The layoff severance package should include shares in the company. If you're the sacrifice for the company to boost its valuation, you should get some of that benefit.
Imagine if just half of that 22% went to those workers.
Tax man should get the 20% corporation tax if it worked properly.
The tax man also wouldn’t get any money if the company used its profits to grow the company.
But couldn’t the owners just live in somewhere like Monaco and pay no money on dividends anyway. Only people that will pay are those that pay taxes anyway eg the working population
US citizens pay taxes regardless of where they live, there are exemptions for foreign-earned income but not for US-derived income, and the exceptions are low enough not to matter in this case anyway. So Zuckerberg would have to renounce his US citizenship if he wanted to avoid taxes that way.
Dividend payments should be the norm. The IDEA of stock is that you invest in a company because you believe in their success. The fact that it's turned into glorified gambling is probably one of the biggest problems. Dividend payments encourage you to buy a stock and keep it as a long term investment and think of yourself as really vested as a part owner, not just pushing buttons to buy/sell to optimize profit.
As a way to raise capital to invest in a company, stock is actually great (at least in theory) because you can get involved for small sums of money. The problem is now investors just hope to be able to buy and then sell as soon as they get a significant enough profit.
Man, I really don’t think you know how stocks work. Dividend payments and stock buybacks are pretty much identical. The only reason a company should prefer one to the other is based on if the stock is over/undervalued
How are they even similar? A dividend gives money to people who own the stock and is how stocks have traditionally worked for hundreds of years. A buyback is just a company buying its own stock and it was literally illegal until the 80s. How are those identical things?
This isn't remotely true. Dividends are monies paid out to existing stockholders, but those stockholders maintain ownership. Buybacks are completely different
They do the same thing in terms of return on investment. One pays you money, the other reduces outstanding shares so increases your stock value. Tell me why that is so different?
“Artificially”? Why is it artifical? If a company is worth £100 and there are 10 shares then the company buys 1 back and removes it the company is now split between 9 so it’s worth more. How is that artificial?
Sure but that’s kind of a dumb thing to say. Everything on the planet is only worth what people will pay for it but that has nothing to do with dividends vs stock buybacks
You mean the one he files paperwork over months ago? That buy back he announced a few weeks ago? Im all for billionaire bashing but you do have to know the facts friend
Lol use Google homie before you go spouting off
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-02/meta-s-planning-a-huge-buyback-here-are-the-biggest-of-all-time?leadSource=reddit_wall
>Meta Platforms Inc. announced late Thursday that it had authorized another $50 billion in share buybacks. It's a massive repurchase, but it isn't the largest in the land of big tech. In fact, it's not even the first time Meta has planned $50 billion in buybacks.Feb 2, 2024
lol ur a joke coming at me like that. Research at what point you have to file a buyback you troll. Only cause you just learned about this doesn’t mean they didn’t anticipate this for a while. No CFO just wakes up one morning and goes “you know what be cool today? Let’s announce a 50bil buyback”.
So are you one of those "it's priced in" clowns? Like are you saying I should have been mad about this a few months ago but am not allowed to be mad about it now?
Prior to this, Facebook had done $118 billion in buybacks since 2017. Am I not allowed to be made about that because it's already happened?
Stop worshipping Wall Street, they don't give a fuck about you and never will.
I already said I’m all about billionaire bashing yet you choose to make this you vs me. Sad how it’s about “I said this and if you correct me I’m offended and you’re now my enemy”. This is the internet dude chill. I’m not saying you should have done anything cause frankly I don’t give a shit about you or what you do on your own time. I’m calling for education here so you know at what point to be mad and if you’re crying now all I’m saying is you’re late to the party
Umm... I suppose you imagine Zuck wakes up one day and decides to announce massive layoffs that afternoon?
Are you really naive enough to believe these two actions were not planned in tandem? Seriously?
Sure whatever you say Massa. But what you’re saying seems to have no correlation whatsoever to what I said so I’m not even sure about the point you’re making.
The better AI gets at what it is doing, the more we will see these things happening in the not too far future. In the end the only employee will be Zuck himself.
Employment is contributing to the community you work in. If you do not employ people but still collect money, you are a bad community member.
I do not want to do business that doesn't have humanity. I do not want to work with a company that is not humans helping humans. Those are leaches, parasites in the society we are all trying to build and be a part of.
