Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
President Trump tweeted in December that the U.S. Postal Service isn’t charging Amazon enough to deliver merchandise. But it’s not Jeff Bezos who is getting the lowest rates. In fact, it’s a major economic competitor of the United States—China—that is getting a sweetheart deal from the USPS.
Comments
for those who, like me, can't access the WSJ piece, here is a Forbes version which explains the situation quite well Having bought some of that ultra cheapo stuff on Ebay from China in the past myself , I pretty much figured something like this was going on. But I thought it was probably the Chinese shipping entities that were eating most of the loss and subsidizing.
You bringing up this story from quite some time ago makes me think of the big picture meta of it, though. ThatTrump's MAGA theme is often enough just another narrative used to feed his narcissism. And his fans of both him and MAGA iedology buy into it that he's doing some things to effect the general isolationist, America first ideology. But not only does he not understand how to effect that, when given the choice of attacking an entity that is the supposed enemy to that ideology, or attacking someone he sees as a threat to his personal brand, he'll go with the latter. So in this case the U.S.P.S. losing money, it is the fault of Bezos owner of the Washington Post liberal and not China. No doubt also because Xi has proven himself now to be very respectful of the Trump persona and likes the chocolate cake at Mar a Lago (not to mention a lot of Chinese think his daughter a glorious fashion icon). And Bezos is not at all respectful of the Trump genius. I suspect the narcissism wins nearly every time. And that further, he thinks of MAGA and Trump brand as one and the same.
by artappraiser on Sun, 08/19/2018 - 4:55pm
p.s. back to the related factuals. When I bought such items on EBay (small items like stockings, eyeglass chains) I was truly amazed at how quickly they arrived. Ebay still puts on the listing the olden times delivery date expectations; the shipping description will like say it's going to take a month to get the item, as in: caveat emptor, it could take you forever to get this. But it doesn't, it comes withing a week like anything mailed domestically. Very shocking for someone like me who has had a lot of experience with the nightmare of shipping things internationally in decades past. It also became clear that there is some kind of efficient monopoly system on the Chinese end providing for it all working out well, the packing, for example, seems to all come from the same place for different vendors and is as lightweight as possible and probably designed to fit into some kind of larger bulk container ideal for the aircraft being used, labels seem designed for certain software, etc.
by artappraiser on Sun, 08/19/2018 - 5:21pm
I came to the WSJ article in a Google search of the subject which I thought would have received attention if it was as a friend described and had been revealed in major media. When I clicked on my search at the Google page it came up first and though I do not have an account there it came up around the firewall for me. It gave a fairly short concise outline of the problem. I discovered that it had in fact been covered by major media. The Bloomberg article showed up second and there of course were more.
Although every description I have now seen describes what seems to be a clear easily understood problem with a simple solution, I believe the chance of it entering widespread awareness and being handled in the simple way it could be [ who would vote against raising postal rates from China to a fair and equitable level?] is lessened by politics. As far as I can see the Republicans have not chosen to make it an example and the Democrats have no incentive to give any props to even one small example where Trump is right about even a small facet of his rhetoric on unfair trade policies and so it is an issue within a larger issue that is being ignored when it could be easily solved.
I have purchased items from Banggood which cost less delivered to my front porch than the postage alone for the same identical product would be from a U.S. online dealer. Cost of postage is the variable.The hobby shop that previously would have had the same item has long been out of business. The WSJ article gives an example of a knockoff Chinese product that can be delivered to your door for a total price, six dollars and change, for about a dollar less than the shipping for the original American manufactured items cost of shipping it to the next town in the States. The cost of shipping the American made product to China was said to be twenty two dollars. That price negates any guarantee offered by the Chinese company.
by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 08/20/2018 - 12:49pm