Why Amazon Wants To Pay Sales Tax

Maximum Prophet writes "A while ago, Amazon caved on paying individual states sales taxes. Now we know why. Amazon is setting up same-day delivery warehouses everywhere. They will put most normal retailers out of business." If that's a bet, I'll take it.

Comments

would i rather

[Simpson,Homer_Jay]

shop at wal-mart?

Re:would i rather

[ackthpt]

I'm a sucker for going to farmers markets, picking out produce which was harvested yesterday and usually picked when it's ripe, not a month ago when it was still "green". For canned or frozen goods something like delivery could make sense (though I'm usually pretty erratic in my schedule for delivery) but I still get a lot of those things at Trader Joe's because Joe's suppliers use far less chemicals in the making of their products (I really don't like looking at something like a burrito, which should be beans, cheese, flour, oil and water, but reads like The Brothers Karamazov.)

Course, it' doesn't rain 11 months out of the year where I live, either, so I don't mind being out and about and hitting farmers stands on the way home from work, like some manic pinball.

Amazon's strength was books, then consumer eletronics, then food, then eveything else. While they have free delivery (for over $25 spent on most items) there's a certain amount of waiting and if the item is DOA (like one cracked DVD I received) you have to exercise some patience. Meanwhile good ol' brick and mortar lets you have the goodies in your hot little hands now and often work out better on returns.

Re:would i rather

[cjcela]

I think your post is shortsighted. While it may be convenient in the short term, the price we may have to pay for a single company providing pretty much all consumer goods may be outrageously expensive in the long term for society. By killing the small business, Amazon is not helping the economy, but actually bankrupting small shops for its own profit. Low prices today are not always a good long term strategy, because when there is no more competition, there are no more price restrictions, and we are stuck with a gigantic company that controls the market. Remember what happens when Walmart sets shop in a small town. Protect your local economy. Do your part to help the small guys - they will be your Plan B when the big company decides to screw you over.

Re:would i rather

[cjcela]

I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term. By the time you figure out what is going on, they will own the market, and the small shops will be long gone. You will have no option but to deal with a single merchant. Good luck with that. Be smart. Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive. That will keep things in relative check.

Re:would i rather

[icebike]

I fail to see how destroying competition by undercutting local shops is a good thing for the local economy in the long term.

In order to meet a Same Day Delivery promise Amazon will have to be LOCAL. So there went your major point. Poof.

Workers walk out of one failing business model which requires customers to come to them, and walk into a better business model which puts the "shelves" right there in people's homes (on the computer or their phone), and offers same day delivery.

You seem to have a lot in common with THESE people. They didn't prevail either.

Don't try to convince us you have never shopped on line.

Re:would i rather

[RajivSLK]

And the merchant class, who used to get by owning small shops, will cease to exists. All those people will work at Wal-mart for $8/hour.

Wal-mart's low prices exist not because they have a vastly more efficient distribution system as commonly thought but rather because they have vastly more efficient systems for negotiating deals, driving down labour costs, leveraging the artificially low Chinese yuan and squeezing the profit from the supply chain.

Re:would i rather

[thetoadwarrior]

By minimising choice you end up with fewer low paid jobs. Even if it turns out to be the same amount of jobs they'll be lowered paid. It's not a good thing. Given the US' history of bending over for corporations too leaving everything to dry up and only having, for example, Wal-Mart and Amazon, as your only choice will not be a good thing. Anyone who can't see that in the long term that killing off choice is a bad thing is nuts. It's not just about doing things the old way. I like online shopping but why not have the same level of competition but online rather than deciding it's better to just go with the two companies that do questionable things and treat their employees like low paid shit.

Re:would i rather

[betterunixthanunix]

Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive

Easier said than done. I am on a grad student's salary, and saving a few dollars here or there really does matter sometimes. I suspect that a lot of people are in my position -- even people who are paid more, but who have to feed their children etc. When the little guys are "a bit more expensive," they are going to see less business, and it is not just that people are being cheap or greedy.

I also happen to live in a town that has done plenty of things to promote small, local businesses -- our downtown area has only a handful of corporate chains, and as I understand it, they had to fight pretty hard to get permits. Maybe some towns are in a bind and really cannot do the sorts of things that are necessary to keep local businesses alive, or maybe the people running those towns just lack backbone.

