Ditto.Originally Posted by Alan
Ditto.
Amazon shopping is a near-essential to me.
I live in a remote place with few stores. The stores here tend to hugely overcharge, as this is a tourist destination. I can't easily drive somewhere else to shop - that takes an entire day and $75 in ferry charges and fuel, not to mention food for the journey. All goods here that are not locally produced are brought in by sea or air.
It is incredibly efficient for me to "add-to-cart/buy now" and have the goods I need delivered to my house within a few days. It is even now usually cheaper. By batching-up my orders, I try to reduce the impacts of the shipping.
My community's big complaint these days about Amazon is that they have been trying experiments with delivering here "more efficiently". This seems like a good idea, but it has resulted in:
- Causing chaos at our local Post Office, which has only a few employees, when they diverted using UPS/Fedex to using USPS. They had to put up tents in the parking lot the handle the volume, and an extra 3-4 day delay was caused simply due to the couple of USPS employees having to sort through the huge piles of parcels. The stress caused a good portion of the experienced staff to quit, making the problem worse. It impacted regular first-class mail delivery too - it quickly degraded to the point that to send a letter to my neighbor took 10-ish days for delivery. This impacted local elections, which are all by-mail, billpaying, jury notification, etc.
- This change also caused the local delivery company, which subcontracts out to UPS/Fedex, to lay off most of its staff without any warning. These employees are our friends and neighbors, and this was not received well.
- Amazon next tried to send over their own contract delivery folks from the mainland. This is an ongoing disaster. They almost got lynched when they seized part of the undersized parking/loading facilities at our ferry docks and turned them into an outdoor package sorting location. The foolish State ferry officials who approved that deal for a very small sum of money, if they visited here to see how it was going, would likely be strung up from the streetlamps, if we had streetlamps. This change to using their own trucks also caused local employees to get laid off.
Fun times.
If we can exclude reductions in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as very possible, but unknown, I'd probably go more global. Freedom to have clean air due to climate research at places like NOAA, the protections of health offered by HHS that apparently has can backs on numerous research programs and searches for cures for things like cancer, cutbacks in services and protections in National Parks and Forest Service, which I use routinely. Other environmental and health protections offered by the EPA. The liberty of knowing we are a world leader by withdrawal of military protections for sovereign nations subject to invasions by brutal dictatorships. Etc. I think most of this is still shaking out with unknown but risky outcomes.
To be honest, I've always considered paying taxes a reasonable but not perfect deal for the services I get back and have lived a comfortable frugal life as they are. I'd probably be willing to pay a little more if it meant a better healthcare system, cleaner air and water, up to date infrastructure. and advances in health sciences. Seems like Warren Buffett thinks the same. As does Albert King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg5XAZWpLG0
How to you feel about the VA cutting 80,000 workers. That's the number I've seen, but whatever it is it's a lot. Do you think veterans who have served the county will miss anything. Maybe treatments for PTSD, access to VA hospitals, or help for homeless vets? I'm not sure what the cutbacks will be specifically, but probably involve many things. Or maybe 80,000 is just waste and nothing will change. Just curious.
"what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver
The boycott organizers seem to totally discount how useful Amazon is for those who live in isolated places, are disabled, shut-ins, etc.
Oh I don’t know that anyone expects people who truly rely on Amazon to boycott it. I’m sure if you asked echase here she would not want to see shut-ins go without. The boycott is aimed more at the general user in America, many of whom can reduce their use of Amazon if not eliminate it completely.
That said, I have not reduced my use of Amazon.
I'm guessing that climate, overall health and cancer research will continue without any discernible degradation if staffing is cut back to 2019 levels and funding remains at 2024 levels.
As for my thoughts on the VA, I think that if personnel cutbacks occur at the level you've referenced, there will still be approximately 400,000 employees servicing the needs of our veterans. Using an off the top of my head calculation, that would be approximately 1 VA employee for every 40 living US military veterans.
As a veteran myself, I've never utilized any VA services other than receiving approvals for GI Bill education benefits and a VA home loan, both back in the 70's when the the VA enjoyed staffing levels less then 50% of today's headcount. It occurs to me that there is almost certainly a fair amount of bloat in every government agency, especially considering in this case that the vast majority of veterans in any given year have no contact with or services provided by the VA, which would bring that 1 in 40 number down to something along the lines of 1 VA employee for every 20 or fewer veterans receiving services during each year.
Overall, I'm thinking we veterans will be just fine.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
I hope you are right. I suspect the information we will get from a lot of the new regime sources will confirm that it's all OK, if not beautiful. There will be a lot in the mainstream media saying that isn't so.
I seem to get that the VA expanded from 2019 levels was due to an expansion of benefits for burn pit victims? I've seen cutback numbers as high as 60% for the EPA. I don't think we will know all the gory details for a while. I hope we don't hang Ukraine out to dry over an oval office argument.
My last employer was a barely sub Fortune 500 company with a couple of thousand in the location where I worked. There was a shooting over a woman, a few examples of falsification of expense reports, Falsification of records, a theft ring, and various sorties of unsavory relationships. There were people with locked door offices who would some times disappear for many hours. The majority of people worked hard and long and other people got caught and fired. It seems like the way with big organizations and a general population mix. We had workforce reductions, but cutbacks were surgical rather than the DOGE effect. I don't know how different government agencies might be, but it does seem like they get bogged down in unnecessary routines..
"what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver
Someone on another forum who works in the Federal division that manages physical buildings says they are slashing divisions, and emptying buildings like crazy. All I can think of is that in this environment, where commercial real estate isn’t exactly strong, what’s gonna happen to the buildings that the federal government owns? Will they become useless hulks, dragging down the blocks of the cities where they sit?
Last edited by iris lilies; 3-9-25 at 11:33pm.
I have a BIL with a couple of life-threatening health conditions who receives all of his (substantial) care from the VA. I'm sure I will hear what, if any, impacts there are to his care, so I will have that bit of anecdata to share in the future. As an aside, he and SIL both voted for Trump.
I personally have already seen a very significant reduction in staffing and increased wait times at my local post office.
I live almost within shouting distance of a national historical site, which already seems to operate with pretty lean staffing. It will be interesting to see how/if they are impacted in the upcoming season. They are only open seasonally for tours and such, but the grounds are open year-round as a park.
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