"But they’ve still managed to boost profits beyond anything ever seen before because they’ve got away with employing as few workers as possible at as low a rate as possible."
I think there are other factors.
1. US effective corporate tax rate has been declining as corporations have found ways to keep profits in offshore tax havens. This is a huge contributor.
See for example this article about AAPL whose effective tax rate is 14% which is much lower than the US nominal corporate tax rate of 35%.
2. Outsourcing to lower cost centers. This is also contributing to lower US wages; If a company can move the work to India, Brazil, China, etc. at a much cheaper cost, they will do that. This has been going on for decades, but advancements in telecommunications and internet has made outsourcing to far away locations more efficient and cost effective over the past 10-15 years.
3. Federal reserve keeping short term rates at 0% and manipulating other fixed income rates with the QE program, e.g. buying $100BLN worth of MBS and US treasuries every month. This had the effect of creating record-low interest rates for corporate and junk bonds. This lowers interest costs for companies and also increases business demand because more companies are able to borrow $$ than otherwise.
Some of the revenues and profits are increased just because corporate and public debt has increased abnormally.
I used to be an Amazon fanboy, too, but I don't buy much from them anymore after (1) Target, Best Buy, and other retailers started pricematching amazon prices. Since Target gives you 5% off for using Target card, Target is now almost always cheaper than amazon. and (2) Amazon started charging sales tax. That was a HUGE reason I ordered items from them.
I still like amazon, and still have Amazon Prime, and I am still looking forward to their Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals.
It's not a bad thing that Verizon offers a slew of different Android phones and tablets with different features and price points. Choice is good. Choice is driving competition to create the best hardware to run android. Crappy hardware will fail, and good hardware will thrive.
I've never heard of this site before, but looking at their page 'How it works', it seems clear it me it's a shoe-of-the-month club, and works similar to things like Disney Movie club, Harry and David Fruit of the month club, or one of various Book Clubs.
The only scummy part would be if they still charge $39.99/month if you don't cancel / skip / select a shoe, without sending you anything. Compare to Disney Movie of the month club where if you don't make a selection or skip that month, you get sent the "Featured" title for that month. Maybe justfab should send you the shoe of the month if you don't make a selection, or maybe they should send a "beauty gift basket".
Otherwise, it looks legit, if you like this sort of thing.
But why would anyone ever look at the "How it works" page? Even if a link to the page were prominently featured on the site (it's not - it's only in the footer), how often do you wonder how a shoe store works?
People go to JustFab to buy a pair of shoes, not to join a shoe of the month club. Check out their front page. It looks like a online shoe store. It doesn't mention the VIP program at all. That's tossed in during the checkout process and it's pretty easy to miss the fact that you're buying more than a pair of shoes.
There is no Fed tapering imminent. They just voted last week to keep the $85 BLN/month flowing on a 9-1 vote.
During dot.com bubble, the short term interest rate was 5%+ in 1998 and 1999, and that didn't stop that bubble. The Fed only belatedly raised rates to 6% in 2000 when the bubble went parabolic.
The Fed is always slow to raise rates, and rates are at 0%.
It could be years before we are at 2% rates with FOMC incrementing 0.25% every quarter or so, and 2% rates is still very stimulative. Right now, the Fed isn't even talking about raising interest rates. They have only been talking about reducing the $85 BLN/month $$ printing, but even that is on hold as of the last FOMC meeting where they voted 9 to 1 to not taper.
The Fed still has the pedal to the metal, and have publicly stated they do not see a bubble anywhere (just like they said there was no housing bubble back in 2006-2007). Don't get shaken out of the market just because the Fed talks about tapering its $$ printing from $85BLN/month to $75BLN/month. The current environment is still very stimulative for stocks.
If there is a bubble, it won't pop because of the Fed. It will pop after the momentum is exhausted and it collapses from its own weight.
>I eventually realized that for perishable goods, they put the new stuff in the back of the shelves, so now I just head for the back of the shelf when I need to buy perishables there. <
This is standard practice at grocery stores to put freshest food at the back and soonest to expire in the front. No reason to hate on TJ's on that point.
I tried it out for awhile, and it did seem to help me read faster, but I felt like my brain was been strained. If I started doing this all the time, I'm wondering if my brain would freak out reading regular black on white text.
I'm wondering if just adding reference points along the margin or between lines could accomplish the same thing without having to change the text color. Something similar to the tick marks along a graph axis.
Nice article. Missile command was very unique not just because of the game design but the rollerball control (rather than joystick). I remember feverishly whipping that ball around while trying to blast all the missiles.
I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about this on hacker news.
I think it's a joke that FB is worth over 1/3 of GOOG.