http://imgur.com/gallery/Th0nSiV
I want to go back to the good ole days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXRviuL6vMY&t=0m56s
Increasingly it becomes clear that the solidly middle-class American Citizen/worker (under 75k a year) is the gore-ee. The hapless slave with a job, who works for decades, pays ever-increasing taxes and fees at all levels, fears the ever tyrannical governments at all levels to see that his contract with the "social contract" is meaningless.
That statement will be expanded on in subsequent posts... In the meantime the winner in all the results of the subject of this thread is likely to be... no one.
A frightening lose-lose scenario.
The first likely result is a massive national anti-trust, anti-monopoly hissy-fit by all the residents of the United States who are not :
Elected Criminals.
Crony capitalists and their parasites.
Lifetime Public not-working employees.
Union leeches with their special privileges.
Public unionized State County and local employees, including bureaucrats and "public safety" (/sarc> education employees.< (/sarc)
A hissy fit demanding anti-trust anti-monopoly action, a la AT&T and a dozen other huge corporations who were forced to split into many independent corporations.
Other relevant and transcendental subjects that need in depth discussions follow...
Yeah, but nobody can beat their prices on toner.
Sears and JC Penny destroyed the retail stores base with catalog sales last century. Right on time a hundred years later, Sears et al, are upset that Amazon is the new sears catalog business model. The only difference is their catalog is digital and fresh every second.
The internet is now the "Mall social construct", where as the mall used to be a place to visit in person, now it's Facebook and Twitter.
Good business plans beat bad business plans. It’s not like Amazon is alone in this, they’re just the flagship for the change. They don’t even have a monopoly to bust.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Usually, although certainly not always, Amazon has the same product at the same or cheaper price. How is it that B&M stores can’t beat that?
Before everyone jumps on me telling about the cost of B&M stores, I would argue that Amazon has many very large distribution centers and many, if not more, employees.
I am by no means an Amazon apologist, in fact, it is my opinion that Amazon has gotten way too big and is, or is fast becoming, a monopoly and ripe for anti-trust review.
I admit that I hate shopping and have fallen under the spell of shopping online and having things delivered to my doorstep, but I want other retailers to innovate and compete with Amazon. Why is this not happening?
Even behemoths such as Wal*Mart are decades behind Amazon. Sears, who started the whole catalogue shopping experience which was the precursor to what Amazon currently does, is now bankrupt. Amazon started in 1996, I think. That same year I started ordering from them when they only sold books, but even back then I knew they were going to be huge. And here we are. Amazon owns most retail markets now.
Ebay is putting on pressure also.Most items now come with 2 day Fast and Free shipping.
With artificial intelligence, machines will someday learn that they don’t need us.
Commercial real estate is going to be destroyed as all the brick and mortar buildings are no longer needed. They go away and a massive number of jobs go away. I see no future scenario in which most of us are working.
Amazon has announced that they will hire Gay Refugee drones to deliver products.
Related:
Amazon worth more than Sears, Macy’s and Target combined
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3511499/posts
(January 6, 2017)
Manufacturing in the U.S. began fleeing to "foreign greener pastures" in the late 60s.
Countries do NOT have friends and enemies; just National Interests. Among those interests is to maximize national income and minimize National expenses related to "trade." Do the math.
Trump has done a good job of shedding light on the short term orgasm, and the long term hangover of that "great" suicidal idea.
Those essentials include food, energy-electrical power supplies, clothing, ordinary household utensils, repair items and appliances, transportation, and perhaps some measure of limited "discretionary" spending, if any.
"Entertainment" may or may not qualify as an essential to the solidly middle class (under $75k) American Family.
ALL of those essentials are daily compromised by failures of less than adequate treatment of American health and safety issues by the foreign countries that now supply over 80% of most of them. The only possible exception is food, but the unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats and bugs-and-bunny crowd are determined and working on making sure tainted food becomes another failure of the "foreign trade" fiasco.
Next up... Examples of the statements above.
The U.S. economy never did recover from the great buggy whip industry slaughter.
Retail that’s getting hurt is/was likely gouging or being negligent.
A popular retail store will charge $150 for the same HDMI cable available online for half the cost. That’s an insane margin over the wholesale/dist cost.
Guitar Center on the other hand offers competitive prices in their stores. And I’d much rather visit and patronize the stores.
Local hardware stores are doing great while competing with both the box and online stores.
Amazon doesn’t need to be the only disruptive force in town. It practically stands alone as many of the traditional retailers squandered their final years. The potential for the paradigm Amazon adopted has been available for decades. Mainstream (not Main St) retail screwed itself.
It doesn’t surprise me that brick and mortars are flailing, they have completely abandoned the concept of what courteous service means. Tha retailers are swamped with a staff of gimmedats who seem to make it their goal to be rude, uninterested, and find the highest honor in the store, that is, running the cash register.
That’s what makes me prefer on-line shopping, not saving a few bucks.
I don’t go to mcdonalds anymore, because of the eyes-half-closed, mouth breathers who man the front counter. Without the cash register these morons can’t make change for a dollar without having a three-way conference with the manager. Couple that with ever-decreasing quality of the food, and an unclean store, there’s no reason to go there. Whereas Chick-Fil-A people are always neat, clean, courteous, and well-spoken. I guess it’s the difference in management.
Amazon now uses FedEx or UPS to ship from city to city but when the product arrives in the target city then Amazon has hired local individuals to deliver from the terminal to the client.
Also, there are many drop-off sites in most “Stripes” gas stations to send back faulty or unworthy items.
Both of those ideas seem pretty good to me. In addition, I cannot find cheaper prices than Amazon.
I’m not particularly thrilled at the prospect of handing so much retail business over to Amazon, given the corporate leadership and their employment practices. Killing off bricks and mortar retail isn’t always the best thing, even if you do save money. Recall the rationale for all the Chinese imports: they’re cheap. Amazon’s cheap, too.
Adam Smith was no fan of monopolies and it was not due to HOW they were formed in his day as much as it was their anti-competitive effects on markets.
http://imgur.com/gallery/Th0nSiV
I want to go back to the good ole days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXRviuL6vMY&t=0m56s
Anyway, once Amazon and a few other have everything, including groceries, you want to shop for covered, it's easy to slap gas rationing on all the evil people like me who have a 4x4 that doesn't run on coal, er, electricity or is the size of a soap box derby toy car.
After all, they won't impose restrictions on UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc. so they won't be imposing hardship of any kind on people who already voted with their dollars and chose those big online sellers anyway.
Sorry, I'm in a conspiratorial mood this morning after watching a few episodes of Ghost In The Shell to wash the image of the wench they put in the movie of the same name out of my mind. Oops, thought of her again, I'll put the USB stick back in and watch some more.
This isn’t about high tech, new ideas, or even convenience.
Amazon is winning for a simple old fashioned reason. It has better prices.
You can bet that if Sears could give the similar products at a lower overall price, then I’d buy at Sears.