Internet sales tax, yea or nay?

Fuck sales tax and fuck the king.  IMHO

Trump called this decision a "great victory for consumers and retailers." How is it great for consumers? I'm sure it needed to be done, but having the cost of purchases increase can rarely be considered a victory for the consumer. Much like Trump's trade war, this will result in additional money out of the consumer's pocket. Some victory. BTW, trumpstore.com only collects sales tax in 4 states currently, so when Trump excoriated Amazon over this issue he was being incredibly hypocritical. Surprised?

vaggar99 said:

jeffbr said:

Trump called this decision a "great victory for consumers and retailers." How is it great for consumers? I'm sure it needed to be done, but having the cost of purchases increase can rarely be considered a victory for the consumer. Much like Trump's trade war, this will result in additional money out of the consumer's pocket. Some victory. BTW, trumpstore.com only collects sales tax in 4 states currently, so when Trump excoriated Amazon over this issue he was being incredibly hypocritical. Surprised?

whenever competition is made more fair, the consumer should win.  there was a time when we went to a local store for almost all of our shopping needs.  Brick and mortar did a great job of brining deals to your local neighborhood store.  not so much anymore.  foot traffic is way down, so the focus has turned to selling higher dollar/higher margin items to make up for the traffic loss.  bottom line: if you want something now, you're gonna have less choice and pay more for it.  

hopefully, things start moving back to the glory days of the mid 90's!!! 

America stores with less choice?  That made me laugh.  

brianlux said:

Meltdown99 said:

vaggar99 said:

jeffbr said:

Trump called this decision a "great victory for consumers and retailers." How is it great for consumers? I'm sure it needed to be done, but having the cost of purchases increase can rarely be considered a victory for the consumer. Much like Trump's trade war, this will result in additional money out of the consumer's pocket. Some victory. BTW, trumpstore.com only collects sales tax in 4 states currently, so when Trump excoriated Amazon over this issue he was being incredibly hypocritical. Surprised?

whenever competition is made more fair, the consumer should win.  there was a time when we went to a local store for almost all of our shopping needs.  Brick and mortar did a great job of brining deals to your local neighborhood store.  not so much anymore.  foot traffic is way down, so the focus has turned to selling higher dollar/higher margin items to make up for the traffic loss.  bottom line: if you want something now, you're gonna have less choice and pay more for it.  

hopefully, things start moving back to the glory days of the mid 90's!!! 

America stores with less choice?  That made me laugh.  

It is true that many stores in America have an almost obscene number of choice for the same common products where are almost all the same.  On the other hand, more and more I am finding there are high quality products that I used to get that I cannot find in any brick and mortar store in our area.  That include the  Newman's own kibble for my cat that I now have to buy on-line.  It includes some hardware items that, if I want quality, I have to go on line for.  And it definitely includes 99.99% of the records I would like to buy (preferable used in good condition).

Three things have killed local downtown brick and mortar stores:

1.Walmart (more crap per square foot than any store in the world).

2.On-line sales.

3.Suburbia, shopping malls and the death of community focused city central almost everywhere.

All good points.  I also think if items are selling well in store, then they'd stock it.  Another point you brought up is so much choice  among common products, that chews up shelf space.  30 years ago I worked at a K Mart ... theft was a huge problem,  online sales eliminates customer theft...so I'm sure that is driving companies to push online sales.  That's a huge cost savings for a company like Amazon?

Meltdown99 said:

vaggar99 said:

jeffbr said:

Trump called this decision a "great victory for consumers and retailers." How is it great for consumers? I'm sure it needed to be done, but having the cost of purchases increase can rarely be considered a victory for the consumer. Much like Trump's trade war, this will result in additional money out of the consumer's pocket. Some victory. BTW, trumpstore.com only collects sales tax in 4 states currently, so when Trump excoriated Amazon over this issue he was being incredibly hypocritical. Surprised?

whenever competition is made more fair, the consumer should win.  there was a time when we went to a local store for almost all of our shopping needs.  Brick and mortar did a great job of brining deals to your local neighborhood store.  not so much anymore.  foot traffic is way down, so the focus has turned to selling higher dollar/higher margin items to make up for the traffic loss.  bottom line: if you want something now, you're gonna have less choice and pay more for it.  

hopefully, things start moving back to the glory days of the mid 90's!!! 