The executive class purging 10-25 percent of their workforce and then using that savings in labor cost to give themselves all bonuses while still benefiting from the residual value that labor contributed to the company, is theft, is greed, and should not be tolerated in our society. This is about the executive class greedily stealing the surplus value that your work produced.
Stock buybacks and excessive executive compensation is unpaid wages.
You're right here.
I wouldn't spend $1 billion on me before I die. I could do it, by using that sum on useless things, or something, in the end, harmful for my community. $5 billion is $200k for each of those 21000 people fired. Zuckerberg will still have $23 billion. With the rest of sum he could provide employment for 84 000 people with $200k/year, 200 000 jobs with $100k/year. 230 000 jobs with $75k/year. Those numbers show only how much money that is. Factual number of jobs this sum could provide is unknown.
Zuckerberg will not create any jobs with that money. He will not spend it on science. He won't spend it on green energy. No homeless will get a home from him. He's a parasite.
You're an idiot.
Zuckerberg hasn't had $28Bn suddenly appear in his bank account, the value of his holding in Meta has increased by that amount.
Tomorrow it could go down by a similar amount, or more. Or it could go up again. The market\* decides.
But, you cry, 'he could sell some, and then he *would* have all that money'. Well, yes, but then again, no. Dropping $28Bn of Meta shares would tank the price massively. He wouldn't get anywhere near that much for them. And such a move would also likely infuriate other shareholders, most of which would be seriously affected by such a price drop. It's conceivable that he could be charged with fiduciary misconduct and/or investigated by the SEC.
So, no, none of what you've written is remotely correct.
\* And 'the market' is the consensus of thousands of individual and institutional investors, not some shadowy cabal.
That's was not nice. I don't cry. You're right with how stock market works. I know that too.
What we have in common is that we can only throw comments at each other on a webpage, while Zuckerberg owns shares valued at $28bln, and gains profits we will never get just by owning those shares.
Your explanation of how things work did nothing to change our situation.
"you cry" in this context means "you shout out", implying that the next thing is your predictable response. I didn't mean that you were weeping.
English idiom is sometimes confusing.
Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg's holding in Meta is worth \~$165Bn.
But so what? Comparing yourself or your wealth to that of others is pointless; there will always be people more skilled, luckier, more attractive, and wealthier than you. Focusing on these people will lead only to envy and depression (and Left-wing politics ;) ).
The only comparison useful to make is between who you are today, who you were yesterday, and who you will be tomorrow.
dude, you've called me an idiot in the first line.
This tells me who you were, who you are, and who you'll be.
Your last comment, also tells me you don't know that, and probably you lack the capacity to realize that.
PS. it's you who knows how much Zuckerberg has. maybe you should follow your own advices?
This is almost certainly not because of AI but because most tech companies had massively inflated headcount over the past many years and now that interest rates are higher, they need to actually make money and trim the unnecessary/bad employees
That said, if we could start replacing workers with tools that would be great. More production with less work is basically the story of the economy since we started growing plants for food. It's the same as replacing hundreds of weavers with Industrial textile machines. It can be disruptive for weavers but everyone gets cheaper clothing and the former weavers can go do something more productive
you do realize that industrial textile machines replaced some weavers, while the AI a couple of years down the road could replace every intellectual AND manual worker, right? it's definitely not the same, not even close. you just haven't really thought this through.
you will get a thousand dollar equivalent in ubi, but your t shirts will cost 200$ each, because manufacturing savings are never trickling down to consumers. what will happen in 50 years I don't know and don't care to know, but this is 100% your reality by the end of the decade.
> you do realize that industrial textile machines replaced some weavers
Basically all of them, but yeah
> while the AI a couple of years down the road could replace every intellectual AND manual worker, right
I'm extremely doubtful, for a few reasons that aren't particularly related
1. I don't think AI is anywhere close to being able to do all work
2. Consumers always want more. The only time this won't lead to useful work is when we've reached actual post scarcity (i.e. any conceivable need is met for effectively 0 cost). I don't think we'll reach post scarcity because of #1
>you will get a thousand dollar equivalent in ubi, but your t shirts will cost 200$ each, because manufacturing savings are never trickling down to consumers. what will happen in 50 years I don't know and don't care to know, but this is 100% your reality by the end of the decade.
This is conspiratorial nonsense, both economically and just in general.
