Report critical of Amazon

  • Thread starter Thread starter Maxirad
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Scary stuff. Think about ten, fifteen years from now, if they decided they didn’t like someone, be it an individual or a company, they could really make life unpleasant. A huge company with vast powers. Can’t do much now, and later would be too late. Even if they always play nice, it is still a huge “job vacuum cleaner.”
 
Thanks for posting this. Also introduced me to a new organization with interesting ideas.
 
the website or the River Basin? Context is important when you make a post.
 
Maxirad said:
Check this out.
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The economic report, sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, measures the impact on local and state sales taxes of Amazon’s operations. Amazon, I believe, now collects sales taxes on most if not all of its sales. The tax collected is based on the state in which the goods are shipped. Local sales taxes are avoided and that is good thing for Amazon customers and a bad thing for only those local communities that have a local sales tax and an Amazon competitor selling the same goods. However, the report estimates without explanation that all Amazon sales in each state are subject to the same two conditions.

We estimate that … $55.6 billion might otherwise have occurred in retail stores without online retail.The report goes on with questionable math to assign each state a proportion of Amazon’s estimated sales to calculate the taxes avoided.

In terms of jobs, the report does not include peripheral jobs created as a result of online sales. UPS, FedEx, USPS are certainly positively effected. Nor does the report factor in the savings in time, auto wear, and gas that would have occurred in brick and mortar shopping.

The report to me seems biased. It’s clear the retail book dealer has been displaced. So was the horse carriage maker. Most all new technology displaces something. The benefits of online sales to the consumers are spread widely and the costs narrowly. Should consumers go back so local communities can collect more taxes and book dealers remain in business?
 
Maxirad said:
Well, o_milly, I hate to see independent bookstores go under.
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I wonder if there’s some sort of middleman operation that could connect local retailers with local consumers, instead of just connecting retailer to consumer as Amazon does.
 
This is just a phase, things are always changing, eventually someone will come along with a better, more efficient method.

Btw, amazons jobs are not that great from what Ive heard, we have multiple Amazon distribution centers near our airport and their labor turn over is unbelievable, it has even been brought up in the city council meetings.
 
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