Re:would i rather

[DM9290]

I think you mean mean workers walk out of one failing business model and are replaced by computers and robots in a better business model.

The luddite's were not wrong, they were just overly optimistic. or haven't you noticed that the middle class is vanishing?

Re:would i rather

[Stormthirst]

I love how the Americans always blame their government rather than the obvious flaws in their economic system

Re:would i rather

[icebike]

There are far more players in the every day needs business than Wal-Mart and Amazon.

This is an easy business to get into for those stores already located in your community.
An internet connection, some software, some minimum wage stock pickers, and delivery vans.

  Amazon on the other hand has to build warehouses very close to every market, stock them, and then add An internet connection, some software, some minimum wage stock pickers, and delivery vans.

See the difference?
Amazon is at a severe disadvantage here. Yet you see very few Grocery store chains jumping in to add this type of convenience. Why not? They already have the expensive part in hand. They have the store in every little town!!!!

Your insistence that every worker have a high paying job is precisely why there is so much unemployment in the US today. If high school kids or college students or out of work CPAs can earn a few bucks doing this work, where is the down side of that.

Re:would i rather

[trout007]

I'm not sure how you can believe your economic death spiral philosophy. It doesn't make any logical sense. How does your version of an economy get started in the first place? How did we get to here from a hunter gatherer society? Did some magic being create jobs which created growth which created jobs which created demand? Of course not.

The way an economy grows is simple. People first have to consume less than they produce. This is savings. Then they can spend time and energy building capital goods which increase productive. More productivity means destroying existing jobs and cheaper goods. This frees up labor for working where they can add the most value. This process continues and we get richer and more comfortable as we have to work less for things.

Think about an isolated hunter gatherer society. They spend all of their time trying to survive. They have to either ration food or spend extra time hunting to get enough food for them to have the time to plant crops or raise animals. Both these things require a lot of effort at first to build the tools and work the land. But after they get it done they can feed themselves using fewer people. Now some people can think about what else to do like build furniture or boats or something else they never could have done if they had to hunt.

Re:would i rather

[Luckyo]

First of all, he's talking about the trend and direction we're going into, not current scenario which is what you're talking about.

Second, if you claim that retail store clerks are a "high paying job", you're either stupid or ignorant of reality on a scale that would suggest need for psychiatric intervention. These are among the lowest paid jobs with lowest job security of all jobs out there. Grandparent's point is that these jobs are fairly important for local community because they allow for people who can't get other jobs not to start robbing and shooting reasonably well off people like you to earn a living.

Finally, grocery stores are at MASSIVE disadvantage. We already see the situation in electronics, where people go to a local shop, check out what they need and then... order from amazon. This will happen to groceries eventually as well. And that will kill your choice of products, your ability to choose where to spend your money and eventually your ability to actually visit a local store. This is a trend end result of which is very visible in several industries already, such as banking. Almost no way to get a human service, and now that banks got rid of most tellers, they will charge you for actually getting service in the bank.

That is the future of large corporations taking over small ones at retail. It probably won't happen until a generation change, but it's coming. And it's ignorant self-harming cheerleaders like you that will cheer it until the reality is here, at which point you will finally realise that you got a short end of a stick.

Re:would i rather

[Luckyo]

When your failing economic thesis is your main religion, you won't stop until complete collapse. Partial ones, like the recent banking crisis will just be taken out of the hides of little people and the system will continue to grind on.

USSR is already down. USA seems hell bent to follow.

Re:would i rather

[trout007]

I'll explain our current situation. After y2k and 9/11 those in power were scared we were going into recession. They were right we were. It is to be expected when you are facing an unknown threat. The correct course would have been for people to reduce debt and start saving to prepare for the worse. This naturally shifts production from long term capital goods to near term consumer goods. But the Federal Reserve wouldn't allow it. They pumped out the money like no tomorrow. This sends a false signal that people are thinking long term and it's time to build capacity. When businesses calculate if a long term project it worthwhile a major factor is what is the interest rate and expected inflation. At first both rates are low. Hence the housing boom and outsourcing to ramp up capacity. Now eventually prices rise due to all of this new money floating around chasing the same amount of resources Oil, Gold, Housing, ect. As prices rise all of those inflation numbers that people used in their calculations eat away the justification for increasing capacity. Then you get the crash as all of this projects are abandoned and the misallocation of resources and labor are exposed. The only solution is to let it work itself out. The market had a signal for a long time that more houses were needed because people were paying record amounts for them. If the easy credit wasn't there it would have been a good signal. But as it turns out all of the labor and material put into housing was a waste. Now you have to let the price of houses crash to where the market will support. All of those people that were employed by housing construction have to find new productive lines of work.

