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Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

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Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#341

Post by mrguyorama »

wombat-man wrote: post #268
reverendsteveii wrote: post #215

"This is hostile and political." --The President. No, Really. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/white-house-blasts-amazon-ov...

I can't tell if they still, genuinely, just don't understand how tariffs work and how they are charged. But if they're lying... why? to what end? People are going to notice when prices are jacked up or stores are empty.

If Fox News never tells them that increasing prices are Trump's fault, they will never turn on him. People need to stop treating his supporters as rational people just missing some information.

It's a classic cult of personality. They ignore reality as Trump demands.

There is no way out of this by insisting that they will naturally snap out of it. That's never been how cults of personality end.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#342

Post by bluGill »

DrillShopper wrote: post #339
sethd wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did vote, but not for Harris or Trump. :) Would I have voted for a Democrat or a Republican if they ran the "right" candidate? I suppose anything is possible, but given the history, I would consider that to be very unlikely.

Congrats for voting for Trump indirectly

Congradulations for ensuring we get more and more evil.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#343

Post by Eisenstein »

ceejayoz wrote: post #262
Eisenstein wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of 20 district sales taxes in California alone (out of ~150). Los Angeles County Measure H: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 03-31-2025 City of Orland Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2017 to 03-31-2025 Rio Dell City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2015 to 12-31-2024 City of El Monte Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025 City of San Pablo Reduction Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%,…

Yes. This is silly. We should change it. (But it's largely an issue for online sales, not physical locations. The McDonalds in San Anselmo, barring The Big One, stays in San Anselmo.) See also: American healthcare, college, etc. "Our setup is absurdly complex in bad ways" is not an argument for keeping that setup, it's an argument for making fixes.

I agree and never made the argument it should not be fixed. It is cause and effect, however.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#344

Post by Eisenstein »

Maken wrote: post #297
Eisenstein wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of 20 district sales taxes in California alone (out of ~150). Los Angeles County Measure H: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 03-31-2025 City of Orland Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2017 to 03-31-2025 Rio Dell City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2015 to 12-31-2024 City of El Monte Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025 City of San Pablo Reduction Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%,…

Are those based on the location of the seller or the location of the buyer?

Buyer.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#345

Post by bluGill »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #321
bluGill wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales tax cannot be per-calculated, since it is charged on the total sale. Rounding errors will get you. (when I worked fast food 30 years ago one value meal was $3.18, but two were $6.27) The government pays attention to this type of thing and they will get you for those pennies. (remember there are many governments, it is possibly all the local governments in question would decide not to pay attention, but that doe…

> one value meal was $3.18, but two were $6.27 That sure is a HUGE rounding error! 9¢ savings by doubling up is nothing to sneeze at! > they will get you for those pennies Was your restaurant ever audited? That is a lot of pennies!

Opps, my memory of prices is obviously wrong after 30 years. I can't tell you which number is right though.

One penny times the thousand or so meals per day over a year adds up. I don't know if we were audited - but I' s we would have been shut down for failing the audit.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#346

Post by mrguyorama »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #218
ericmay wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little difficult for me to make the point I want to make here because I don't disagree with you, but the usage of the word "brand" is not as descriptive as I'd like it to be. If you're buying good copper cookware the manufacturer "brand" matters, they build a reputation for having quality products, ideally continue to make those quality products at a fair price, etc. and life is good. But then there are brands…

I get it - there are brands that are well-known for being brands (i.e. famous for being famous) and there are brands that are well-known for making legitimately good products. Avoid the former like the plague, but the latter is one of the best methods to find legitimately great stuff.

Except there is an entire business strategy that has been consistently deployed in extracting that brand value by making the product shittier and just waiting for sales to slow as people figure it out.

Craftsman for example.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#347

Post by sorcerer-mar »

bloudermilk wrote: post #258
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #256

I was just talking to a couple friends of mine, about this, yesterday. They run a medium-sized manufacturing business that has almost all their work done overseas. Another friend of mine was just laid off, as a transportation broker, directly because of the tariffs. The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. I feel as if this was not well thou…

It’s as if these policies were created without any concern for the well being of SMBs and consumers.

It is a literal stupid person calling the shots. He literally thinks trade deficits are the US "losing" or "giving away" money to foreign countries, and he believes (correctly, in a way) that we can tariff our way to perfect trade balance.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#348

Post by sorcerer-mar »

DrillShopper wrote: post #327
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #256

I was just talking to a couple friends of mine, about this, yesterday. They run a medium-sized manufacturing business that has almost all their work done overseas. Another friend of mine was just laid off, as a transportation broker, directly because of the tariffs. The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. I feel as if this was not well thou…

> The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. That is their goal - to drive out the small and medium businesses so that the president's donors can swoop in with private capital offers to enrich themselves.

No it's not. He's just a very unintelligent person surrounded by sycophants. Trump almost certainly doesn't even have an ulterior motive here. He has loudly proclaimed for decades his belief that trade deficits are the same as a subsidy or giveaway to the other country.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#349

Post by bluGill »

ceejayoz wrote: post #281
xienze wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US. Again, not quite as simple as you're making it out to be. And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total?

> Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US. Cool, great place to start. Let's fix that. Both have similar land mass, similar populations, similar balance of federal-ish and state-ish and local-ish governance, similar cultures, etc. > And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total? Surely handling 13k tax…

what are the unintended concecuences of your plan? Until you figure themout don't propose a change as it might be overall worse.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#350

Post by phil21 »

rafram wrote: post #126
ZeroTalent wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no more "as QoL in China improves." The majority of parts of "Swiss Made" watches are made in China, utilizing a loophole that requires 60% of the watch's cost to be manufactured and assembled in Switzerland. So they make a rotor made out of gold in Switzerland, which accounts for 60% of the COGS of the watch, pop the rotor on the movement, and the sapphire glass on the watch, and it's "Swiss Made." Best sou…

> There is no more "as QoL in China improves." You start with this, but then the rest of your comment is totally unrelated. Could you elaborate?

China is already producing top-tier parts at the current set wages. Wages are unlikely to increase as quality of production goes up - it's already world class.

That's the argument as I see it at least. I tend to mostly agree, with some carve-outs for highly specialized industry and general "social" differences in how business is typically done.

At this point, if you need basic manufacturing - China seems unbeatable on both price and quality for the vast majority of items. Not to mention lead times and iteration speed.

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