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Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

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Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#401

Post by floxy »

profmonocle wrote: post #76

I'm fine with this as long as they include the tariff in the listed price. I'm worried businesses are going to use tariffs as an excuse to have a fake list price, then hit you with massive hidden fees at the point of sale. Some sectors have been doing this for years - "service fees" at restaurants, "regulatory response fees" in the telecom industry, all sorts of nonsense in event ticketing. Physical goods have mostly…

>Especially because these scams actually work - the reason restaurants give for not just increasing their menu prices is because higher listed prices drive people away.

Is there a good way to account for the loss of customers from this practice? I have certainly opted out of restaurants with extra fees.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#402

Post by rayiner »

slibhb wrote: post #386
rayiner wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a less sarcastic note, pretty much zero mainstream economists believe that tariffs will bring back manufacturing to the US. Mainstream economists also widely agree corporate taxes and capital gains taxes are bad: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-... . Should we eliminate those taxes and have everyone pay a large VAT? I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how ec…

> Mainstream economists also widely agree corporate taxes and capital gains taxes are bad: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six- .... Should we eliminate those taxes and have everyone pay a large VAT? You don't have to go all the way. Just experiment with a VAT and lowering corporate taxes. > I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant…

> What economists have is better than vague feelings about the dignity of working in a factory as opposed to a service job.

You've got it backwards. If people have the feeling that there is more dignity working in a factory than delivering Door Dash, that's a preference that should be factored into the economic analysis. Similarly, economic analyses considers factors like labor laws and environmental laws as detracting from "comparative advantage," even though it probably better reflects peoples' preferences for those things to be a minimum standard that no country is competing on. And it's certainly relevant that being a manufacturing powerhouse provides a long-term military advantage compared to a services-based economy. Prior to World War II, the U.S. had largely demilitarized. It built the world's largest military within a couple of years, because of its industrial capabilities. Those are real-world considerations, but aren't factored into simplistic comparative-advantage analyses.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#403

Post by triceratops »

dh2022 wrote: post #369
s1artibartfast wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calories are cheap. You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks. Everything after that is preference substitution. This doesn't invalidate consumer demand. People judge society and ultimately governments based on if they are able to obtain their preferences.

Re: "You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can you please let us know how can you get 2,000 calories for $2?

Rice, beans, bananas, potatoes. It'll keep you alive but it won't be pretty.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#404

Post by crazygringo »

mrguyorama wrote: post #333
crazygringo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being used to it. There's good reason sales tax isn't included in the price, which is that sales tax varies locally. It isn't even the same per ZIP code. You couldn't advertise a statewide or nationwide price if you had to include sales tax. You couldn't display prices online at all until you entered your full address, which seems antithetical to privacy. This is different from most other countries, wh…

This is a distraction. The regional supermarket chain in new england that is owned by kroger ALREADY localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE despite every store in the state having the exact same tax rates. They STILL don't include the tax in the price listed because fuck you, this is america

No, it's not a distraction.

Not all ads are weekly sales flyers, obviously. And not all states have the same sales tax throughout, of course.

Also, you know that most items in a Kroger's don't even have sales tax in the first place? So that's an odd place to use as an example.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#405

Post by alright2565 »

dh2022 wrote: post #369
s1artibartfast wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calories are cheap. You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks. Everything after that is preference substitution. This doesn't invalidate consumer demand. People judge society and ultimately governments based on if they are able to obtain their preferences.

Re: "You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can you please let us know how can you get 2,000 calories for $2?

I lived off $2/day in food for a few years in the US. Oat flour, protein powder, oil, and a multivitamin.

My approach was a little more engineered than most people's would be, but definitely possible if maybe you expanded it to $3/day or $4/day.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#406

Post by s1artibartfast »

dh2022 wrote: post #369
s1artibartfast wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calories are cheap. You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks. Everything after that is preference substitution. This doesn't invalidate consumer demand. People judge society and ultimately governments based on if they are able to obtain their preferences.

Re: "You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can you please let us know how can you get 2,000 calories for $2?

In addition to what others said, I buy 2 roast chickens a week for $5 each.

Rice is $20/25 lbs, and 1600 calories/lb for 2000 calories/$

They are 6.5lbs after deboning. Cooked chicken skin on is 950 calories per pound. That is 620 calories/$.

Tortillas themselves are 110 cal, and 4.99 for 100ct, or 2200 cal/$

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#407

Post by jay_kyburz »

skeletal88 wrote: post #293
xienze wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they have the same kind of state and local sales tax rules that we do? Again, _you can't know the price to display if you don't know where exactly in the country the package is going_. It is not possible to display the "final price" in US online stores ahead of checkout unless the user is already logged in AND the shipping address is the same as where the user lives. The juice is not worth the squeeze for onli…

In the EU, when I go to some online shop it first lets me chooose my language (and country), then it displays all the prices with the correct VAT amount. You in the US keep saying "we are so special, so it is impossible to change things for the better in any way". While other countries also have complex rules for similar things yet they still manage to provide a better experience for shoppers, citizens, sick people -…

need to get DOGE on it.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#408

Post by andrewflnr »

atoav wrote: post #329
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…

"Not well thought out"? This was the equivalent of putting on a blindfold and throwing random darts at a world map. On top of that the reasons they gave are contradictory, because in the end the truth is the tariffs were based on the vibes one specific man had held since the 80s. However the world is very different since then. Not even the numbers make sense. If the goal was to punish people with whom the US has a hi…

Let's be careful. It wasn't really "vibes", especially not at the start. There was a very clear cut ("simplistic" would be too generous) formula that determined the tariffs. Granted, probably the tone of the "negotiations" since then has been vibe-influenced...

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#409

Post by therealpygon »

SecretDreams wrote: post #380
conductr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article being discussed isn’t about what Amazon has to do. It’s about them trying to expose the cost of tariffs so consumers know more than they typically do. It’s completely voluntary and intentional on their part. They’re basically quantifying the impact of trumps policies, probably in a way that will change people’s ideas about how it affects their pocketbook. In a way, they’re playing politics with this.

Amazon is in the business of selling shit. Tariffs will make them sell less stuff. By exposing the component of cost associated with tariffs, Amazon at least informs the customer why business is more expensive lately. It is "playing politics" the same way listing the effect of taxes on the final cost of something is "playing politics". This is just useful information for the consumer. It's absolutely absurd to think…

Amazing how providing facts is now “playing politics”. No one seemed to have a problem with labels when they were slapping Biden stickers on private gas pumps, but I’m sure that is totally different and way more accurate than having provable data and listing it on the cost it incurs.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#410

Post by ttepasse »

xienze wrote: post #271
ceejayoz wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an argument for fixing the rules . As functional rules in this regard are clearly possible to create. The EU has a similar smattering of disparate jurisdictions (with varying VAT rates) just like the US does.

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?

For a computer what is the difference between 27 and 13000?
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