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I bought my tv from Amazon on their extended Black Friday sale. It's remanufactured, which means it ended up in my living room over a landfill. It was about the cost of a small tv you might tote around the house. The first one had been dropped and wouldn't work, so amazon picked it up free and reversed the charge, then let me find another one and order it.
Remanufactured electronics run very well, all returned to factory spec, and save space in a landfill. I also have a spare laptop from Walmart which I ordered and had delivered. If it turned out it didn't work, they'd ship a replacement free. And in my state, Amazon doesn't include sales tax.
So if you want to save some waste, look at remanufactured products. There are many on the walmart online site.
Is the fact that Amazon doesn't charge tax in your state really any benefit though? I find it to just be extra paper work. It's not like you're saving anything.
oh my yes, it's completely unrealistic to think that a chain whose gross profit was 129 billion in 2014 might just put a little of that into their employees wages in order to encourage other employers to raise their employees wages...why should they; there is no law requiring them to be socially responsible and the race to the bottom is fun
Well, you do realize that Walmart is a business, right? A not-so-profitable business. It's not like they have a whole lot of extra money to raise wages with. Retail is not a high-margin business.
Wal Mart, being a retailer, pays low wages, just as the industry overall does. It would not make sense to offer high wages for minimal skills.
They have been one of the top 20 best paying retail stores, and less than a $1 difference between most of the others in the top 20 list, and with their new pay scale, they jump ahead to near the top. And the majority of the high end department stores do not even make the top 20 stores. In words that make it simple to understand, Walmart pays better than the majority of the high end upscale brands.
The thing in many retail stores a few people will make great money. In the 1960s, I was working for one of the top rated department stores in the nation. The furniture, major appliances, and electronic departments were on commission. We all earned much more than the assistant store manager, at today's dollars we all made over $125,000 per year. I sold furniture. One day I furnished one of the biggest homes on the Coast in the most prestigious developments in the state. My commission from that one sale was about equal to what the clerks made per year. At the same time, the clerks, etc., were earning 85 cents per hour, or about what the average minimum wage is today when converted to today's dollars. Different times with the same buying power per hour worked.
Retail has always been low pay. They pay according to what the person doing the work, brings in in income benefits to the store. That is why certain salesmen/women made many times what most clerks earned. Our three departments, brought in nearly half the profits to the store. To insure they were able to get the sales they wanted to hire the best salespeople for those departments. The rest of the store brought in low profits per department, so they were paid minimum wages. The store simply could not afford to pay more than they did, and still be able to make a profit. They could not raise wages for everybody, because to do so they would have had to raise prices considerably, which would make them non competitive, and put them out of business.
no dear, not the mom and pop stores, the major grocery stores that they have run out of business
A couple years ago an economics professor, from a major US university, published an article in one of the top journals that showed consumers saved approximately $50 billion annually on their grocery bills because of Walmart.
That is huge, especially considering that people who buy groceries at Walmart are probably concentrated in the lower socioeconomic groups.
Is the fact that Amazon doesn't charge tax in your state really any benefit though? I find it to just be extra paper work. It's not like you're saving anything.
The sales tax here is ten percent. They tax food too. So my tv saved me a nice chunk by being tax free. I buy as much as I can from them because of the lack of sales tax.
What extra paper work?
When the first one I ordered had a gash in the box and didn't work, a report on the website got the charge returned and a free pick back up (also free delivery). Buying from a store would mean you had to haul the tv in yourself.
I'd like to get a slightly bigger tv and put the other one in my room after a slight modification of the built in I made and will look towards amazon again.
The sales tax here is ten percent. They tax food too. So my tv saved me a nice chunk by being tax free. I buy as much as I can from them because of the lack of sales tax.
What extra paper work?
When the first one I ordered had a gash in the box and didn't work, a report on the website got the charge returned and a free pick back up (also free delivery). Buying from a store would mean you had to haul the tv in yourself.
I'd like to get a slightly bigger tv and put the other one in my room after a slight modification of the built in I made and will look towards amazon again.
My point is that just because you don't have to pay taxes when you purchased your TV, that doesn't mean that you don't pay taxes on it. It just means you pay taxes at a later time. All it does it push the can down the road. It doesn't save you any money (unless you're evading taxes).
The paperwork to pay these taxes is the extra paperwork I'm talking about. When you purchase from a retailer that charges you sales tax, you don't have to worry about this extra paperwork.
Another reason I hate these big box stores and mega national chains is because I feel it corrupts the character of communities around the country. I absolutely hate that I can leave Pennsylvania, travel 2500 miles to Oregon and find the same.exact.thing there. Local flavor is still around but it seems to be in shorter and shorter supply the more these mega-chains grow.
My aunt's experience is the same, she never made very much until she moved up to being a department manager at Kroger, even now, relative to her experience, she still doesn't make very much even after 20+ years so I'm not sure where people are getting this rhetoric of "back in the day, people were making bank working in grocery stores."
I also don't get when people throw around the idea that buying at your local Mom & Pop store is somehow supporting a place that pays fair wages as opposed to Walmart.
A small locally owned retail store is going to pay a part-time cashier or stock person close to min wage too, and their benefits will usually be worse than at a bigger chain. Mom & Pop stores aren't some magic place where low skill workers are paid enough to own a home and raise a family.
My point is that just because you don't have to pay taxes when you purchased your TV, that doesn't mean that you don't pay taxes on it. It just means you pay taxes at a later time. All it does it push the can down the road. It doesn't save you any money (unless you're evading taxes).
The paperwork to pay these taxes is the extra paperwork I'm talking about. When you purchase from a retailer that charges you sales tax, you don't have to worry about this extra paperwork.
Oh please! You actually think people pay those taxes on out of state purchases?
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