Let me know if this is making sense and I'll keep writing.

Re:would i rather

[I_am_Jack]

It's not for my lack of understanding why it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because your argument is based on a very subjective and factually inaccurate view of recent history. One of the tenets of Keynesian economics that is sound is not to adopt austerity measures in the face of recession or depression. The time for austerity is when the economy is strong, and there are the tax receipts and free-flow of capital to pay down the debt assumed to spend your way out of a recession (and that's the only way out of a recession; it's what Clinton did to get us out of the recession of 1990-94, and then used the late 90's boom to pay down debt and balance the budget). The reason we've gone into double-dip now is because of this misplaced (and frankly mind-boggling) belief that after a decade of deficit spending while consistently reducing income, we can some how entice those who hold a record amount of capital back into spending by not priming the pump through government incentives. When the private sector is not spending, and people are out of work and not spending, who else is going to spend? The economy we've built is dependent upon consistent expansion and growth. When you have neither, you have nothing. This is not complicated math here. The fact there there seems to be a large segment of the population willingly suspending disbelief about conservative economic initiatives and principles is clear indication why we're going down in flames. If you're a student of history, you can why we are where we are now because a Republican-controlled congress made the same kind of demands on FDR, and if it weren't for the eventual wartime debt and spending, would have plunged us into a second great depression. Yet when you have a propaganda machine pumping out misinformation about what is really happening in the market place, it's going to remain this way until it either collapses or people finally question why we've built a corporate welfare state that pays to ensure it's participants can continue to game the system.

Explain to me using your logical model of economics why it made good economic sense for Barclays to manipulate LIBOR?

Re:would i rather

[Mr.CRC]

Your doing good so far. So what is the root problem? The Fed and its fake money. It creates economic distortions in every conceivable way. Then when things f*ck up, people think the problem is not enough government control. Well, the Fed and its fake money are fundamentally a centrally planned market for money. That is fundamentally total government control over the economy. Yes I know the Fed is "private"--but in reality it is private the same way "public/private partnerships" are private--they aren't and wouldn't exist if it wasn't for a political decision, so they are really quasi-government enterprises. So there is no way at all to create a free market with its inherently stabilizing negative feedback loops that leftists cannot comprehend or insist on denying, out of this mess. It is destined to unravel into unstable distortions.

But the 99% always believe the problem IS the (non-existent) free market, and that we need more government interventions, because that is what they were programmed to think in...government school.

Everything is as it is meant to be.

Re:would i rather

[Darinbob]

Historically monopolies have formed and thrived when governments did not stop them. The free market forces do not prevent monopolies from forming.

Re:would i rather

[DinDaddy]

So why doesn't he buy his hooks at Walmart?

Re:would i rather

[foniksonik]

Why can't local farmers use Amazon to sell their produce online, picked that morning, delivered that afternoon?

Re:would i rather

[Darby]

For grocery stores, if you think shopping online is going to replace the local supermarket, you're insane and need psychiatric intervention. How are you going to buy ice cream online? Unless they do some really fast delivery, it'll be melted.

How far from your local grocery store is ice cream made that they sell?
For that matter, how long do you camp out at the local grocery store waiting for it to arrive so you can speed it home and eat it all before it melts?

Re:would i rather

[trout007]

Severe economic booms and busts have existed almost nonstop since the fed was created in 1913. They inflated to get us into WWI. Then they kept it up. Ever hear of the roaring 20's? That was the inflation of the bubble which has to inevitable burst which was the depression. WWII only got us out of the depression if you consider sending millions of unemployed men overseas to fight and die a good way to cure unemployment. If you look at the people in the US during the war they were still living like they were in the depression. Everything was rationed and it was horrible. The economy didn't get better until after the war ended and millions of soldiers were fired by the military.

The 90's boom was similar. The cold war ended and Clinton rightfully gut the military since we didn't need to fight the soviets. That released lots of labor to work on things people actually want. But in addition Greenspan inflated like crazy. We had this thing called the dot com bubble which is where all of the malinvestment went in the 90's and burst in 2000.

