It seems by "Open Platform" they mean shoving all your data onto their chat platform, basically an open API. That definitely is not an open platform in my book, as you can't federate, run your own, etc.
I see some of the upsides of both Slack and Gitter, but having used both I still find IRC or a Signal group much easier and more convenient overall. Perhaps its the familiarity, or that I find both to be yet another tab to have open/app to install & maintain, but I just can't call myself a fan.
Free shipping is a lie, but the average consumer thinks of dealing with shipping costs separately as pesky, and Amazon & eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping "free".
I don't see "free" shipping going away, nor do I see Amazon's new delivery service succeeding where DHL and other have floundered in the past, since you need a certain volume in that business to even be viable, and Amazon has stated they can't push that volume alone to make running a shipping service make sense.
What might happen, and what I hope happens is the lower end, smaller businesses get better next day and 2 day shipping prices. Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep.
Another much smaller vendor I deal with can't get anywhere near that pricing, half that weight/size box will run me $150 easily, with ground (a week and change) being $40 usually for a 25lb box from them.
Edit: Another layer to this is USPS and China Post teamed up a while back and offer Chinese sellers dirt cheap ePacket shipping, where 1lb of goods can be moved to the US for $5, whereas USPS charges $50 to the American seller to ship something to China [1]. Essentially, it makes American online sellers uncompetitive in our own market. This is why people like Trump, since he says he'll put a 35% tariff on foreign imports and end programs like ePacket (not supporting him though, just to be clear).
Definitely, you should be able to get a shipping price without going into the checkout, Amazon makes it quite difficult compared to Aliexpress & eBay when it comes to finding out shipping prices, to the point that I avoid shopping on there with a rare exception occurring every 6 months or so.
For the average shopper, pricing in shipping and sales tax will make them buy more online. Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.
>Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.
Note it's really "collects" sales tax in. Buyers still, in principle, owe use taxes on the purchase--which individuals often don't pay of course.
I don't think it's so much a matter of whether sales tax is bundled or not though. For big ticket electronics purchases, for example, the same item is often available for the same price with "free" shipping from other online resellers who don't collect sales tax--and is cheaper for many consumers as a result.
> " Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep."
Not sure how they are doing that. The UPS rack rate for 50lbs from Chicago to Seattle is $83 via Ground, $161 for 3 day select, $252 for 2nd day air, and $310 for Next Day Air Saver. I can't see $23, even for ground...I don't know of anyone with a discount rate that good.
They push 10,000+ parcels like that a month, and send their shipping out to bid every year, helps to have big companies ordering tons of hardware from ya. 3 years ago they were on DHL which was great for DHL same day, I could order something at 8am and have it at the customer's site later that evening.
> Amazon & eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping "free".
Are you sure that is why? I thought it was because sellers started selling $1 items with $50 shipping and handling fees attached.
Also places where competitors are listed together are hard to browse unless "total cost" is listed explicitly somewhere (having to figure out whether the $19 or $5 with $5 shipping is better is annoying).
I had not known about the program, but I did notice all of the cheap electronics with "free" or low cost shipping from China and Hong Kong a few months ago. Since I was visiting China later in the year, I compared pricing between eBay and taobao on the things that I wanted. Surprisingly, I found that ordering in New York through eBay was cheaper than ordering in Shanghai through taobao on a significant number of items that I wanted. I have since ordered plenty of stuff from China through eBay.
I read (here, in an HN thread, IIRC) a while back that the Chinese government eats the cost of shipping items outside of the country (I haven't verified that, however, so it may be entirely incorrect).
That was the reason given why you can purchase an item online from a Chinese seller for, say, $1 USD -- including shipping -- and the seller can still profit from it.
Yes it's true. I just ordered some MR11 bulbs that are defective. (It might not be their fault. I think they send 220 volt, instead of 120volt halogen lamps.) It's not worth shipping them back. There's a weight/size limit, but many items are shipped free.
A bigger question. If more people took advantage of this free shipping paid for by the Chinese government; how would American companies compete?
(Since I here--Amazon has been slowly raising prices, and people don't seem to notice, or care. I noticed it with portable transistor radios at first, and MR11 bulbs lately. Personally, I'm getting tired of UPS trucks racing up and down my street, filled with a lot of stuff we probally don't need.)
