1. Average American spends THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR year at Amazon. That’s staggering.
2. As of now the trial is not scheduled to begin until January 2027 (although the discussed injunction is meant to address that). I believe the length of time required to get a decision in court is the single biggest impediment to justice being served. It usually waters down the final judgment, makes costs prohibitive for plaintiffs, and allows perpetrators to continue benefiting from illegal behavior indefinitely. In some cases, the defendant can be elected President in the interim eliminating any chance of facing a court decision.
> 1. Average American spends THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR year at Amazon.
Where else would americans be getting home goods like soap, appliances, electronics? Vitamins, perscriptions, etc?
The answer to almost every one of those, for the vast majority of Americans, is one of like 5 megacorps. Target, Walmart, Kroger, CVS, Amazon. Things have largely stopped being available retail because of all this consolidation. If I want to go buy a multivitamin, its no joke like $25 a bottle at my grocery store, and $8 on amazon. It is just kinda... a part of people's lives now, and the alternatives all involve either spending more money or time.
It’s funny: a loved one gifted me a book knowing I’m opposed to Amazon’s practices. They let me know they bought it elsewhere and the act of paying more was part of the gift’s charm (they’ll use Amazon otherwise.)
You can buy used books, they sell extremely cheap and are perfectly readable. There is a lot of seller, at least in France, but I guess it must be similar in usa.
Books are staggeringly affordable (aside from hardback), and if even they seem too expensive, libraries exist and offer ebooks. I would honestly be embarrassed to announce this – it reveals something very unflattering.
Staggeringly affordable? Last time I checked ebooks were roughly the same price as physical books. That's ridiculous. If they were like 20% of the price I'd buy them.
I don't care man. It doesn't matter to the world whether I spend money on books or not. It only matters to me. Or I guess it's more correct to say it matters much more to me than to the rest of the world.
So yeah, I'm not worried about it. I don't tip either, by the way, unless I see a very good reason to. Given the choice, I prefer to keep my money rather than give it away. Couldn't care less what you or anyone else thinks about it.
Sure, ebooks could be cheaper, but they’re still cheap as hell. $5-10 for what, ten hours of entertainment? A fraction of what you pay to dine out. I mean, you can be as cheap as you like, but this thread exists because you’re promoting your cheapness tactics for others to emulate, which, at scale, actively harms the very things you are enjoying. You can be cheap! It’s just parasitical, which is why I suggested it was a shameful thing to announce.
I looked up the price for Project Hail Mary which I read recently, it's like $20 and the physical book is the same price. Think about that. Imagine all the work involved in producing and transporting the physical book, compared to just infinitely copying a single epub file that's probably generated automatically from a word document or whatever they use to write books. The fact that those are the same price is outrageous. It's completely unreasonable.
I wouldn't say I'm cheap, I'd say I'm frugal. I'll happily spend money on things, just not when I don't need to. And especially not when it's completely unreasonable like ebook prices. I can get it for free so I'll take that deal. You can say it's parasitical, I guess I don't disagree with that. Personally I think there's a lot bigger fish to fry in that department like insanely rich people who hardly pay any taxes, but sure I'm slightly parasitical in some minor and insignificant(to everyone except me) ways.
I also don't really think it matters that much. Most authors don't make enough money to live off it. The ones who do, make a fortune. I generally read books written by those lucky few who make a fortune, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about not paying money to Andy Weir, who's worth about $55 million according to a quick Google search. He'll be fine. And all the middle men like Amazon and publishers etc can pound sand as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, I mean millionaire authors are one thing, but saying "Most authors don't make enough money to live on, so I'm not going to pay them for their work" is a bit absurd.
That's not what I said. I said I don't read their work. Maybe I do some times, but it's not often and I seriously doubt the $2 or whatever they end up getting after everyone else has their cut makes any difference to them.
Oh yeah because I definitely want to be giving money to entitled shits who'll spit in my food. That makes all the sense. Tipping happens after anyway.
And for the record I'm not American, we don't have the insane tipping culture you guys do. I know you're American because only an American would say what you just did.
I'm not American, but I assumed you were American because you were defiantly declaring that you don't tip, whereas in Europe (for example) it would not be worthy of comment :P
Guess we both assumed.
