On Friday, April 6, 2018 at 3:40:43 PM UTC-5, Electric Comet wrote:
On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 11:33:33 -0700 (PDT)
" wrote:

same lathe on Amazon. Its $5 cheaper on Amazon. Free shipping
also. Probably the same third party seller at both Amazon and
WalMart.

what is price for lathe if you pick it up from lathe store

that is the interesting part of the equation because shipping is never
without cost

there is the rub

and it comes out that amazon are engaged in shipping fraud
not a surprise

and the tax payer pays the bill so amazon has been subsidized by
us tax payers

Agree with John response. Amazon negotiates a shipping price or accepts the standard price from the USPS. No one forces the USPS at gun point to ship for the price they quote or negotiate. They decide. And I suspect they do make a small profit on every item they handle. But the USPS has billions or trillions of overhead costs to cover. So most likely they would need to double or triple or quadruple the shipping cost on every item they touch to cover the costs they incur. The Postmaster General sitting on his big wide butt in Washington DC probably gets paid a quarter million a year. Plus a retirement package of 125% of his highest pay. Lot of overhead with the USPS.

As far as the US taxpayer subsidizing Amazon, we also subsidize every minimum wage worker at Walmart and McDonalds and everywhere else. Most of those employees receive Medicaid and food stamps. Yet work full time jobs for the biggest most profitable companies in America. How about that! But we sure as hell don't want to increase the minimum wage to get these full time workers off food stamps. Better to keep corporate profits up and steal taxpayer money to send welfare to the workers at the most profitable companies in America.

Acme Tools, the Tool Crib of the North successor, has a store in my town. This lathe is $2000 from them. I could pick it up at the store downtown. But add in 7% sales tax. So really $2140. $75 MORE than from Amazon or any of the other free shipping internet sellers. Assuming they are not collecting sales tax. Not sure about this now days.

On big ticket items, the sales tax can easily be a price killer.