America stores with less choice?  That made me laugh.  

well, i happen to help run a small retail chain and that's not only what I see but help execute everyday.   the change is subtle, but it's there.

Another issue that might lead to less choice is companies buying shelf space ... the big companies through marketing and buying shelf space dictate our choices.  

Meltdown99 said:

vaggar99 said:

Meltdown99 said:

vaggar99 said:

jeffbr said:

Trump called this decision a "great victory for consumers and retailers." How is it great for consumers? I'm sure it needed to be done, but having the cost of purchases increase can rarely be considered a victory for the consumer. Much like Trump's trade war, this will result in additional money out of the consumer's pocket. Some victory. BTW, trumpstore.com only collects sales tax in 4 states currently, so when Trump excoriated Amazon over this issue he was being incredibly hypocritical. Surprised?

whenever competition is made more fair, the consumer should win.  there was a time when we went to a local store for almost all of our shopping needs.  Brick and mortar did a great job of brining deals to your local neighborhood store.  not so much anymore.  foot traffic is way down, so the focus has turned to selling higher dollar/higher margin items to make up for the traffic loss.  bottom line: if you want something now, you're gonna have less choice and pay more for it.  

hopefully, things start moving back to the glory days of the mid 90's!!! 

America stores with less choice?  That made me laugh.  

well, i happen to help run a small retail chain and that's not only what I see but help execute everyday.   the change is subtle, but it's there.

So is theft a big problem in your chain?  Somehow I think retailers like the cost savings from online sales (no theft).  When I worked at K Mart they tried to keep theft at 3% or less ... I will be honest I was young and they never explained 3% or less.  I was assuming 3% of store sales, these issues were discussed at monthly staff meetings ... one year theft was over 5%, and the manager was "pissed".

yes, theft is a big problem.  we probably sit around 3% loss from theft.  it might be true that there is less theft in online sales, but you still have employee theft to deal with.  Online stores have additional cost of shipping and labor associated with picking product that the consumer would have normally done.  The long standing sales tax holiday was sort of a way to help online stores offset some of these costs.  

brianlux said:

Meltdown99 said:

vaggar99 said:

jeffbr said:

Trump called this decision a "great victory for consumers and retailers." How is it great for consumers? I'm sure it needed to be done, but having the cost of purchases increase can rarely be considered a victory for the consumer. Much like Trump's trade war, this will result in additional money out of the consumer's pocket. Some victory. BTW, trumpstore.com only collects sales tax in 4 states currently, so when Trump excoriated Amazon over this issue he was being incredibly hypocritical. Surprised?

whenever competition is made more fair, the consumer should win.  there was a time when we went to a local store for almost all of our shopping needs.  Brick and mortar did a great job of brining deals to your local neighborhood store.  not so much anymore.  foot traffic is way down, so the focus has turned to selling higher dollar/higher margin items to make up for the traffic loss.  bottom line: if you want something now, you're gonna have less choice and pay more for it.  

hopefully, things start moving back to the glory days of the mid 90's!!! 

America stores with less choice?  That made me laugh.  

It is true that many stores in America have an almost obscene number of choice for the same common products where are almost all the same.  On the other hand, more and more I am finding there are high quality products that I used to get that I cannot find in any brick and mortar store in our area.  That include the  Newman's own kibble for my cat that I now have to buy on-line.  It includes some hardware items that, if I want quality, I have to go on line for.  And it definitely includes 99.99% of the records I would like to buy (preferable used in good condition).

Three things have killed local downtown brick and mortar stores:

1.Walmart (more crap per square foot than any store in the world).

2.On-line sales.

3.Suburbia, shopping malls and the death of community focused city central almost everywhere.

My 72 year old mother is constantly complaining about the obscene amount of choice we have in stores. She thinks it's completely outrageous and really annoying. I personally like it, just because there aren't that many choices when it comes to GOOD products, but the wider the selection, the more likely it is that there will be at least one really good choice to make. But ideally, the market just wouldn't be flooded with all those crappy options. It's always amazed me how companies are able to find such huge markets for inferior products, while there is a far superior product everyone could be using. Sometimes there isn't even a price difference. And sometimes this is so much the case, that the far superior product goes off the market. Is it because people simply aren't very discerning or what??