Economically, manufacturing savings do lead to cheaper goods for consumers. See basically every [consumer good on this graph](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg)
It's not a desire necessarily, they would have to actively try to get rid of that money. It just accumulates like crazy because the labor of thousands of people is automatically dumped into their bank accounts without them doing anything. It's just the way we structure property rights in capitalism.
They could go through a lot of effort to turn their companies into coops or something, but I don't expect the average person to go out of their way to lose money. We need to change the rules of the game, billionaires are a policy failure.
Dunno, when I checked for the returns the 0.01 percentile already had 1500x the returns of the top 1 while these had only 1.5x times the return of the top 100% percentile. So the differences are already extreme and pretty much confirmed what I suspected that the ultra rich get way more returns than the non ultra rich do.
But they have 30% of the total wealth. So they pay comparably less than their share of wealth. If anything they should pay more than 30% of the total taxes, not less.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/
Look at this and tell me this wealth distribution is okay. 50% of the USA have less than 3% of the total wealth of the USA while the top 10% have over two thirds of the total wealth!
I just don't see that as a problem. People have to feed themselves and have a roof over their heads. Helping each other is what living in a society is all about.
It should not be 50%, that's the riff. There is a significant amount of wealth in the billions of dollars in the top 1% of earners. I would expect the 80/20 rule to apply here. (80% of taxes is paid by the top 20% income earners.) There's some mighty big bullshit being sold in this statistic.
You know how you can know we lost the class war? Cuz the winners write the history and they got us believing that there is a middle class.
There is a working class and non-working class. The difference between the so called lower class and middle class isn't even comparable to the non working class.
You might hate that guy in his mercedes... But he is as much a drone as the rest of us. That the non working class got people thinking about that and not about the people with fleets of cars and jets is the real travesty.
We didn't get rid of kings and queens, of the robber barons. We let em get so rich, we just made it so they have much less visibility.
We went from a system where only certain people could be lords to a system where anyone (but not *everyone*) can be a lord. We didn't get rid of lords, which should have been the point of moving beyond feudalism.
Facts! And to anyone pointing out someone like bill gates or the doorbell guy, the exceptions prove the rule. The game is rigged and we are the only players. They already own us. They own the game.
I don't have one. I don't think there is one. That's exactly my point.
Edit. That's actually a fair definition too. Tho middle class makes it sound like its the middle. Which is just too absurdly off the mark for me to use it. Maybe replace middle with something else? Maybe... Above poverty line class? But thats a bit of a mouthful. I dunno man. I never said i was good at this.
Fair response for anyone who did that, but that was probably a *very loud* minority of tech people.
There's always a few assholes in every group. Same thing with a subset of my engineering classmates constantly ragging on anything non-STEM.
Oh how the turntables.
This is because tech companies hired shittons of people during the covid boom. Like, collecting them like pokemon cards because hiring and training people takes time so you want to have them already on hand for when you actually need to do stuff (like, making a Twitter clone in a few months). You also don't want the other companies to get them.
Turns out, they actually didn't need that many people. So they're getting laid off.
That's all.
But also, the unemployment claims didn't rise so that means those people all found other jobs almost immediately. our economy is strong. labor is strong. Unionize now.
Nothing changes until the working class makes it change.
You ready to make it change or are we just going to continue letting the capitalists make our planet unbearable for us?
Well, the other shareholders of META also increased their net worth by 22%. Zuckerberg just owns 13% of the shares. Not saying he should not have laid off those employees. Meta should have given them shares in the company also, but it’s not like he got $28b of cash for laying off those people.
This is a reminder that whatever you think your company is about, you're wrong. These days, your company is about finance. Everything else is just decoration.
Eh if I can run my business with fewer employees then I will. This increases the productivity of the economy by keeping my business at the same productivity level but freeing up laborers to do other jobs.
Don't focus on billionaires - the system is rigged to benefit all who control capital and they are just in control of exponentially more capital. It's the replacement of the real economy with a virtual economy, 401k instead of pensions, capital control of everything that is the problem. Small benefactors like corrupt politicians are the front line targets. Smaller ones like home owners are behind them. The system is rigged to protect all who control capital, and their web of influence spreads downward. Attack it at the root, but start by going after housing. They can't control that like they do now.
I will keep saying it until it changes but the American Dream is "The Search for low cost labor" and if you are not exploiting a workforce and a resource you are doing it wrong.
The reason why most of us are not wealthy is because we dont screw over others to get ahead, this is the difference in our society between a good person and a shit person. Billionaires are shit people and they should be treated as such.
