Glad to see Amazon's @JayCarney is now engaging in the growing conversation around FULFILLMENT. nytimes.com/2021/04/16/boo… A few quick thoughts in response:
.@JayCarney writes, "The book somehow casts Amazon in the role of villain, ignoring the fact that Amazon has been a positive force in the US economy, creating 400,000 much-needed jobs last year alone.”
It’s precisely this extraordinary growth and dominance that is now at issue.
I mean, I never could've imagined when I set out to write FULFILLMENT that the company, and the way of life it represents, would become so vastly more dominant in a single year.
And remember: those warehouse jobs have replaced countless lost brick & mortar ones. See: Chapter 8.
“Amazon has helped lift communities across this country with industry-leading pay and benefits—including a starting wage of at least $15 an hour.”
But it all depends on what you’re comparing it against. Warehouse work resembles factory labor—but pays less than it. See: Chapter 4.
“In fact, almost 60 percent of all physical product sales in our store are from small businesses.” But that's just it: Amazon has been successfully pressuring small local biz to sell on the site as "3rd party sellers," since Amazon gets a huge cut of those sales. See: Chapter 5.
That's all for now. I welcome further engagement, and urge people to read the @xrw review that @JayCarney took issue with: nytimes.com/2021/03/24/boo…, as well as the book, and judge for themselves.

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More from @AlecMacGillis

10 Apr
"Harvard researchers who have been following 224 children ages 7 to 15 found two-thirds had clinically significant symptoms of anxiety and depression btwn Nov 2020 and Jan 2021. That is a huge jump from 30% with anxiety and depression before the pandemic."
wsj.com/articles/pande…
"Particularly delicate are the years from 8 to 14. The years around puberty are ones of greater neuroplasticity, when the brain is particularly sensitive to external events and learning experiences."
"Michaela Voss, director of the eating disorders center in KC, says admissions for kids w/ eating disorders have risen substantially. With many schools shut and sports canceled, some children felt 'there was nothing else to do but exercise and stare at their bodies in mirrors.'"
Read 5 tweets
7 Apr
This is a good @jonathanchait on Mitch McConnell's shift on corporate speech: nymag.com/intelligencer/…. I would note, tho, that it's not the case that no one doubted Mitch's sincerity when it came to defending campaign $$ as speech. "The Cynic" laid that bare as a tactical gambit!
Here fwiw is the relevant section from The Cynic about how McConnell came to adopt the "campaign $$ is speech" argument against campaign finance reform. It was pure political calculus. 1/3 Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
2 Apr
Many nursing homes are still barring physical contact between vaccinated residents and visiting family members.
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/…
"All employees and residents have been vaccinated. But the facility’s medical experts still say there are too many unanswered questions to permit close physical contact, including whether a vaccinated resident could catch the virus from a visitor & transmit it asymptomatically."
Read 4 tweets
29 Mar
Finally got to @CaitlinPacific's stemwinder on elite private schools. It's eye-popping and enraging. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
"Exeter has 1,100 students and a $1.3 billion endowment. Andover, which has 1,150 students, is on track to take in $400 million in its current capital campaign. And all of this cash, glorious cash, comes pouring into the countinghouse 100 percent tax-free."
"Less than 2% of students attend [private] schools. But 24% of Yale’s class of 2024 attended [one]. At Princeton, 25%. At Brown and Dartmouth, 29% In the past 5 yrs, Dalton sent a third of its graduates to the Ivy League. Harvard-Westlake, in LA sent 45 kids to Harvard alone."
Read 4 tweets
27 Mar
Major pandemic problem: move far from the big city to flee the coronavirus, end up somewhere far from high-quality interior designers to renovate your new home.

Solution: fly out an interior designer thousands of miles to do the work, after Zoom consults.
wsj.com/articles/with-…
“We wanted a Hamptons-meets-Scandinavian vibe."
"Homeowners living far from urban design centers—or their favorite interior designers—are taking the extra time and effort to bridge the distance gap. That means creating a sleek New York look or a relaxed L.A. aesthetic in unexpected places."
Read 4 tweets
19 Mar
"Rob and Jessica Zizza, newlyweds who met at Columbia’s business school, began their [Park Slope] search with a $3 million budget but decided to pay an additional $1 million to get the layout they felt would accommodate their desired post-Covid lifestyle." wsj.com/articles/for-w…
"They are now in contract to buy a $3.995 million, 3-bedroom unit at 1 Prospect Park West in Park Slope.
'We had the ability if we wanted to do it all cash, but where interest rates now made it sort of a no-brainer,' said Mr. Zizza, who works in real estate and private equity."
"Soon Jang, a California-based physicist, and his wife began eyeing NY apts for their youngest son, who was slated to attend Columbia in the fall. They quickly settled on a $2.3 million 2-BR. Following the onslaught of Covid-19, they had decided two bedrooms wouldn’t suffice...."
Read 5 tweets

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