Apple And Amazon Have A Problem: People Don’t Want to Buy Stuff Anymore

I'm more in the can't buy stuff... all my funding is currently tied up in food and shelter.
 
deadlift1 said:
There original reason for being was never to buy books and media. That was just the jumping off point. Bezos always envisioned a massive online marketplace where he could sell anything and everything. Books and then eventually CD's were just a simple starting point.

As it relates to media there is obviously a growing trend of "renting" music in the form of the various media streaming services. This is a direct outcome of Apple's desire to eliminate the concept of the album and allow people to buy individual songs. This, IMO, has further eroded the quality of music that is produced today and most people don't want to buy an album with 2 good tracks and 11 other garbage ones thrown in. If artists start making respectable music again more people will buy the entire album.

Renting would also be an attractive option on other things such as home appliances which are built like absolute garbage these days. I'd gladly rent a dishwasher for $10/month on a 5 year contract if it was repaired/replaced by the company when it inevitably breaks after 2 years (I speak from experience on this one).
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There are still quality appliances, but there is a lot disguised as quality which are garbage. Had a whirlpool dishwasher need fixing after 1 year, second year the entire pump assembly needed to be replaced all because a single gasket broke (which you cannot buy individually go figure). After much research found out Bosch and Meile are the way to go, but their entry level dishwashers start at around $800.

Personally, I'd rather buy quality products when possible. Though for movies/music renting is a good option. I think it depends on the product. The thing with music, movies and even games now is that they have become consumables. Renting things that you are only going to use a few times makes much more economic sense. It doesnt for things you plan to use over and over again.
 
Ramses said:
Agree, and I see it in my own line of work peddling higher end "toy" car stuff. The customer is changing, the cars are changing, the buying habits and expectations are changing, none of it for the better from a profit making standpoint. Pretty much everyone I know between 25 and 40 now is really not into the whole buy crap scene. Especially anything on credit. I think Amazon and the like know it too and are, sporadically, acting on it. I'd hate to be selling cars or big ticket stuff for a living these days.
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I think I remember seeing a report that less than a fifth of the US population under 30 years old don't have a single credit card. Most people in my generation I think don't see the need to have one. My credit score is in the 700s right now on student loan and medical bill payments alone. I recently bought a new car, and those payments will also fuel my credit score. However, in the hopes of buying my own home in the near future I did finally cave in and got a credit card to work on getting my credit score even higher. But the only thing I put on it right now is gas...
 
I'll throw my philosophies in here too. :eek:

I think the race to the bottom for prices and china manufacturing has caused a loss of the sense of ownership for most consumer products. Everything has become interchangeable and disposable.

There used to be a time when you cherished certain possessions because they were unique or rare. A pair of Italian shoes, German headphones, the original Sony walkman, the Polaroid/Kodak instant cameras etc. These things were special. They had identities, histories and context. They were made with pride by their respective countries and carried a bit of that culture with them.

Now everything is the same. Everything is made in China, and everything is an "iteration" of the previous year's model. 9/10 now i buy products simply because i need them to fulfill a function not because i Want them for some existential reason. And if I don't need something, then i simply won't buy it, and you can advertise spam me all you want.
 
The only things worth cherishing are those you build yourself. Nothing you buy is worth falling in love with because its mass produced and crafted to be redundant in short time.
 
mastaBlasta said:
9/10 now i buy products simply because i need them to fulfill a function not because i Want them for some existential reason. And if I don't need something, then i simply won't buy it, and you can advertise spam me all you want.
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Same here- Have the same phone since 2006. Its durable and does what I need it to do, text and make calls with the occasional picture when I need proof of something.

Advertising is generally wasted on me, matter of fact if you call my home unwanted I'll have fun with you on the phone for a good 10 minutes or more just to entertain myself.
 