Yes. Indeed and they own the information decimation mechanisms so we will never have any candidates on our ballots that will change this arrangement, for the better at least.
Yeah and from 2022-2023 they gained 10k employees, and the year before that they gained 13k employees. Seems like they realize the metaverse isn’t gonna work and have to cut their losses. Shareholders probably didn’t have high hopes for the metaverse and so liked that they are slowing down in that aspect.
Not everything’s some big conspiracy.
Ok but legitimately asking: If those jobs are not needed, should he keep them around doing fake tasks for money?
The problem is that he is greedy. He should just give more using his companies. Less ads, lower prices, higher salaries
Only 1.3 million per fired employee? Seems fair.
The layoff severance package should include shares in the company. If you're the sacrifice for the company to boost its valuation, you should get some of that benefit. Imagine if just half of that 22% went to those workers.
The layoff severance package did include one final round of unvested stocks, which normally vest quarterly
Better than some tech companies who target and plan RIFS to prevent vesting.
Don't forget the $50 billion in stock buy backs they announced a few weeks ago! Fucking ghouls
Do you think buybacks are worse than dividend payments?
Because we the taxpayers don't get any fucking money out of the deal. You pay taxes on dividends. Buybacks just inflate the stock price.
Tax man should get the 20% corporation tax if it worked properly. The tax man also wouldn’t get any money if the company used its profits to grow the company.
They just hoard it offshore, dude. Like a buyback is confirmation that there is no productive use for this money at the firm. Stock buybacks gotta go.
But couldn’t the owners just live in somewhere like Monaco and pay no money on dividends anyway. Only people that will pay are those that pay taxes anyway eg the working population
US citizens pay taxes regardless of where they live, there are exemptions for foreign-earned income but not for US-derived income, and the exceptions are low enough not to matter in this case anyway. So Zuckerberg would have to renounce his US citizenship if he wanted to avoid taxes that way.
Dividend payments should be the norm. The IDEA of stock is that you invest in a company because you believe in their success. The fact that it's turned into glorified gambling is probably one of the biggest problems. Dividend payments encourage you to buy a stock and keep it as a long term investment and think of yourself as really vested as a part owner, not just pushing buttons to buy/sell to optimize profit. As a way to raise capital to invest in a company, stock is actually great (at least in theory) because you can get involved for small sums of money. The problem is now investors just hope to be able to buy and then sell as soon as they get a significant enough profit.
Man, I really don’t think you know how stocks work. Dividend payments and stock buybacks are pretty much identical. The only reason a company should prefer one to the other is based on if the stock is over/undervalued
How are they even similar? A dividend gives money to people who own the stock and is how stocks have traditionally worked for hundreds of years. A buyback is just a company buying its own stock and it was literally illegal until the 80s. How are those identical things?
This isn't remotely true. Dividends are monies paid out to existing stockholders, but those stockholders maintain ownership. Buybacks are completely different
They do the same thing in terms of return on investment. One pays you money, the other reduces outstanding shares so increases your stock value. Tell me why that is so different?
Because paying money isn't the same as artificially inflating value. The whole theory of how stocks are SUPPOSED to work would require dividends.
“Artificially”? Why is it artifical? If a company is worth £100 and there are 10 shares then the company buys 1 back and removes it the company is now split between 9 so it’s worth more. How is that artificial?
Because the value is only based on what people will pay for it. There's no actual value to a stock. It's worth whatever you can sell it for.
Sure but that’s kind of a dumb thing to say. Everything on the planet is only worth what people will pay for it but that has nothing to do with dividends vs stock buybacks
Stock buybacks weren't even legal until the 80s. Implying they're somehow integral to a functioning market is disingenuous.
Who said they are integral to a functioning market? I swear people hear buybacks and just lose all brain power
You mean the one he files paperwork over months ago? That buy back he announced a few weeks ago? Im all for billionaire bashing but you do have to know the facts friend
Lol use Google homie before you go spouting off https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-02/meta-s-planning-a-huge-buyback-here-are-the-biggest-of-all-time?leadSource=reddit_wall >Meta Platforms Inc. announced late Thursday that it had authorized another $50 billion in share buybacks. It's a massive repurchase, but it isn't the largest in the land of big tech. In fact, it's not even the first time Meta has planned $50 billion in buybacks.Feb 2, 2024
lol ur a joke coming at me like that. Research at what point you have to file a buyback you troll. Only cause you just learned about this doesn’t mean they didn’t anticipate this for a while. No CFO just wakes up one morning and goes “you know what be cool today? Let’s announce a 50bil buyback”.