As for Barclays and the rest of the bankers should be tried and put in prison as far as I'm concerned. Fiat money, fractional reseve banking, FDIC, and legal tender laws are tools the bankers use to suck the wealth out of the producers in society.

Re:would i rather

[Guppy]

And the product variety and quality has improved dramatically every step of the way. That corner store usually and no more than 4 round steaks to choose from. Not an entire meat counter full of various sizes. They had poor quality fruit, when it was in season. Not a fruit section with fruit from all over the world all year around.

Oh, and hey, they had flys.

That kind of variety and quality doesn't come from mom and pop stores. It comes from big corporations.

But hey its a free country. You want those filthy little corner stores with limited selection, just drive 100 miles across the Mexican border. They still have them there. And the Flys too. No selection, very few products to sell. Go further down in central America, South America, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and it gets worse still.

I don't have any experience with Central/South America, but I've spent a fair bit of time in Asia. And I'll agree with you regarding the ever-present flies, but not on any other point. The diversity of the small vendors was outstanding; while each individual vendor might have a tiny selection, there were literally hundreds of them in a market, each jostling for a niche (and somehow, my grandmother knew exactly who to go to, for the best quality stuff at any given time).

If you walked in with set ideas about what you wanted to buy at that moment, then yes -- you might not be able to find that exact thing if it was was out of season. In the street markets, if you were willing to be flexible, you'd find unusual heirloom varieties of things that might be grown only in a single village (but might have been grown there for centuries), or you'd find entire species of fruits and vegetables you never even knew existed. That's for stuff you can eat -- if you wanted gadgets and electronics, it was just as good, as long as you were near a major city (most of it's produced there now, anyway). If you knew where to look, you could find vendors in a little stall in the corner somewhere that could do custom-modded laptops builds for you right there, on the spot (and slap on an emblem for whatever brand you wanted it to "be").

In comparison, the quality of fruits of vegetables you can get in the typical US suburban supermarket is really sad. Americans do not consume enough vegetables compared to the folks over there, and I can understand why. Everything has been bred to look shiny and hygienic and perfect -- but you don't taste with just your eyes. A lot of people don't understand how much has been lost because they've never had a decent example to compare against what they're getting. And, once you discount the dozen brands of each item, the true amount of variety is really small -- for instance, all our vegetables seem to be based around maybe two dozen species that have sufficient scales of production and distribution to make them economical. Over there, it's hundreds.

If you've never had a good experience with a street market, maybe you haven't been to a healthy, vibrant one. Time's running out though -- and I can understand why. It takes time and expertise to shop in that kind of environment, and your legs get a strenuous workout in the process (maybe the change is part of why asians are getting fatter now). And yes, there's noise and flies and dirt everywhere, and the little vendors don't have the economy of scale big operations can offer. As a result, in some places the multinationals big-box stores are gradually pushing the street markets out of business (they hang on for a while, but in their declining years it can be pretty sad. Maybe that's the kind of market you've seen?)

Re:would i rather

[PlusFiveTroll]

-- Eventually, the price of labor will drop below the subsistence wage level and people will fail to subsist (i.e. they will die). This will reduce the supply of labor, until the system returns to equilibrium.

This is true, but it is highly undesirable. People generally don't give up life willingly when they realize they are unneeded. They turn to crime, taking the fruits of the labor of the needed or even worse they turn actively against the 'needed' population in either terrorism or outright war. War is a terribly inefficient method of reducing population because it tends to kill more then the 'unneeded' and it destroys a lot of the resources and capital that could be used in more useful human endeavors.

Who remembers Kozmo? or Webvan?

[Electrode]

This all seems strangely familiar to me. Would be interesting if Amazon could pull it off, though.

Good.

[couchslug]

Driving to brick-and-mortar stores is an expensive time-waster. The more online choices I have the better.

Re:Good.

[quintus_horatius]

Oddly enough, more and more online retailers are selling through Amazon. And many businesses, including online retail, are running their infrastructure in clouds, often serviced by (you guessed it) Amazon. If you thought Wal-Mart had a wide grip, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Re:Good.