Nicterys said:
Yeah but increasing the wage for McDonald's employees to $15/hour will surely make prices of things go up which is why wages obviously have to be kept low. Actually, let's lower minimum wage so that prices for things at the store will be cheaper because apparently that's how economics works here in the U.S.
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this is how I feel.

this would only happen in America. Once they up minimum wage, prices of everything will go up. Those folks making the new minimum wage won't go anywhere. they still make the same amount of money...BUT the folks like myself that make good money, it hurts us because my salary isn't going to magically go up by 7 dollars an hour.
 
Bigbacon said:
this is how I feel.

this would only happen in America. Once they up minimum wage, prices of everything will go up. Those folks making the new minimum wage won't go anywhere. they still make the same amount of money...BUT the folks like myself that make good money, it hurts us because my salary isn't going to magically go up by 7 dollars an hour.
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While probably true, without manufacturing or a willingness to invest in infrastructure from the government or private sector all the money is getting concentrated at the top and not getting spread around.
 
Armenius said:
I think I remember seeing a report that less than a fifth of the US population under 30 years old don't have a single credit card. Most people in my generation I think don't see the need to have one. My credit score is in the 700s right now on student loan and medical bill payments alone. I recently bought a new car, and those payments will also fuel my credit score. However, in the hopes of buying my own home in the near future I did finally cave in and got a credit card to work on getting my credit score even higher. But the only thing I put on it right now is gas...
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This was me until I bought a house. And while I still do not have a traditional credit card, I do buy a lot of things on credit. Need new carpet? Oh you have 24 months no interest? Sign me up! I sure as hell would rather have money in the bank and make payments with 0% interest than shell it out up front.
 
With Mortgages lasting 15-30 years and endless property tax, buying a house seems more like renting to me.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Why not? McDonald's in Denmark pays their employees the equivalent of $20 USD, and a Big Mac there only costs $0.80 cents more. So in a country with massively higher taxes and 4x the employee wage, McDonalds can somehow magically still make a profit, with only a 16% increase in the price of the good.
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I'm gonna bet those McDonald's are run much more efficiently and with a significantly smaller number of employees per unit sales than your average US McDonald's.

If fast food workers expect to get a higher wage, they're going to have to step up to earn that higher wage.
 
FM 3370 said:
With Mortgages lasting 15-30 years and endless property tax, buying a house seems more like renting to me.
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Not to mention that they front-load the interest payments. Shouldn't even be legal. Though technically it keeps rates lower for those who do stay in one place for a long time. But they still shouldn't be able to basically subsidize those people by screwing people who move around more often.
 
FM 3370 said:
With Mortgages lasting 15-30 years and endless property tax, buying a house seems more like renting to me.
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If you have to keep paying for a thing and someone can take it from you if you don't, you don't own it imo. If I was stuck paying a bill on something for the next ten+ years I'd shoot myself, or fake my death and skip the country. Especially if it was something I couldn't pick up and take with me.
But that's just me..
 
Parja said:
I'm gonna bet those McDonald's are run much more efficiently and with a significantly smaller number of employees per unit sales than your average US McDonald's.
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I would also bet that in the case of the McDonalds in Holland the state is footing the bill for some of those wages.

Benefit package.
 
Bigbacon said:
this is how I feel.

this would only happen in America. Once they up minimum wage, prices of everything will go up. Those folks making the new minimum wage won't go anywhere. they still make the same amount of money...BUT the folks like myself that make good money, it hurts us because my salary isn't going to magically go up by 7 dollars an hour.
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That isn't what happened in Washington or California (San Francisco and San Diego).
 
dandragonrage said:
Not to mention that they front-load the interest payments. Shouldn't even be legal.
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This is basic financial mathematics, the longer the term of the loan and the higher the rate, the more interest you will be paying (this even happens on your 5 year car loan). If you take out a 30 year mortgage, you are paying interest based on that 30 years. This is the opposite of compounded interest on savings, where you earn interest on the interest you already collected.

If you are only going to live in a place for a few years, then you should consider renting instead of buying.