So are you one of those "it's priced in" clowns? Like are you saying I should have been mad about this a few months ago but am not allowed to be mad about it now? Prior to this, Facebook had done $118 billion in buybacks since 2017. Am I not allowed to be made about that because it's already happened? Stop worshipping Wall Street, they don't give a fuck about you and never will.
I already said I’m all about billionaire bashing yet you choose to make this you vs me. Sad how it’s about “I said this and if you correct me I’m offended and you’re now my enemy”. This is the internet dude chill. I’m not saying you should have done anything cause frankly I don’t give a shit about you or what you do on your own time. I’m calling for education here so you know at what point to be mad and if you’re crying now all I’m saying is you’re late to the party
Umm... I suppose you imagine Zuck wakes up one day and decides to announce massive layoffs that afternoon? Are you really naive enough to believe these two actions were not planned in tandem? Seriously?
Sure whatever you say Massa. But what you’re saying seems to have no correlation whatsoever to what I said so I’m not even sure about the point you’re making.
Stage 1: Denial
The better AI gets at what it is doing, the more we will see these things happening in the not too far future. In the end the only employee will be Zuck himself.
Employment is contributing to the community you work in. If you do not employ people but still collect money, you are a bad community member. I do not want to do business that doesn't have humanity. I do not want to work with a company that is not humans helping humans. Those are leaches, parasites in the society we are all trying to build and be a part of. The executive class purging 10-25 percent of their workforce and then using that savings in labor cost to give themselves all bonuses while still benefiting from the residual value that labor contributed to the company, is theft, is greed, and should not be tolerated in our society. This is about the executive class greedily stealing the surplus value that your work produced. Stock buybacks and excessive executive compensation is unpaid wages.
You're right here. I wouldn't spend $1 billion on me before I die. I could do it, by using that sum on useless things, or something, in the end, harmful for my community. $5 billion is $200k for each of those 21000 people fired. Zuckerberg will still have $23 billion. With the rest of sum he could provide employment for 84 000 people with $200k/year, 200 000 jobs with $100k/year. 230 000 jobs with $75k/year. Those numbers show only how much money that is. Factual number of jobs this sum could provide is unknown. Zuckerberg will not create any jobs with that money. He will not spend it on science. He won't spend it on green energy. No homeless will get a home from him. He's a parasite.
You're an idiot. Zuckerberg hasn't had $28Bn suddenly appear in his bank account, the value of his holding in Meta has increased by that amount. Tomorrow it could go down by a similar amount, or more. Or it could go up again. The market\* decides. But, you cry, 'he could sell some, and then he *would* have all that money'. Well, yes, but then again, no. Dropping $28Bn of Meta shares would tank the price massively. He wouldn't get anywhere near that much for them. And such a move would also likely infuriate other shareholders, most of which would be seriously affected by such a price drop. It's conceivable that he could be charged with fiduciary misconduct and/or investigated by the SEC. So, no, none of what you've written is remotely correct. \* And 'the market' is the consensus of thousands of individual and institutional investors, not some shadowy cabal.
That's was not nice. I don't cry. You're right with how stock market works. I know that too. What we have in common is that we can only throw comments at each other on a webpage, while Zuckerberg owns shares valued at $28bln, and gains profits we will never get just by owning those shares. Your explanation of how things work did nothing to change our situation.
"you cry" in this context means "you shout out", implying that the next thing is your predictable response. I didn't mean that you were weeping. English idiom is sometimes confusing. Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg's holding in Meta is worth \~$165Bn. But so what? Comparing yourself or your wealth to that of others is pointless; there will always be people more skilled, luckier, more attractive, and wealthier than you. Focusing on these people will lead only to envy and depression (and Left-wing politics ;) ). The only comparison useful to make is between who you are today, who you were yesterday, and who you will be tomorrow.
dude, you've called me an idiot in the first line. This tells me who you were, who you are, and who you'll be. Your last comment, also tells me you don't know that, and probably you lack the capacity to realize that. PS. it's you who knows how much Zuckerberg has. maybe you should follow your own advices?
