Google owner Alphabet becomes $$TRILLION$$-dollar company

[mysteryowl]

Tech giant is the fourth US firm to achieve the valuation – after Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.
Alphabet’s value, based on the price of its Wall Street-listed shares, passed $1tn (£776bn) in the final minutes of trading on Thursday night, with shares closing at a record high of $1,450.16 each.
-snip-

It has followed its tech rivals Microsoft, Apple and Amazon over the $1tn mark, amid a long rally in so-called Faang stocks.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/17/google-owner-alphabet-becomes-trillion-dollar-company

I just think of all the businesses these ultra-mega companies have gobbled up, hence squashing the so-called American dream.

[Farmer-Rick]

1. If not for the millions of people in poverty, these guys could Not be so rich.

Deadly poverty is a feature of out of control capitalism. The filthy rich can't be rich without taking it away from someone.

That's why kings, queens and lords were so rich during feudalism. They had so many serfs and peasants in abject poverty.

And like feudalism, capitalism has become stagnent and destructive.

[mysteryowl]

2. Well said

[EX500rider]

3. "The filthy rich can't be rich without taking it away from someone."

You mean someone buying their product or stock? Sounds voluntary to me.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. Nope. The filthy rich actually take it away from someone.

For example, local farmers use to sell their produce to local schools. But then the USDA changed the funding system for school lunch programs and the schools have to buy in mass quantities from USDA selected producers who are 90% corporate owned farms. So, farmers very rarely sell directly to schools anymore and all those sales go to big rich corporate farms instead of supporting local farmers.

Local grocery stores use to buy from local farmers. But now big chain corporate stores set up lucrative contracts with big corporate farms in other states. All those sales use to go to supporting local small farms are being sucked out of the economy to line the pockets of a filthy rich corporate stock owner.

Local producers use to provide all our products and those sales were distributed to a lot of middle class families and supported them. But now, a handful of filthy rich people collect all those sales to add to their piles of wealth.

So corporations didn't create those sales. Corporations didn't magically create this need and want. They took them from the middle class families who use to live off those sales.

Of course when they did that the GOP and the filthy rich didn't say that was what was going to happen. They didn't mention that thousands (millions?) of once succesfull farmers were going into poverty. They didn't mention that when the USDA decided to consolidated school lunch funding it was going to take away sales from farmers who use to live middle class lives off those sales. Now those farmers are in poverty. Now those small retail store owners are in poverty. Now those factory workers have sales clerk jobs and live in poverty.

Corporations took away enteprenuer and self emploved incomes and sent those people into poverty.

[EX500rider]

7. All that was going to happen anyway..

...if large corporate farms are more efficient due to economies of scale they were going to come on top eventually.


But now big chain corporate stores set up lucrative contracts with big corporate farms in other states.

When you are purchasing for a large chain you want a reliable low priced supplier who can handle all your orders. Not surprising they would go with the larger concomerate who can meet those needs, it's called economics.

[Farmer-Rick]

8. No they wouldn't because there is one thing huge corporate farms Can Not do

They can't mass produce quality. They are constantly looking for cheap inputs, to sell at higher prices. Cheap inputs create crappy products. Corporation have now been allowed to put sawdust into your grated cheese and sell it to you. But until corporation started selling most all of the cheese in the US, it was illegal to taint it with sawdust.

The USDA did not announce that their funding change would wipe out most small farmers. They hid it and lied about it because the filthy rich were pressuring them. The filthy rich gave campaign contributions to Raygun, W and the GOP. Then they complained and threatened until only huge cheap corporations can sell to the USDA

There is only economy of scale if you reduce something. Usually quality and wages are reduced. The myth of large is better is rediculus. Bigger is not better or cheaper or more efficient. It merely reduces labor costs and quality thanks to a willing federal government.

There are many small farmers in less capitalist countries that produce quality and quantity without corporate control. Small can be just as efficient if there is a level playing field.

[EX500rider]

9. Most large scale farms in the US are family operations.

Most large-scale U.S. farms in 2015 were family operations: over 90 percent (about 59,000 farms).
Family farms play a dominant role in U.S. agriculture. In 2015, these farms accounted for 99 percent of U.S. farms and 89 percent of production. On family farms, the principal operators and their relatives (by blood or marriage) own more than half of the business’s assets—in short, a family owns and operates the farm.
In 2015, 90 percent of U.S. farms were small family operations with under $350,000 in annual gross cash farm income (GCFI)—a measure of revenue that includes sales of crops and livestock, Government payments, and other farm-related income. These small farms, however, only accounted for 24 percent of the value of production. By comparison, large-scale family farms with at least $1 million in GCFI made up only 2.9 percent of U.S. farms but contributed 42 percent of total production. Nonfamily farms accounted for only 11 percent of agricultural production.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/march/large-family-farms-continue-to-dominate-us-agricultural-production/

[Farmer-Rick]

10. Wal Mart and Amazon are family operations too.

Doesn't make them efficient, of high quality or fair. It doesn't make the playing field fair either.

