Quote Originally Posted by Diehard Ute View Post
With the new Amazon and UPS facilities in SL things will get interesting. You combine those two buildings it’s 1,600,000 square feet.

Amazon is literally across the street from Fed Ex and a 5 minute drive from UPS.
I'm connecting dots here and jumping topics, but assuming UPS & FedEx (and USPS) are facing wage/benefit pressure from the free-lancers, this adds pressure toward healthcare reform. As GM demonstrated a few years ago as they moved manufacturing from plants in the US north to Canada because of healthcare costs, many businesses are increasingly finding the benefits aspect of wages to be cost prohibitive.

Ironically, Intermountain (Health Care) has a new CEO who is on a campaign to dramatically re-invent how they operate. The word is a LOT of people are going to be riffed, and at least in the IT part of IHC, they intend to keep the architecture and security groups, with everyone else becoming contractors. (We're getting really, really good applicants looking to jump off that ship, right now. The IT placement folks in SLC are really getting a workout, from different angles.)

IHC shedding employees will certainly help bend the healthcare cost curve downward (in Utah), though it needs to come down quite a bit more to allow non-insured workers to be able to afford healthcare. CVS Pharmacy acquired Aetna (the health insurer), so there is some serious consolidation going on in healthcare, vertically, nationally. They may be able to stave off a push toward a Single Payer model that a resurgent Democratic party would be pushing in the early 20s.

Fascinating times as an economic & political observer. Probably not so much fun as a participant.