Stens has up'd their free shipping limit

[7394]

my point...

 

[StarTech]

Less than $15 isn't really bad, I suppose. I have a close friend who died recently. His son was going to ship me a guitar he wanted me to have. Who ever he was trying to ship it through, wanted over $100.

That sounds about right. When I tried ship an USC back to Canada for warranty repairs the local PO wanted nearly $100 to do it. But when I contact the OEM they sold me a round trip label for only $35. That I didn't mine so much as the USC was over $200 to replace.

 

[PTmowerMech]

When you take a pay cut then you can lower your prices
Inflation is built in into every Western Economic system in order to maintain th value of capitalist capital
Thus everything has to continually go up in price , except wages which in the USA in particular has remained unchanged for decades so shareholders can take bigger dividends .

Our wages have gone up a LOT in the past decade. Too much, really. But because of the inflation (too much money in the economy), the value of the currency has dropped. So wages must increase. If the gooberment would stop all the borrowing and spending, inflation wouldn't be an issue.

Capitalism is fine. Crony capitalism mixed with a pack of spend freaks in DC creates this mess.

 

[PTmowerMech]

That sounds about right. When I tried ship an USC back to Canada for warranty repairs the local PO wanted nearly $100 to do it. But when I contact the OEM they sold me a round trip label for only $35. That I didn't mine so much as the USC was over $200 to replace.

I just checked my local post office and they said shipping my guitar to Houston (where the other guy is) isn't even $100. So I'm wondering which carrier he's trying to ship with.
I've seen video's of all carriers mishandling packages. So it's a crap shoot as to which one is better.

 

[7394]

I've seen video's of all carriers mishandling packages. So it's a crap shoot as to which one is better.

Insure the crap outta of your item, & track it..

 

[Tiger Small Engine]

Our wages have gone up a LOT in the past decade. Too much, really. But because of the inflation (too much money in the economy), the value of the currency has dropped. So wages must increase. If the gooberment would stop all the borrowing and spending, inflation wouldn't be an issue.

Capitalism is fine. Crony capitalism mixed with a pack of spend freaks in DC creates this mess.

The United States owes 32.5 trillion in debt, prints money like it grows on trees, has a social “safety net” program for way too many issues, pays people $15/hour to flip burgers, has illegal immigrants pouring over the border daily, finances other county’s wars…you see where I am going with this. These and more are the problems. Capitalism works great when you let it work on its own. When you start manipulating and tweaking it, the problems arise. The U.S. is like a household that is house poor, is running up the credit cards, and has a great job, but has no budget. Spending problems not earning problems. No politician has enough of a backbone to put his/her foot down and say “enough”.

 

[Scrubcadet10]

Our wages have gone up a LOT in the past decade. Too much, really. But because of the inflation (too much money in the economy), the value of the currency has dropped. So wages must increase. If the gooberment would stop all the borrowing and spending, inflation wouldn't be an issue.

Capitalism is fine. Crony capitalism mixed with a pack of spend freaks in DC creates this mess.

yep
the wages go up and the value goes down. You can make more, but that more don't mean you get more.

 

[bertsmobile1]

The United States owes 32.5 trillion in debt, prints money like it grows on trees, has a social “safety net” program for way too many issues, pays people $15/hour to flip burgers, has illegal immigrants pouring over the border daily, finances other county’s wars…you see where I am going with this. These and more are the problems. Capitalism works great when you let it work on its own. When you start manipulating and tweaking it, the problems arise. The U.S. is like a household that is house poor, is running up the credit cards, and has a great job, but has no budget. Spending problems not earning problems. No politician has enough of a backbone to put his/her foot down and say “enough”.

The national debt figure is a smoke & mirror job.
The actual debt , ie the money requred to pay out the bonds and actual real loans that are held by private industry & other countries is around 1/3 of that , the rest is money the government borrowed from itself but appaears on the books as a "loan ".
A case of the left pocket owing the right pocket .
Once the gold standard was dropped the governments ( ours does the same thing ) has to pretend they are not just "printing money" because the economic theory will not allow money to appear from nowhere.
So the Government generates bonds ( I owe yous ) which they sell to the Treasury and to private enterprise which includes foreign governments , like Saudi Arabia, Japan & China

The problem is not what the government spends, it is what it does not collect because mutinational companies like Ford, Apple , Microsloth, Texaco, Sarah Lea , etc etc etc all offshore their profits to tax havens where they pay little to no tax on the profits and almost no tax to the US government .
ou will find Companies like Ford will register the patients on their cars in the USA then sell the patient to Ford Camen Islands .
Ford Camen islands then charges Ford USA royalties for using the patients in making the cars.
Apple USA sold their Trademarks to Apple North Ireland who license them back to Appe USA for an amount that is almost the same as Apples nett USA trading profits and just about all of the top 2000 US companies have a similar tax avoidance scheme .