They are consolidating the dairy farms, because the US cut off subsidies institute back in the 1930s, so that the filthy rich can put more people into poverty by taking away their sales.

[EX500rider]

12. "Doesn't make them efficient" Actually they have succeeded because they are VERY efficient.

[Farmer-Rick]

14. No, they are successful for selling China's cheap crap and paying slave wages

Chinese crap was cheaper than American made items. In fact old man Walton and his kids got caught labeling Chinese trinkets as American made. They got a small fine.

China was looking for an American partner to sell their rather poorly made items to Americans and old man Walton raised his hand and jumped up and down and said I will, I will. And a marriage was made in heaven.

The US government helped out by ignoring anti trust laws, conducting a war on unions to lower wages so low that full time Walton workers can still qualify for food stamps. They also allowed China to undercut prices until it wiped out American producers.

When thanks to the failure to enforce anti monopoly laws, the merger mania happened in the 80s and 90s, Walton got to put all sorts of small retailers out of business creating poverty wherever he set up another Wal Mart. He did not create sales he stole sales from middle class retailers. Those retailers each had their own full staffs that also fell into poverty.

But when Walton put them all out of business, all those people lost their jobs. But Walton paying crap for wages and building stores with very few personnel in them set up shop he sold the same things but with much lower labor costs.

And that is our so called capitalist corporate efficiency. Its just very crappy wages.

[EX500rider]

18. Finding cheap suppliers and keeping cost of labor down is part of efficiency.

No one is forced to work there.

When thanks to the failure to enforce anti monopoly laws
Walmart or Amazon do not have a monopoly on anything, just being the biggest is not a monopoly, I can get anything they sell from someone else, so not a monopoly.

[brooklynite]

4. How have Microsoft and Apple spoiled the "American Dream"?

From what I can see, they can't get rich if people don't have money to buy their products.

[Farmer-Rick]

11. Well, Microsoft started out by stealing computer time from a hospital

Billy boy broke into his mother's hospital...she was a major hospital executive....and he stole computer time from those computers.

Nothing like starting a major corporation by committing a crime. But Gates is notorious for dirty dealing, double crossing and stealing others' code.

And Traitor Trump, who meets weekly with Billy boy, just gave Gates company...that he still holds a ton of stock in....a huge government contract for muktimillions. Now I wonder how Gates got that???

Gates and the Apple founder are not geniuses. If not them, somone else would have invented probably better operating personal computers. They were just the first and manage to monopolize and squeeze ever last cent out of the technology.

[brooklynite]

15. "somone else would have invented probably better operating personal computers"

If someone had, they'd have made a fortune and you'd be complaining about them.

[Farmer-Rick]

17. Yeah you are probably right

It's capitalism that's creating 99% of this mess.

[EX500rider]

19. Riggggttt....cause countries that weren't capitalist like the Soviet Union, Pre-1980's China,

N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, ect all all such lovely places to live and work.
The motto in the Soviet Union was "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work"

[USALiberal]

16. Link to these stories please! nt

[fescuerescue]

5. actually small companies DREAM of

being gobbled up these ultra-mega companies.

It's quite common for a startup's exit plan to dearly dearly hope to be purchased by Amazon, Google, Cisco, Apple etc.

Back when I worked for one of those, my employer bought about 20 companies a year and not a single one was purchased unwillingly. The employees of those small startups were only angry if they were hoping to be purchased by some other big company. In all those cases the employees made out extremely well. -Extremely- well.

The silicon valley model is a quite a bit unlike anything else.

I have a small consulting company and I would be thrilled beyond words for Google to buy mine. But I'm small potatoes and that's really a pipe dream.

[Farmer-Rick]

13. That is the only way to be a successful company these days

Hope you take enough sales away from some huge corporation so that you annoy them and they buy you out. Of course they can also just sell what you are selling for pennies for a couple of years then put you out of business. That's another slick move by the filthy rich.

But it wasn't always that way. Use to be you could sell retail items for a small mark up and you could support you and your family. Not so much anymore thank the Walton Family and the US government for not enforcing anti trust laws.

It"s always a partnership between GOP law makers and the filthy rich.