as the meritocracy becomes hereditary. I am much more worried about the deteriorating environmental and sociopolitical climate my daughter will inherit than her economic prospects.

That's what happens when your basic education system is very localized and based on property taxes.

Even into the third century AD, Rome was still the best game in town, by far. But slaves (robots) had damaged the labor market, concentration of land into estates (Apple, Google, Amazon) pushed small landowners (mainstreet brick and mortar) into subsistence farming or being tenants to the estates (if not replaced by slaves) and Romes ability to manage important issues like handling the migration and resettlement of displaced barbarian tribes declined due to political infighting (let's build a wall).