[shutdown -p now]

Indeed. If Amazon can actually pull off same-day delivery with local warehouses close to everyone, I'd say that they deserve the market dominance. Right now the choice between online and retail a question of convenience vs getting your hands on the product faster. If I can have the former without sacrificing the latter, retail should damn well adapt or die.

Wally World of the Interwebs

[ackthpt]

Still, if brick and mortar specialize then can still do well for themselves. Just give up the bulk order stuff Amazon handles in volume.

Sucks, if they threaten your meal ticket, but this whole trend has been going on since Sears & Roebucks sent out their first catatlog.

Re:Wally World of the Interwebs

[westlake]

Sucks, if they threaten your meal ticket, but this whole trend has been going on since Sears & Roebucks sent out their first catatlog.

In 1897 and for years after the Sears catalog had a large grocery section --- a much better selection than the small country store could offer and very attractively priced.

No perishable goods like fresh fruits or meats, of course.

On almost every page Sears pushed the notion of buying in bulk or "clubbing" your orders with neighbors to gain the most favorable shipping rates.

be careful what you wish for

[iveygman]

Local retailers (and apparently Walmart, too) were the leading forces in pushing such legislature through in many states. They obviously (and rightfully) fear that Amazon could completely destroy them. This legislation, they thought, would force Amazon to compete with them on an even playing field. Except the playing field was never even to begin with. Even if you force them to abide by the x% sales tax rule, they still completely dominate you in terms of convenience, selection, sheer operations efficiency and economies of scale. Only Walmart could really hold a candle to them. This is going to blow up in the brick-and-mortar retailers' faces and they'll have nobody to blame but themselves for their downfall.

Re:be careful what you wish for

[twistedcubic]

Amazon likely would explore this possibility regardless of the sales tax issue. It's not anyone's "fault".

Re:be careful what you wish for

[evilviper]

, they still completely dominate you in terms of convenience, selection, sheer operations efficiency and economies of scale. Only Walmart could really hold a candle to them.

I shop Amazon.com quite a bit, but honestly, the shopping experience sucks. I pretty much have to shop other websites to find the product I want, and then I might visit amazon.com and search for the exact product to look at reviews, and/or see if I can get it cheaper than elsewhere. If Google Product Search ceases to include amazon.com, I'll probably never buy anything there ever again, and be perfectly happy about it.

Trying to FIND what you want on amazon.com is a nightmare. A flood of irrelevant results, a "sort by" drop-box which just as often scrambles the results (try a big search, then sorting by price, and tell me you don't find several that are out-of-sequence), no connection between an item and related items or accessories, except for the few, fairly random "most people buy..." results on a page. etc., etc.

Walmart gives you a much easier website to navigate, with consistent and proper metadata on each and every item, proper categorization, related products, etc.

Walmart.com has a smaller selection, but that is actually a GOOD THING because you have less crap to wade through, and yet Walmart tries to serve everyone, so they always have at least one item from every possible product category.

What's more, walmart's physical location advantage is huge... For YEARS, I couldn't have any products shipped to me, because I was living alone, working the same hours they delivered and that their officese were open, not to mention their nearest center being a crazy distance away, in horrible traffic. When shipping just doesn't work, store-pickup is an acceptable option, that Amazon can't offer without B&M stores in every city. Even their lock-box idea isn't going to suit large items, or save them money on shipping.

Don't think I'm endorsing walmart, I'm just using them as the example of the polar opposite of amazon, and pointing out where amazon's flaws become huge disadvantages... A few years ago, I wouldn't be caught dead in a Walmart store. But as other retailers have actually conceded the fight (Ever gone into a Target to find they don't have ANY men's shoes? Ever gone into a pet store to find they don't have ANY flea collars?), and are perfectly happy to REQUIRE their customers to shop at walmart because the margins on many items their customers will need just aren't big enough, or the merchandise doesn't sell quickly enough, I've found myself with no other choice, and have only begrudgingly made peace with buying from Walmart, and happily stop buying from many other B&M's who apparently don't care about their customers...

Jobs

[Eyezen]

First manufacturing was destroyed, and the economy is still barely adjusting. Now retail is being threatened. Whats left for 300 million people to do? Interesting times indeed.

Re:Jobs

[shutdown -p now]

There is a difference between manufacturing and this. Manufacturing was not destroyed, because it provides a valuable service for our society without which it cannot function - so it was outsourced (which is bad, but it's a whole different thing). Here, though, we are talking about one business model subsuming the other by virtue of being more convenient and more efficient. It's not fundamentally different from online/downloaded media replacing audio CDs and video DVDs. In the end, you end up paying less for better service - why wouldn't you prefer that?