Please don't sign loan papers if you don't understand how interest works. That's how many people end up in financial distress. Try renting instead, then you can deal with higher rent payments every year instead of a fixed payment for the next 30.

FM 3370 said:
With Mortgages lasting 15-30 years and endless property tax, buying a house seems more like renting to me.
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I've lived in my current home for almost 20 years. Renting something similar would cost me almost 5 times as much as my current mortgage and property taxes combined. The savings allowed my wife to stay home with the kids, and for us to live in a nice upper class area.

Plus, the house is currently worth over 3 times what I originally paid for it. The increased value should come in handy when I retire and downsize.
 
nutzo said:
This is basic financial mathematics, the longer the term of the loan and the higher the rate, the more interest you will be paying (this even happens on your 5 year car loan). If you take out a 30 year mortgage, you are paying interest based on that 30 years. This is the opposite of compounded interest on savings, where you earn interest on the interest you already collected.

If you are only going to live in a place for a few years, then you should consider renting instead of buying.

Please don't sign loan papers if you don't understand how interest works. That's how many people end up in financial distress. Try renting instead, then you can deal with higher rent payments every year instead of a fixed payment for the next 30.
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I understand it fine and I haven't signed anything, so don't talk down to me.

Point is that they charge you the interest of the entire term first (well, mostly), rather than paying interest as it accrues over time.

If I take out a 30 year loan and move after 5 years and pay the loan off, I should have around 5/30 equity. But no - almost all of that went into interest payments.

The place you could have called me out is that doing this helps them keep rates lower overall because they make a lot of their profit this way (people who keep moving and don't get to the point where they have much equity). But that is a type of subsidization.

I understand this as well or better than you do.
 
dandragonrage said:
I understand it fine and I haven't signed anything, so don't talk down to me.

Point is that they charge you the interest of the entire term first (well, mostly), rather than paying interest as it accrues over time.

If I take out a 30 year loan and move after 5 years and pay the loan off, I should have around 5/30 equity. But no - almost all of that went into interest payments.
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Except you clearly don't understand how amortization works.
 
Parja said:
Except you clearly don't understand how amortization works.
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Fact is they can make the system work any way they want it to. Telling me that I don't understand how one specific method works does not prove me wrong. It's only one way to accomplish things, and it's a method that benefits mainly the banks, so the banks tend to use it.
 
dandragonrage said:
If I take out a 30 year loan and move after 5 years and pay the loan off, I should have around 5/30 equity. But no - almost all of that went into interest payments.
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No exactly sure what you're saying here. Yes, those 5 years of mortgage payments went almost entirely to interest. However when you pay off a conventional mortgage that pretty much never have early repayment fees or penalties, you're only paying off the remainder of the principal and not a dime in further interest payments.
 
Armenius said:
I think I remember seeing a report that less than a fifth of the US population under 30 years old don't have a single credit card. Most people in my generation I think don't see the need to have one. My credit score is in the 700s right now on student loan and medical bill payments alone. I recently bought a new car, and those payments will also fuel my credit score. However, in the hopes of buying my own home in the near future I did finally cave in and got a credit card to work on getting my credit score even higher. But the only thing I put on it right now is gas...
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Make sure you actually understand how to raise your credit score. Check out creditboards.com. I have 19 credit accounts with a aggregate of $95k limit and maintain a 750+ credit score.
 
mikefxu said:
Make sure you actually understand how to raise your credit score. Check out creditboards.com. I have 19 credit accounts with a aggregate of $95k limit and maintain a 750+ credit score.
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Remeber also that even if you have credit that you don't use, the total available credit that one has avaiable to them can actually hurt their credit score.
 
heatlesssun said:
Remeber also that even if you have credit that you don't use, the total available credit that one has avaiable to them can actually hurt their credit score.
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I was carrying zero debt and my score was dinged specifically because I didn't have a big enough line of credit vs. the average balance I carried on my credit card (which was always paid in full monthly).

