May 22, 2015
In a Washington Post column today, Delaware Governor Jack Markell and Third Way President Jonathan Cowan took a swipe at the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in arguing for a set of ill-defined centrist proposals. (For example, they want better schools — great idea.) There is much about their piece that is wrong or misleading (they imply that the rebuilding of Europe and Japan impedes growth and makes us poorer, that’s not what standard trade theory says), but the best part is in the last paragraph where they tell readers:
“Nine years ago, Borders Books had more than 1,000 stores and more than 35,000 employees. Four years ago, it liquidated. Those stores didn’t close and those employees didn’t lose their jobs because the economic system was rigged against ordinary Americans. They closed because technology brought us Amazon and the Kindle.”
Actually, Border Books did close in large part because the economic system is rigged against ordinary Americans. One of the main reasons Amazon has been able to grow as rapidly as it did is that Amazon has not been required to collect the same sales tax as its brick and mortar competitors in most states for most of its existence. The savings on sales tax almost certainly exceeded its cumulative profits since it was founded in 1994.
While there is no policy rationale to exempt businesses from the obligation to collect sales tax because they are Internet based, this exemption has allowed Amazon to become a huge company and made its founder, Jeff Bezos one of the richest people in the world. Oh yeah, Jeff Bezos now owns the Washington Post.
Addendum
I see many folks have a hard time believing that sales tax mattered to Amazon’s growth. While readers here may exclusively buy books in stores or on the web. Many do both. And for most of these people it is very likely that if they had to pay 5-8 percent more for the books purchased on the web that they would have bought more in stores. If would add, that if didn’t matter to these people, then we have to wonder why Amazon and other Internet retailers didn’t just raise their prices by 5-8 percent and put more money in their pockets?
Again, the amount at stake here is almost certainly more than Amazon’s cumulative profits. That makes it a big deal.
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