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drxdrg08 OP t1_j6at4me wrote

Reply to comment by Little_Noodles in Does Philadelphia really financially support the whole state? by drxdrg08

> Is it just a coincidence that a massive percentage of Philly’s workforce is commuting from neighboring counties?

That's just not true. Factually not true.

When you subtract the people commuting outside of Philadelphia for jobs from people commuting into Philadelphia for job, the total number of workers is quite small compared the total workforce in the region.

So the idea that surrounding counties have no self sustaining economies of their own is absurd.

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Little_Noodles t1_j6b087r wrote

As of 2019 (the most recent public data), 47 percent of all jobs in the city are held by people from outside the county. That’s factually true, and it’s a massive percentage. There are a lot of reverse commuters, but it’s 40 percent, which is fewer.

And a lot of that is little money. I reverse commute to Delaware, and my income isn’t moving anyone’s needle.

When it comes to the great big engines of commerce in the city, where huge amounts of money is being made, particularly in property development, the developers are building in the city from offices in the suburbs, using labor that lives in the suburbs (affiliated with unions in the city), whose contracts are negotiated by lawyers from the suburbs (who went to UPenn).

Philly’s biggest law firms are full of lawyers from the burbs. Its massive medical complexes are staffed by doctors that went to school here and work here, but live juuust over the border.

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drxdrg08 OP t1_j6b1g3e wrote

You are having a separate conversation with yourself.

The matter of the fact is that residents in the city of Philadelphia receive far more in benefits from the state and the feds than they ever create with their own labor.

To put it even more simply, to maintain the current level of poverty that the city is in, it needs many billions of dollars from people that live somewhere else. The city does not support anyone else. It can't even pay its own bills.

The data clearly supports it.

The city receives $1.3 billion/year in SNAP benefits alone.

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Little_Noodles t1_j6b1lip wrote

The richest person in the state is the guy behind the Philadelphia-based Susquehanna International Group.

Ya wanna guess where he lives? Cause I can tell you where he doesn’t! And where do you think his highest paid staff live?

The wealth of Philly’s suburbs is, in large part, extracted from the city. Philly provides those counties with low wage labor that they don’t have to subsidize but Philly does (60% of Philly’s reverse commuters make $40,000 or less annually), educates and provides jobs for their their professional classes, and provides a commercial center that generates wealth for those counties’ richest residents.

The CEO of Aramark, one of the city’s biggest employers? A company whose HQ is in Philly and makes 14.6 billion annually? Chester county. Where do you think his top execs live? I only bothered looking up the CFO and one other - but it’s not Philly! They’re all in wealthy PA suburbs

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drxdrg08 OP t1_j6b5nxz wrote

> The CEO of Aramark, one of the city’s biggest employers? A company whose HQ is in Philly and makes 14.6 billion annually?

Everything you say is nonsense. It's just made up.

But let's pick just one thing. Can you prove the 14.6 billion figure?

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Little_Noodles t1_j6b688y wrote

Huh, I did make a mistake. I didn’t see their most recent annual report, which has upped the figure to 16.3 billion in revenue.

I also just looked for info on their senior Vice President. She lives in the “greater Philadelphia area” (aka the PA suburbs in counties outside Philly).

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drxdrg08 OP t1_j6b7lv0 wrote

> Huh, I did make a mistake. I didn’t see their most recent annual report, which has upped the figure to 16.3 billion in revenue.

Do you know the difference between revenue and profit?

Aramark made $194M in profit in 2022, lost -$91M in 2021, lost -$462M in 2020.

So in the last 3 years they made no profits, but lost -$359M.

You said they make $14.6B in profit. So clearly you have no clue about finances whatsoever. Even the basics.

And this is precisely how a lot of people think Philadelphia supports the whole state.

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Little_Noodles t1_j6b99ds wrote

At no point was I talking about net profits. Just revenue (which is why I said words like “revenue”). Like a lot of businesses, the past couple years have been a mess. I dunno if you noticed, but some shit was going down in 2020 and 2021 in Aramark's industry. But they’re a multi-billion dollar global corporation that makes money, and lots of it, more often than it doesn’t.

If you want to go lecture their lawyers and financial team about their “basics”, I can tell you where to find them (hint, drive outside the city limits and start knocking on the doors of mansions).

Now, if you want to argue that last years earnings mean that John Zillmer doesn’t deserve to be taking $1,118,750 from the city back home to Chester County in base salary, plus bonuses, stock options, and other benefits, we can agree on that.

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drxdrg08 OP t1_j6ba1bo wrote

> At no point was I talking about net profits. Just revenue.

Please stop embarrassing yourself any further.

> The CEO of Aramark, one of the city’s biggest employers? A company whose HQ is in Philly and makes 14.6 billion annually?

You were literally talking about profits. You were talking how Aramark, a national company, somehow extracts billions of profits from Philadelphia.

Have a good say sir. This conversation where you just make things up is clearly unproductive. You can keep thinking Philadelphia supports the whole state. Maybe even the whole country.

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Little_Noodles t1_j6bb46j wrote

When someone asks you how much you “make” do you subtract expenses first and only state your year end profit? Or are you hung up on “revenue”, which is the word for what that figure represents?

And top level staff absolutely does make their money in Philly and take it somewhere else, regardless of their company’s revenue or net profit year to year, and that is where it gets taxed for the purposes of this discussion (this process of taking something from somewhere where it is created and moving it somewhere else is also known as extraction).

Again - the richest guy in the whole state has his HQ out of Philly, but is not living here. He lives in Montgomery County. Philly’s biggest companies are almost all headed by executives making millions of dollars, but who live over the border, and the same can be said of their second tier staff. Dude that owns the Philadelphia Eagles (personal net worth in the $3-$4 billion range)? Montgomery County. The billionaire that owns most of the Phillies? Bryn Mawr.

In 2019, seven of the city’s biggest corporations (which includes Aramark) spent $2 billion across 19 categories of locally deliverable goods and services (construction, IT, security/public safety, pest control services, courier services, catering, architecture/design, lab supplies, facilities management, communications/public relations, business advisory consulting, special event planning, lobbying, accounting, personal protective equipment, legal services, and insurance.). Only 22.5% of that money was spent within the city.

Lots of money is made in Philadelphia - but a ton of it gets funneled directly out to the suburbs.

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boomerinvest t1_j6ctor6 wrote

However, the people living in Philly commuting outside Philly to work and the burbs folks coming into Philly to work all pay city wage tax. Although residents pay a higher tax. Philly mismanages revenue like crazy. Cigarette tax, beverage tax, wage tax, sales tax, gas tax, property tax, utility revenue. The list goes on.

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