So overvalued property in the current economic context combined with unprecedented (for Greece) property taxes is making home ownership a burden? Plus the maintenance costs wipe out what remains of the value.
I think that the cases that the inheritance has been rejected is for property that is of little value.
The article is doing a disservice when it does not break down what inheritances they are talking about.
Home ownership in Greece is quite sacred (around 70% own a home) and the current government is even avoiding forced evictions for those that do not pay their home loans.
With austerity feeding on itself as it has been for many years in Greece, the rental market seems to have become flooded with properties. If your citizens have no money, and your economy is shrinking in the double digits every year for years on end, how does anyone do anything economically?
The economic troubles of Greece have been similar to those of the eastern european countries. The issue with Greece is that the politicians did not take tough measures early in the crisis and the recovery is too far ahead.
While other countries reduced their headcount in the public sector, in Greece the headcount remains much the same. I blame the politicians, though the political party that manages to win, is the one that offers not to reduce the public sector headcount.
This inability of the politicians is also reflected in the enforcement of the smoking ban. While in public transport there is no smoking, in most restaurants, cafes and elsewhere, the ban is not enforced. Even in the Greek parliament there is smoking, and even the Minister of Health is regularly seen smoking.
See https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/52dif3/the_sad_real... and weep.
Frankly, investors should use the smoking issue in Greece as an indicator whether the country is actually recovering. As long as the smoking ban is not enforced, the recovery is not happening.
What area are you in? Compared to Seattle/Portland/San Diego prices, 40k euros seems cheap for a 1963 670sqft apt. A similar house in Tacoma would run 110k euros right now, and it is a terrible location.
It's in Kallithea, a generic south-European concrete-jungle urban center. Also, I'm not sure it's fair to compare property values between the US and Greece. The average person working on the private sector would be lucky if he made $10000/year at this point in time.
Perhaps property value is in line then if 40k euros is an inflated price, I think 110k euros in Tacoma is a price too high for that area myself, the average income down there is around 22k euros a year for a working person [1].
Dude, you can't even buy a crackerbox in Seattle for 300k euros anymore, a 500sqft apartment has gone from 270k euros to 400k euros in the past 2 years, and that is before the 4500 euros you'll pay to go to an "exclusive" wine tasting/auction to bid on the few units that are up for sale.
Its still extremely dangerous to give birth in the US when compared to Greece, our maternal death rate is 7x higher [1], on par with Iran, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.
Why do hundreds of pregnant women die every year in the US, but significantly less die in Singapore, Greece, Canada, Ireland, etc? This shouldn't be a thing, and we shouldn't be this far behind other countries on this, its not an impossible problem to halve or even cut into a quarter that death rate. This isn't even discussing complications of pregnancy or infant mortality, both of which we are not doing amazing at.
I am not contesting that the US could be doing better.
What I am contesting is that you are conflating absolute and relative measurements to try to make a point, and that you are reducing such a complex matter into a question of political ideology that governs the countries. Also, lots of weasel-wording there - e.g, "hundreds of deaths" in country of 320+ million people, comparing with countries that are 100x smaller? - which do show a lack of intellectual honesty.
At least that is the impression that it gives when I read your response as some kind of counterpoint to the comment from GP about socialism and the associated bureaucracy.
If I have read your statement correctly and indeed you meant something along the lines of:
- The USA is doing worse than Greece in this one metric.
- Greece has more Socialist/Welfare-state inclinations than the US.
- Therefore if we want to improve this one metric we ought to adopt more Social-Democratic policies
Consider this: the best country in the list you provided is Estonia, the country with the "Most Competitive Tax System in the OECD"[1], which would basically be an argument that all countries should be like Estonia - a polar opposite from Greece.
But then again, I could have completely misread what you meant. Please correct me if I misinterpreted any of your statements.
(Note to down-voters: do you really think that anything I wrote is so offensive or damaging to the forum, to the point that it deserves to be in negative mark? Gee, I know it is election season for most of you, but let's please keep a HN a place where people can have an honest discussion?)
Dude, grow up. You do not have to live under govt rule, if you choose to follow an ideology that would rather see government not exist, you can and should fully adhere to your ideology and move to such an area. They do exist in Latin America and other places, and you are not living your ideology or helping it in any way if you won't support it in the most basic of ways.