Then to cover this stories are leaked to sympathetic media about how social security is sending the country broke so you end up hating your neighbour because they are on some sort of benefit when in reality is is the payments they get which are usually spent the second they arrive that keeps industry afloat .
And on top of that the "taxation is thieft " mantra get spread through out the community so no cares when the unbelievably wealthy get yet another tax cut while the poor are mugging people in the street because they cannot get enough money to pay the rent .
The Danes are one of the happiest, healthiest people on the planet and they pay over 50% in direct taxes .

Capitalist demand economies only work if the government sets firm rules and enforces them
But right now the goal posts for multination companies and the obscenely wealty are so far apart that they are just about on the side lines where as the goal posts for the workers are just barely wide enough for the ball to pass through.
During the GFC the government could have taken over all of the rubbish loans that the banks had made to the poor to buy their houses for less than 10% of what they gave to wall St
And the net result, thousands lost their entire life savings , perfectly good houses were repossed & bulldozed while the criminal bankers were back in business in less than 2 years and paying themselves massive bonuses again.
Over 75% of all of the economic stimulus went into the stock market which did absolutely nothing for the bulk of the population but allowed stanley to merge with B & D then buy out every other tool maker, close down the USA factories and off shore all of the manufacturing to China to produce even more profits for shareholdes who already have so much money they have no idea what to do with it .

 

[PTmowerMech]

The national debt figure is a smoke & mirror job.
The actual debt , ie the money requred to pay out the bonds and actual real loans that are held by private industry & other countries is around 1/3 of that , the rest is money the government borrowed from itself but appaears on the books as a "loan ".
A case of the left pocket owing the right pocket .
Once the gold standard was dropped the governments ( ours does the same thing ) has to pretend they are not just "printing money" because the economic theory will not allow money to appear from nowhere.
So the Government generates bonds ( I owe yous ) which they sell to the Treasury and to private enterprise which includes foreign governments , like Saudi Arabia, Japan & China

The problem is not what the government spends, it is what it does not collect because mutinational companies like Ford, Apple , Microsloth, Texaco, Sarah Lea , etc etc etc all offshore their profits to tax havens where they pay little to no tax on the profits and almost no tax to the US government .

I was with you, right up until the last sentence. Our government funded (from 2016 to 2021) funded things like gender studies in Pakistan. So when you say the government doesn't have a spending problem, I just have to laugh.
Giving the government more money will only allow them to spend more money. The big corporations do more for the economy than the government ever thought about doing.
Elon Musk has over 50,000 US employees. His personal income tax is probably equal to, or higher than all those employee's combined.

Capitalist demand economies only work if the government sets firm rules and enforces them
But right now the goal posts for multination companies and the obscenely wealty are so far apart that they are just about on the side lines where as the goal posts for the workers are just barely wide enough for the ball to pass through.

Free market capitalism isn't a bad thing. Crony capitalism is. Corporations are entitled to at least 95% of their earnings, how ever they choose to earn it, because it comes from their customers.

During the GFC the government could have taken over all of the rubbish loans that the banks had made to the poor to buy their houses for less than 10% of what they gave to wall St
And the net result, thousands lost their entire life savings , perfectly good houses were repossed & bulldozed while the criminal bankers were back in business in less than 2 years and paying themselves massive bonuses again.
Over 75% of all of the economic stimulus went into the stock market which did absolutely nothing for the bulk of the population but allowed stanley to merge with B & D then buy out every other tool maker, close down the USA factories and off shore all of the manufacturing to China to produce even more profits for shareholdes who already have so much money they have no idea what to do with it .

You'll get no argument from me on the stock market and banks. That's crony capitalism at it's finest.

 

[StarTech]

Free market capitalism isn't a bad thing. Crony capitalism is. Corporations are entitled to at least 95% of their earnings, how ever they choose to earn it, because it comes from their customers.

Might be entitled but they rarely get that much; unless, they use crooked bookkeepping. Even I paid 14% or more in taxes on my net income as a self employed business owner this year. That is only 86% of my earnings I got to keep to run the business and to pay myself.