Your score represents how much money can be made from you. So its partly based on your trustworthiness and financial capacity to take on more debt and pay it back but also on your disposition to taking on debt. Credit cards want you to run a big balance and pay it on time faithfully. So my habits are good for a bank that wants to loan me money for say a house or car that is too hard to pay off early in a big way, I'm terrible for a prospective credit card issuer. So my score, with no debts and a healthy for my age & marital status income, was penalized a nice chunk.
 
jpm100 said:
I was carrying zero debt and my score was dinged specifically because I didn't have a big enough line of credit vs. the average balance I carried on my credit card (which was always paid in full monthly).
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All I was saying is that you don't want to have tons of available unused credit, that's going to hurt more than help your credit score. But obviously you need to have some debt and credit on which for form a good score.
 
TwistedAegis said:
That is how the middle class grows, wages going to more employees, Henry Fords making sure his employees can buy his goods.
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Most of history, employers paid their employees the very least that they could in order to get qualified workers. That hasn't changed. There aren't a lot of Henry Fords out there; nearly all companies are run by pricks who don't give a crap about their workers, which is why in the early to mid 20th century so many unions cropped up. Then the companies without them had to compete, and so they added worker's benefits to the compensation package. Now, it's reversing again, and employees are slowly losing those same benefits and having to pay for them on their own. I think this kind of thing runs in cycles. Like someone else said, change usually comes in violence type events, and this is no different; the union members WERE violently removing scab workers during those years to bring about change. I wonder what it will be like this time around.
But the average worker is still not much more than a moron, believing that commercials, politicians, and religious leaders all tell the truth.
We live in a consumer society. People only stop buying things when they can't afford it anymore. Hmmmm. I wonder how many people just think along the lines of this: 'Like the U.S. gov't, I guess I'll have to raise my debt ceiling.'
 
mikefxu said:
Make sure you actually understand how to raise your credit score. Check out creditboards.com. I have 19 credit accounts with a aggregate of $95k limit and maintain a 750+ credit score.
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Your credit score is probably lower than it should be due to the high limit and the large number of cards you have.

Generally, you want fewer cards (less than 10), with a total limit no higher than your gross income.
Plus, pay them off every month and don't use more than 1/3 of the credit available on the card.
 
Purely conjecture on my part, but fewer people these days actually own homes, which means there is less space to store shit you buy even if you can afford it. People are living a more pared down lifestyle, usually out of necessity.
 
SGA76 said:
Well, charging so much at launch for a forked version of android with 18 month old specs AND limiting it to one carrier?
They just had WIN written all over it....
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Don't forget the amazon focused app store and amazon themed stuff all over it.

Sell an aosp phone with better specs and a removable battery than the nexus phones and I'll consider it.
 
nightfly said:
There aren't a lot of Henry Fords out there; nearly all companies are run by pricks who don't give a crap about their workers, which is why in the early to mid 20th century so many unions cropped up.
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How you could use Ford's name and NOT say his was a prick is amazing.

Ford did not pay his workers well out of any notion of fair wage or love, he wanted to expand the middle class so they could buy his products! Henry Ford was well known for abusing his employees which helped give rise to the unions.
 
mope54 said:
a number of us already knew the reality from research, but now it's moving across the nation in a big way and the examples are rolling in that higher minimum wages are boosting the local economies where they are passed

http://mic.com/articles/92983/here-...-states-that-increased-minimum-wage-this-year
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Raising minimum wage is well known for spikes in unemployment at the same time.

Simple math would tell you this. If you take "x" amount of money and spread it out to the worker pool there is no extra money for new workers. This has been proven over and over again.

Rise in automation is coming due to meddling fools, you will be ordering Happy Meals with a touchscreen before long.
 
gdonovan said:
How about ruinous tax rates? The amount of money the feds, state and local "authorities" remove from my paycheck every week is more than some people earn in the same time period.