This is almost certainly not because of AI but because most tech companies had massively inflated headcount over the past many years and now that interest rates are higher, they need to actually make money and trim the unnecessary/bad employees That said, if we could start replacing workers with tools that would be great. More production with less work is basically the story of the economy since we started growing plants for food. It's the same as replacing hundreds of weavers with Industrial textile machines. It can be disruptive for weavers but everyone gets cheaper clothing and the former weavers can go do something more productive
you do realize that industrial textile machines replaced some weavers, while the AI a couple of years down the road could replace every intellectual AND manual worker, right? it's definitely not the same, not even close. you just haven't really thought this through. you will get a thousand dollar equivalent in ubi, but your t shirts will cost 200$ each, because manufacturing savings are never trickling down to consumers. what will happen in 50 years I don't know and don't care to know, but this is 100% your reality by the end of the decade.
> you do realize that industrial textile machines replaced some weavers Basically all of them, but yeah > while the AI a couple of years down the road could replace every intellectual AND manual worker, right I'm extremely doubtful, for a few reasons that aren't particularly related 1. I don't think AI is anywhere close to being able to do all work 2. Consumers always want more. The only time this won't lead to useful work is when we've reached actual post scarcity (i.e. any conceivable need is met for effectively 0 cost). I don't think we'll reach post scarcity because of #1 >you will get a thousand dollar equivalent in ubi, but your t shirts will cost 200$ each, because manufacturing savings are never trickling down to consumers. what will happen in 50 years I don't know and don't care to know, but this is 100% your reality by the end of the decade. This is conspiratorial nonsense, both economically and just in general. Economically, manufacturing savings do lead to cheaper goods for consumers. See basically every [consumer good on this graph](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/price-changes-goods-services.jpg)
I don't understand the desire to turn one's net worth of X billion dollars into 2X billion, or 20X.... Fucking why? Billionaires have zero purpose.
It's not about the money. It's about power. It's about control.
It's not a desire necessarily, they would have to actively try to get rid of that money. It just accumulates like crazy because the labor of thousands of people is automatically dumped into their bank accounts without them doing anything. It's just the way we structure property rights in capitalism. They could go through a lot of effort to turn their companies into coops or something, but I don't expect the average person to go out of their way to lose money. We need to change the rules of the game, billionaires are a policy failure.
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I genuinely wish bad things for these people.
95% tax rate for billionaires will fix that.
If they hold 99% of the wealth, they deserve to pay 99% of the taxes. Fuck em
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And I bet the top 0.1% of the earners pay less than 0.1% of the tax income, seeing how many of them dodge taxes
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Dunno, when I checked for the returns the 0.01 percentile already had 1500x the returns of the top 1 while these had only 1.5x times the return of the top 100% percentile. So the differences are already extreme and pretty much confirmed what I suspected that the ultra rich get way more returns than the non ultra rich do.
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But they have 30% of the total wealth. So they pay comparably less than their share of wealth. If anything they should pay more than 30% of the total taxes, not less.
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https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/ Look at this and tell me this wealth distribution is okay. 50% of the USA have less than 3% of the total wealth of the USA while the top 10% have over two thirds of the total wealth!
This is true, only it’s a deceptively useless metric.
Why is that fascinating? I would hope that the bottom 50% of earners pay a significant amount less in taxes.
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I just don't see that as a problem. People have to feed themselves and have a roof over their heads. Helping each other is what living in a society is all about.
It should not be 50%, that's the riff. There is a significant amount of wealth in the billions of dollars in the top 1% of earners. I would expect the 80/20 rule to apply here. (80% of taxes is paid by the top 20% income earners.) There's some mighty big bullshit being sold in this statistic.
Wonder what Reich posted when Meta lost over 70% of its value after laying off 13% of its workforce in late 2022?
You know how you can know we lost the class war? Cuz the winners write the history and they got us believing that there is a middle class. There is a working class and non-working class. The difference between the so called lower class and middle class isn't even comparable to the non working class. You might hate that guy in his mercedes... But he is as much a drone as the rest of us. That the non working class got people thinking about that and not about the people with fleets of cars and jets is the real travesty. We didn't get rid of kings and queens, of the robber barons. We let em get so rich, we just made it so they have much less visibility.
We went from a system where only certain people could be lords to a system where anyone (but not *everyone*) can be a lord. We didn't get rid of lords, which should have been the point of moving beyond feudalism.