Also, you're right that the tip comes after, so not tipping is safe... until you go to the same restaurant twice (in America).
No, I don't mind giving physical books as gifts to people who want them. In fact I don't mind physical books at all.
I just prefer ebooks because an ebook reader is 100 times better. It has backlight so I can read in the dark, it's compact so I can put it in my pocket, it's light and ergonomic so I can easily hold it and flip pages in one hand, and it can fit literally a whole library worth of books in my pocket. It's not even a competition, as far as I'm concerned physical books are furniture at this point.
For vitamins/supplements specifically, there's Costco, iHerb, nootropics depot.
While they might not be the absolute cheapest options, they're usually a pretty good price and at least with those sources I'm not too concerned with counterfeit or tainted supplements, unlike Amazon [0]
There used to be 6 Walgreen's in my city. Now there are 2. I've used Amazon to fill some of that gap because the 30 minute drive is bonkers for toothpaste. COVID hit this economy like a Mack truck and helped the monopolists grab even more of a share.
It might surprise you to know that there are different kinds of toothpaste and even toothbrushes, all with differing levels of effectiveness. Some people get advised to use specific kinds by their dentist.
At least I don't feel morally repugnant shopping at Costco. I live right next to WalMart and leave it as a means of last resort. Cancelled Amazon Prime. I guess Vonz/Ralphs/Albersons are all Krogers, so I'm got there if I need small groceries.
Soap comes from everywhere. It's in the grocery store, drug stores. Hell it's in every hotel you stay in. Just grab it before you go and you've got a few weeks' supply.
I would guess that the median American can count the number of times they've ever been to a hotel on their fingers. Possibly even the average American.
Eh it's the same with motels, which a lot more people go to for one reason or another. It's not even worth cherry picking when there are so many other sources of soap that don't come from the back of a van.
I'll add to the chorus who ditched Amazon years ago because of their predatory practices. I do recognize though that I'm a relatively rich American so I can afford to, but if everybody who did, could, the market might look different.
That said, how much of that $3k/year is spent on things they need vs things they bought through Amazon's upselling algorithms? I drive past the giant warehouses and I wonder, how much useful stuff is actually in there? Because when I do find myself on amazon.com most of what I see is just trash wrapped in plastic.
And it proves a point: Things are still available at retail. Sometimes it is a box store but just as often it's a smaller shop. Does it take more time? Sure! But seriously, what is everybody using all that time they saved by shopping at Amazon for? From what I see it's more shopping online.
Average American spends THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR year at Amazon. That’s staggering.
Is it? That’s by households, not individuals. Is it really crazy to imagine a household spending $200-300/month at Costco, Walmart, Whole
Foods—or Amazon?
If it brings you moral discomfort, why do you shop at whole foods? Shopping at Walmart (or whole foods!) would also bring me moral discomfort, so I just ...don't do it.
Today I shopped at the local food co-op, Sprouts (regional/semi-national chain), Whole Foods and Trader Joes. Word on the street is that the co-op has a worse labor relations history than Whole Foods. Trader Joes is good but doesn't sell more than a 1/3rd of the food we eat. Sprouts I don't know much about, it would be a fallback if Whole Foods disappeared.
Whole Foods has the food products (produce, dairy, eggs, grains, nuts) that we eat, is cheaper than the competition for this stuff, and unbelievably beats the co-op on labor relations. However, it also ships profit out of the area. For now, it's sort of the best of a bunch of not particularly good choices.
Be that as it may, the point at issue was the Amazon spending of the average US household. I’m not sure what point relevant to the discussion you’re trying to make, other than reflexively arguing with any use of means in economic analysis. OK, sure, tell Matt Stoller.
I guess it's just always important/helpful to keep in mind that the average is almost certainly going to be misleading when the distribution is extremely skewed, as is the case for household income. It's usually a mistake to talk about averages in these cases, when the median is almost always going to be more meaningful.
Agree, but can't we just include both average _and_ mean? And maybe min/max while we're at it? Seems like that could give a much clearer picture (without even needing a graph!?)
