For somebody working for minimum wage, Wal-Mart’s prices are the difference between making or not. Before Wal-Mart arrived, the only other choices that didn’t involve spending serious gas money for a broken-down car were truly nasty stores with high prices. When the children’s shoes wore out, they kept wearing them because even the cheapest new shoes cost more than the budget could bear. The weekly paycheck from the chicken processing plant bought a lot more food and clothing at Wal-Mart than anywhere else in town and was as good as a raise for poor people.

And the jobs at Wal-Mart? They were the top of the heap for someone who graduated from high school and like winning the lottery for someone who dropped out. You got paid much better than the chicken factory paid and you didn’t come home after work smelling like chicken innards. One guy I knew who was smart, but barely graduated from high school started as a checker and worked his way up to manager, where he was making more money than half the doctors in town. I lost track of him when he was promoted higher and had to move.

After we left the area, when Wal-Mart announced it would build an even bigger store, the whole town celebrated. The reason was not just more selection, but the Wal-Mart store brought more people to town, so a client and friend who owned a fast food restaurant got a lot more business.

The people who compete with discounters have the ability to tell a story more effectively than most of people who need the discounts the most. Whenever I see an anti-Wal-Mart story on television, I notice nobody ever interviews any poor people to ask their opinions.

I’m going to check that in ten years and see if Bezos figured out a way to do it.

Just now I checked Google about the gay/lesbian titles that lost their sales ranking. Amazon did say it was a glitch, and it didn’t affect just those titles. It was related to how the books were originally categorized on their site, so it hit across the board and not just in the US.

One night last week I noticed that no Indie titles had a sales ranking (at least not the ones I checked). Amazon corrected that very quickly. Their software has also removed, in error, a book I wrote about Emily Dickinson (and they didn’t know why). Their remedy? They put up two listings for that book. I think I finally have that cleared up and I’m down to one listing for it.

Even Amazon can’t keep people from finding and buying what they’re looking for elsewhere. For example, if Amazon decided to stop stocking erotica titles, readers who want them will go to the small digital pubs and buy them. Or from their favorite authors’ sites, Smashwords, etc.

The only customers who won’t are those who don’t know how to use a search engine.

Amazon can’t buy the entire digital world, so there will always be options.

I think that David commented both about my company’s policy regarding sales tax on mail orders —

Quote, “PG tried another experiment. He ordered the same Harry Potter book from Borderlands Books and gave a California address. He will spare you his gasp this time. No sales tax on that transaction either.”

– and he also inquired about my own California Use Tax return in the comments thread –

Quote, “Perhaps Mr. Beatts would like to share his Use Tax return to show he paid appropriate taxes on his internet purchases to support California government spending.”

I chose to address the first item and not the second. At least in part because I suspect that people would have a hard time believing the answer to the second .

Regards,
Alan