And note that the warehouses are still in US, and so is the delivery. So to the extent these jobs require working hands, they will be sourced locally. Yes, it'll certainly require fewer hands than traditional retail did, but why should we all be paying for a bunch of people doing useless work? It's a very twisted and flawed way of implementing socialized welfare; we might as well just do the real thing instead.

Re:Jobs

[ShanghaiBill]

First manufacturing was destroyed, and the economy is still barely adjusting.

Manufacturing was not destroyed. We (USA) manufacture as much as we ever did. It is just that manufacturing is much more automated today, so manufacturing employment is down.

Whats left for 300 million people to do?

They could spend their time reading about economic fallacies. Prosperity and economic growth come from more efficient production of goods and services. Not from "keeping people busy."

Interesting times indeed.

Seems more like a slightly interesting continuation of a process that started with the invention of agriculture (destroying hunter-gather jobs).

Re:Jobs

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Whats left for 300 million people to do?

Deliver packages, for Amazon. Sell delivery trucks, to Amazon. Perform maintenance on trucks, for Amazon. Build warehouses, for Amazon. Design and build better delivery systems, for Amazon . . .

Hey, if they are growing, and investing a lot of money . . . they must be spending it somewhere. Think of ways you can help them, and ride their success.

Ask not what Amazon can do to you, ask what you can do for Amazon . . . ?

Re:Jobs

[PReDiToR]

>> Whats left for 300 million people to do?

Buy stuff? Online?

With what?

Re:Jobs

[ChatHuant]

Prosperity and economic growth come from more efficient production of goods and services

Don't forget distribution though. If the current trends continue, most of the extra prosperity brought by productivity growth will be concentrated to a relatively small percentage of the population. If this happens, the total output may be larger but many people could conceivably do worse then they do now.

Re:Great

[mr1911]

Yeah, let's let Amazon get a monopoly so they can jack up prices. Or do you morons actually think they'll keep their prices so low after running out of business the alternatives?

You seem to think that once a business gets to the top of their space and starts acting stupid no one knocks them off. You seem oblivious that Sears used to be the retail giant with stores everywhere that couldn't be topped.

As long as Amazon is doing it better then I am all for them expanding.

Wal-Mart Competition?

[Necron69]

If there is a king of efficiency and lost cost in distribution and retail sales, it is Wal-Mart. You don't think they are just going to sit there and do nothing while Amazon moves in, do you?

Necron69

Re:Cant Wait

[hawguy]

I have a prime membership with them. main app on my phone is the Amazon store and code scanner, go into Wal Mart see an item touch and play with it. if i like it then i check how much on Amazon and then buy it, it is then at my home with in 2days (1day on most things). My wife is disabled and can not drive, so Amazon has been a wonderful thing for us and our kid.

I know lots of people do that, but I think it crosses the ethics boundary. It costs a lot of money to have a physical store and physical product.

There are some things I don't like to buy without seeing them in person (running shoes and TV's to name a couple), if I go to the store to try on running shoes and find ones that I like, I always make a purchase from that store. When it comes time to buy a new pair, I have no qualms about buying them online, but when the store is paying someone to help me find the right shoe, I want to support them for that purchase.

Likewise, if I go to the store to check out a TV, I buy from that store to compensate them for having enough TV's in stock to do a comparison.

But for most other goods, Amazon (with their excellent review structure) is all I need.

I'm usually ok with buying clothes online (though rarely from Amazon), but my wife ends up sending so much stuff back because she doesn't like the fit or the look after she tries it on, she rarely buys online.

Get back to work producing

[pubwvj]

Perhaps what we need is for people to get back in the business of producing. Our family business maximizes vertical integration and just-in-time manufacturing to make it so we control our process, product and profits. We do work with retailers and they take about a 50% cut. To make it we have to make sure that we keep as much as possible of that other 50%. Unlike many businesses, our family actually does the work. We farm. We turn sunlight into food.

Re:Great

[couchslug]

"You seem oblivious that Sears used to be the retail giant with stores everywhere that couldn't be topped."