Min & max are also meaningless for most distributions, so probably you should instead look at P1 and P99 or something, and all of a sudden you're now talking about 5 numbers when all you wanted was a quick point.
Sure, but I’m certain US household income is not normally distributed, and I’d bet all the money in my pockets that US household Amazon spend isn’t normally distributed, either.
You're conflating two different things, but what you point out is still useful because it suggests that there are a few people on the higher end who make a LOT more and are dragging the mean up when compared to the median. The mean is probably not as indicative of the fortunes of most Americans as GP suggests. $3000 is a lot of money for most families, but there are a few for which it's increasingly not only inconsequential, but more like a rounding error.
This is very bad math on the part of the article. You can’t just take total revenue/number of households. I mean have they not heard of a little side business Amazon has called AWS?
Amazon is not just a US company either.
They also have an ad business. You could rightfully argue that ad spend gets passed on to the consumer.
The number Matt’s quoting doesn’t include AWS, AFAICT. It’s “North American segment” revenue in AMZN accounting. AWS is accounted separately as a global unit.
Though now that I write that, I wonder if Matt divided by the total number of North American households or the number of US ones.
EDIT: Amazon North American segment revenue divided by aggregate North American household count is roughly $2,300. But I’m guessing the real number is closer to Matt’s estimate as US households are wealthier and likely represent a disproportionate fraction of that revenue.
North American revenue includes US, Mexico and Canada. The lawsuit is only about US households.
Also, while technically correct that what is included in “how much people in North America spend at Amazon”. The lawsuit is about online sales. Whole Foods by itself made $150 billion in revenue which comes under North American sales.
This is sadly typical arrogant HN commentary jumping off to sound clever, cynically playing on the 'engineer mentality' fallacy, having put no effort to discredit the argumen as witnessed by the now clearly stupid argument presented, yet selfishly putting the onus on others to correct. It's quite sociopathic.
There are more important things than continually arguing on an internet forum, as you have been with multiple people here, that you're right when it's been pointed out numerous times that you jump off half cocked and is not the case. More generally, it is an unfortunate arogant and dangerous mindset from a sizeable part of the HN community.
Well, I actually am right - just not quite as right. He still took “North American revenue” that includes Canada and Mexico and divided that by US households..
I dunno, going in with the starting assumption that Matt Stoller is innumerate and/or will twist statistics to support his otherwise specious arguments is not a terrible approach.
On the particulars of this number, he seems to be close enough, but it’s not nearly as shocking with any context: The average American household Walmart spend is comparable, Apple captures almost half that with a handful of devices and services.
Lol, that sounds about right. I checked, our household spent $2700 last year on amazon. Only 3 things above $100 though, so it's just accumulation of lots of smaller purchases.
They will send you a bunch of spreadsheets and it's pretty easy to calculate your total expenditures. That showed us we were spending about $5k a year, mostly small stuff with very few purchases over $100. With Prime it was easy to order a little here and a little there. All those littles add up.
We got rid of Prime and now spend about $300 a year on Amazon. Half of that for Kindle books. We do spend a $100 a month more at Costco to make up for it. A nice side effect is that we have a lot less clutter and junk around the house.
I wouldn't ascribe averages to mean much. I expect there is a small minority that buys everything on amazon (everything meaning groceries, holiday gifts, prescriptions, etc) that would jack up the average significantly.
Do you realize how generous their return policy is? How convenient it is to order from them, and set up a subscribe-and-save for monthly household items? Also consider how many people set up wedding or baby shower registries on Amazon.
I have been avoiding amazon recently for ethical reasons but i’m genuinely confused by your comment. It sounds like you’ve never shopped at amazon lol. And with inflation…$3k isn’t even that much money in the US. That’s $250 a month.
1. Average American spends THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR year at Amazon. That’s staggering.
2. As of now the trial is not scheduled to begin until January 2027 (although the discussed injunction is meant to address that). I believe the length of time required to get a decision in court is the single biggest impediment to justice being served. It usually waters down the final judgment, makes costs prohibitive for plaintiffs, and allows perpetrators to continue benefiting from illegal behavior indefinitely. In some cases, the defendant can be elected President in the interim eliminating any chance of facing a court decision.