Bernie and Trump are wrong on Amazon

[MontanaMama]

154. Yes. Absolutely.

Local tax laws can be and are often an inequitable shit show. My spouse and I haves owned a small business with a store front for 30 years and we do not get anything handed to us in terms of tax breaks and incentives. Chain stores and businesses get all kinds of incentives for coming into our city. That said, local elected officials and governments have a lot of power and don’t use it...they could give tax incentives to businesses that come to town and guarantee that workers will be respected will be treated well but they don’t. Last year we had a local donut shop go under and two months later a Krispy Kreme came to town and were awarded a $20,000 tax incentive to do so. The local donut shop didn’t get any tax incentive.

I use Amazon often. Like it or not. Chain stores all tend to carry the same stuff and it is a waste of my time to drive all over this town looking for what I need, comparing prices etc when I can get on Amazon, compare products and prices, read reviews and get back to running my business where I provide a living wage to our employees, health insurance and a 401k. I wish Amazon did things differently and when we get Congress back in our grasp we can hold their feet to the fire and lead them to make a change.

One more thing...I have an old kitty who has special needs when it comes to his cat box. We have always used liners for his box that are really large, heavy duty and drape over the sides of his box because he misses the mark sometimes and he scratches them up so thin liners would leak and make a mess. Those liners have made him successful and made my life easier. Well, there was only ONE store in this city that carried them and that store is across town but I happily made the drive and would stock up a few times a year...then that store stopped carrying the liners. They won’t order them in for me either. Amazon has them so that’s where I get them now. We can all bitch about Amazon but clearly they provide a service that people want and NEED. Especially folks who are home bound.