Not to mention Montgomery Ward, who owned the mailorder space before the Internet. They still exist in name, but no one cares.

Sad

[Experiment 626]

So as a result of Amazon caving to my state on the tax thing, I pay 8% more for my purchases, but might eventually get them a day faster. Not being the impatient and impulsive sort, I liked the old system a lot better.

This could however make other online retailers a lot more attractive. If I want to buy, say, an iPad, the cost is the same from any merchant thanks to price-fixing. So I could buy it locally for instant gratification, or online to save the tax. Before Amazon was my go-to for online purchases, being the fastest of the tax-free options. Now, however, I would go to a competitor with no physical presence in the state in order to save good money for waiting a couple extra days.

Re: Sad

[PeanutButterBreath]

If your state has a sales tax, it almost certainly requires you to calculate and pay any tax not collected and remitted by sellers that you do business with (for relevant purchases). In most cases this is called a "use tax", and it appears on personal income tax filing forms.

Buying from out of state might be more convenient than under reporting income or taking improper deductions, but it is just a illegal. Chances are that if your state is interested in nailing you, they can analyze your banking and credit card records and compare your spending habits to your use tax declarations.

However, if none of that bothers you, you don't need Amazon's help. There are plenty of ways to pay less tax than you owe.

Amazon isn't going to PAY sales tax

[mbaGeek]

it is worth pointing out that Amazon will start COLLECTING sales tax not PAYING sales tax. The consumer is the one who will PAY the tax.

Re:Doesn't make any sense to me

[ThatsMyNick]

Not every product Amazon has will be available at these "same day warehouses". Only the popular ones, ones that are predicted to be sell well for the season (or a special day) will be stocked. Next time you fire up amazon.com, expect them to push products that available at the warehouse near you, and sell it to you with their next day delivery guarantee.

Big retailers come and go all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

People have ordered merchandise out of a catalog from Sears Roebuck & Co., Montgomery Ward, etc. since long before the internet. Amazon is doing nothing new. The internet is just a convenient way to publish a catalog and take orders automatically.

It always happens the same way. A big retailer gets established, gains some monopoly power, and starts selling anything and everything. Then it starts discontinuing the lower-volume, less profitable items, and raising the prices on the remaining items, because this seems logical to management. Then their customers start looking for and finding deals elsewhere, simply because they can't find what they were looking for where they used to shop, and they find out the prices where they used to shop aren't that great anyways.

Yes, I know Amazon came up with the "long tail." But it never lasts, because in the end retailers are always infuriated by those customers who for some reason or another happen to be looking for something that is outside the realm of high-volume high-profit mass-marketed consumer products that all big retailers like to specialize in.

Say goodbye...

[luckymutt]

...to Best Buy.
But not Radio Shack...somehow they always survive.
Radio Shack is the cockroach of the retail world.

Did you read your own link?

[jeko]

From the Wikipedia article you linked to:

"The Luddites were a social movement of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested ... replaced ... with less-skilled, low-wage labour, leaving them without work and changing their way of life (See "Dickens, Charles" for what life without work was like in 19th Century England)

Battles between Luddites and the military occurred at Burton's Mill in Middleton, and at Westhoughton Mill, both in Lancashire. It was rumoured at the time that agents provocateurs employed by the magistrates were involved in provoking the attacks. (Sound familiar?) ...and the present action had to be seen in the context of the hardships suffered by the working class during the Napoleonic Wars.

"Machine breaking" (industrial sabotage) was subsequently made a capital crime (Breaking a loom meriting a death sentence?!) by the Frame Breaking Act, 52 Geo. 3, c. 16[9] and the Malicious Damage Act of 1812, 52 Geo. 3, c. 130[10] – legislation which was opposed by Lord Byron, one of the few prominent defenders of the Luddites – and 17 men were executed after an 1813 trial in York. Many others were transported as prisoners to Australia. At one time, there were more British soldiers fighting the Luddites than Napoleon I on the Iberian Peninsula.

Hmm, a social movement protesting societal changes which left many to starve in the streets. This movement was met with ridiculously Draconian responses including executions and exile to Australia, and repressed with the use of more military troops against their own civilian population than were devoted to stopping Napoleon. The Draconian legal responses seem to have been specifically drafted to please wealthy company owners.

You know, I think you've got it exactly right. I think the Luddites have a lot to teach us about the times we live in.