| ▲ | jimbokun 12 hours ago |
| Two things jumped out at me. 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. |
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| ▲ | taurath 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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. |
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| ▲ | abnercoimbre 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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.) | | |
| ▲ | rationalist 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I have found eBay to be cheaper for books than Amazon. | |
| ▲ | bombcar 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I've found that books of all things are usually something you can get for Amazon prices elsewhere. | | |
| ▲ | aucisson_masque 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | kreco 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not invalidating your comment, but sometimes paying "new goods" means to support the creator. |
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| ▲ | sfn42 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I just Google the book name followed by the word epub and generally find what I'm looking for pretty quickly. | | |
| ▲ | 4gotunameagain 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Apples and oranges. Both fruits, some don't enjoy one as much. | |
| ▲ | tene80i 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | sfn42 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | tene80i an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | sfn42 an hour ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | titanomachy 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Maybe you should care a little bit what the people spitting in your food think about it. | | |
| ▲ | sfn42 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | titanomachy 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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). |
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| ▲ | carlosjobim 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you going to give an epub as a present to somebody? | | |
| ▲ | sfn42 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | troyvit 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | indecisive_user 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20499808 | |
| ▲ | themafia 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | qup 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Toothpaste is in basically every store. Dollar stores, grocery stores. Probably most convenience stations. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway173738 an hour ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | dboreham 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Soap comes from Costco. | | |
| ▲ | troyvit 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | taurath 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Add Costco to the 5 and that’s pretty much it for options. |
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| ▲ | wiredpancake 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | twoodfin 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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? |
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| ▲ | PaulDavisThe1st 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I spend $200-300 per week at whole foods, much to my own chagrin and moral discomfort. | | |
| ▲ | SECProto 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | nielsbot 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Maybe there's no comparable or better alternative? (Possibly because of Whole Food's capitalist power) |
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| ▲ | twoodfin 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | AFAICT, the numbers Matt’s referencing include Whole Foods so that’s a Whole Foods + Amazon.com $3,000. Frankly, I think a lot of people have lost perspective on just how rich the average American household is: Around $145k annual income. Not shocking that Amazon is capturing 2% of that gross. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | You’re way off the median household income is $80K https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/ | | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Median isn’t the average and Matt was computing the average household Amazon spend. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The mean is almost always a meaningless statistics. It only takes a few people to buy stuff like this to skew it. http://www.sellersprite.com/en/blog/most-expensive-thing-on-... | | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | danwills 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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!?) | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | vintermann 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The average Amazon spending of a US household, not the Amazon spending of the average US household. That second one gets weird. | | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’d be comfortable assuming household income and household Amazon spend are highly correlated. |
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| ▲ | cyberax 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It actually is for the normal distribution. | | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | bandrami 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Household income is not normally distributed. In fact nothing with a hard zero can be normally distributed. |
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| ▲ | h2zizzle 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | nerdponx 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's on food and consumable household stuff. I imagine some people do all of that shopping through Amazon. But on average? | |
| ▲ | zippyman55 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I spent $3000 at borders bookstore in one year, back in the day. But Amazon gets about $100 a year from me. | | |
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| ▲ | xoxxala an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You can request your complete purchase history from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/hz/privacy-central/data-requests/prev... 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. |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | twoodfin 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | throwaway5465 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Would you rather I suffer from Gellman Amnesia? https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2021/01/18/gell-mann-amnesia/ If you can’t trust someone’s analysis about something you know about, why trust him about something you don’t? | |
| ▲ | twoodfin 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | kgwgk 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Have you not heard of a little organ called brain that can be used to understand what you read? There is even a link to the latest quarterly report there (have you heard of links and financial reports?). | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well considering over the course of four years I got around a quarter million of AMZN (and sold it as soon as it vested)… And if you actually read the report you would see where he is still wrong. Hint: there is more to “North America” than just the US. | | |
| ▲ | kgwgk 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Well considering That makes your comment even worse! > if you actually read the report you would see where he is still wrong “about $3000 for every household in America.” Please let us know what alternative number did you get after your careful reading of the report. | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well since the lawsuit only considers the US and the revenue reported is for “North America”. I’ll let you figure that out. | | |
| ▲ | kgwgk 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, please tell me how do you get a result which is not about $3000 per US household. I’m really curious! | | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | kgwgk 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > The lawsuit is only about US households. Still waiting for the estimate of dollars per US household which is not about $3000. Come on, you can at least try to get to $2800 and claim victory! > Whole Foods by itself made $150 billion in revenue. That seems wrong by an order of magnitude. Or maybe you mean in a decade? |
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| ▲ | HaloZero 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | NavinF 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 3k is less than I expected considering median disposable income is ~50k. Where does the rest go? |
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| ▲ | stogot 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The author ignores that a small business shoppers falls in North America retail, so only dividing consumer household is incorrect My relatives use it for ordering office supplies for their business. |
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| ▲ | janalsncm 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Average household, not American |
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| ▲ | KittenInABox 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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. |