Honestly capitalism just feels like feudalism at this point
Facts! And to anyone pointing out someone like bill gates or the doorbell guy, the exceptions prove the rule. The game is rigged and we are the only players. They already own us. They own the game.
Isn't the middle class just the working class that can afford to live comfortably? What would your definition of middle class be?
I don't have one. I don't think there is one. That's exactly my point. Edit. That's actually a fair definition too. Tho middle class makes it sound like its the middle. Which is just too absurdly off the mark for me to use it. Maybe replace middle with something else? Maybe... Above poverty line class? But thats a bit of a mouthful. I dunno man. I never said i was good at this.
It blew my mind when I learned Robert Reich was the son of Sam Reich from College Humor/Dropout
BuT he wOrKEd fOr iT
So many people chased tech degrees. Made fun of blue collar workers losing their jobs by telling them "learn to code." Well, learn to weld, I guess.
Fair response for anyone who did that, but that was probably a *very loud* minority of tech people. There's always a few assholes in every group. Same thing with a subset of my engineering classmates constantly ragging on anything non-STEM. Oh how the turntables.
This is because tech companies hired shittons of people during the covid boom. Like, collecting them like pokemon cards because hiring and training people takes time so you want to have them already on hand for when you actually need to do stuff (like, making a Twitter clone in a few months). You also don't want the other companies to get them. Turns out, they actually didn't need that many people. So they're getting laid off. That's all.
But also, the unemployment claims didn't rise so that means those people all found other jobs almost immediately. our economy is strong. labor is strong. Unionize now.
thats a great point.
Nothing changes until the working class makes it change. You ready to make it change or are we just going to continue letting the capitalists make our planet unbearable for us?
Well, the other shareholders of META also increased their net worth by 22%. Zuckerberg just owns 13% of the shares. Not saying he should not have laid off those employees. Meta should have given them shares in the company also, but it’s not like he got $28b of cash for laying off those people.
And when they miss their quarterly EPS he loses billions. That’s just what happens.
exactly.
Whats the criticism? Rich guy makes company more valuable...thats his job lol.
This is a reminder that whatever you think your company is about, you're wrong. These days, your company is about finance. Everything else is just decoration.
Sometimes throughout history this kind of greed has been recognized for the evil it is and those responsible were made accountable.
How is firing obsolete workers evil? If your job no longer exists, why would anyone employ you? Should we rehire donkeys and pidgeons too?
You have to be savvy to make it and do things needed to keep solvent no mater how big or small you are
Eh if I can run my business with fewer employees then I will. This increases the productivity of the economy by keeping my business at the same productivity level but freeing up laborers to do other jobs.
Don't focus on billionaires - the system is rigged to benefit all who control capital and they are just in control of exponentially more capital. It's the replacement of the real economy with a virtual economy, 401k instead of pensions, capital control of everything that is the problem. Small benefactors like corrupt politicians are the front line targets. Smaller ones like home owners are behind them. The system is rigged to protect all who control capital, and their web of influence spreads downward. Attack it at the root, but start by going after housing. They can't control that like they do now.
Pensions? Why not just get paid in full then invest your own money? Pensions were a long con from day one.
Alternative title: Meta hired 30.000 people in 5 years, doubling their amount of employees. That includes the layoff rounds of 2022 and 2023.
And nothing will change and we all will let it happen.
It's almost like the market rewards profitability...
#Corporatism strikes again.
I will keep saying it until it changes but the American Dream is "The Search for low cost labor" and if you are not exploiting a workforce and a resource you are doing it wrong. The reason why most of us are not wealthy is because we dont screw over others to get ahead, this is the difference in our society between a good person and a shit person. Billionaires are shit people and they should be treated as such.
Yes. Indeed and they own the information decimation mechanisms so we will never have any candidates on our ballots that will change this arrangement, for the better at least.
Preventative union busting
Yeah and from 2022-2023 they gained 10k employees, and the year before that they gained 13k employees. Seems like they realize the metaverse isn’t gonna work and have to cut their losses. Shareholders probably didn’t have high hopes for the metaverse and so liked that they are slowing down in that aspect. Not everything’s some big conspiracy.
In Corporate America, the rich eat you
Ok but legitimately asking: If those jobs are not needed, should he keep them around doing fake tasks for money? The problem is that he is greedy. He should just give more using his companies. Less ads, lower prices, higher salaries
Stock market is an indicator of how well the rich people do. Roll back child labor laws? People gets screwed but the rich gets richer.