I think I know better how to spend my money then some faceless bureaucrat but I digress.

The idiot governor of the state where I'm living pushed through the largest tax increase in history and can't figure out why people are fleeing the state in droves or why the pool of people working here has been unchanged for over 2 decades.

I'd have more money to spend on goods and services if fewer people were in my wallet before me.
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Sure sounds like Illinois! We should go for a beer sometime :)

:D
 
nightfly said:
Most of history, employers paid their employees the very least that they could in order to get qualified workers. That hasn't changed. There aren't a lot of Henry Fords out there; nearly all companies are run by pricks who don't give a crap about their workers, which is why in the early to mid 20th century so many unions cropped up. Then the companies without them had to compete, and so they added worker's benefits to the compensation package. Now, it's reversing again, and employees are slowly losing those same benefits and having to pay for them on their own. I think this kind of thing runs in cycles. Like someone else said, change usually comes in violence type events, and this is no different; the union members WERE violently removing scab workers during those years to bring about change. I wonder what it will be like this time around.
But the average worker is still not much more than a moron, believing that commercials, politicians, and religious leaders all tell the truth.
We live in a consumer society. People only stop buying things when they can't afford it anymore. Hmmmm. I wonder how many people just think along the lines of this: 'Like the U.S. gov't, I guess I'll have to raise my debt ceiling.'
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You said it in your comment, many people believe media, leaders, etc. for the truth. Our propaganda is far more sophisticated than it was in the early to mid 20th century. You say this is a cycle, if so, I think this time it's going to be a very long cycle. You can't bring about change without some sort of cohesion and everyone seems to be pulling in different directions. I'm pessimistic and think nothing short of widespread starvation would bring about real change, and we're still a long ways from that.
 
nutzo said:
Your credit score is probably lower than it should be due to the high limit and the large number of cards you have.

Generally, you want fewer cards (less than 10), with a total limit no higher than your gross income.
Plus, pay them off every month and don't use more than 1/3 of the credit available on the card.
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My wife has longer history but far less accounts and her score has been similar to mine, since we married it has gone up about 25 points for her, but almost everything is in my name so I don't know how the effects hers. Do some reading at creditboards.com credit is a fickle beast and my understanding that the only will hurt me with a large number of accounts is that some insurance (All State) charge you more. I don't carry a balance and pay off in full every statement. You will actually show a lower utilization if you pay off the account prior to the statement closing.
 
People are very bad with money. Buy the latest and greatest phone and pay excessive amounts per month when there are plenty of good phones that are a 3rd the cost and plenty of prepaid providers that will also save at least half on the monthly service. Now times that by two for your spouse and then add a few more lines for you 5 and 8 year old. Pay $100 a month for TV service that make you lazy and fat. Don't know how to shop effectively and multiply that by spouse and children. I hate shopping at Walmart...just last night I noticed that a 6 pack of a specific brand English muffins was $2.28 at Walmart and $4.19 at Publix. Now buy 20-30+ items on a weekly basis for a family and where does your money go? I shop at ALDI primarily, Save-A-Lot as its on the way home from work for a small number of items (items to complete dinner), and Walmart for the items neither of those carry. We are lucky that all the grocery stores are within a small radius. I also receive a free Sam's Club membership through work and stock up and freeze meat. Buy a house that is double what you need, buy cars that you want instead of need. I don't think I have ever met someone that was genuinely hard up and it wasn't due to making poor decision after poor decision. I have made them myself, learned from them and it made me a better person. You don't have to be poor to make poor decisions, just look at the average $100k+ household and you see they are living paycheck to paycheck unnecessarily.
 
Parja said:
Except you clearly don't understand how amortization works.
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What's there to understand?

dandragonrage said:
Point is that they charge you the interest of the entire term first (well, mostly), rather than paying interest as it accrues over time.

If I take out a 30 year loan and move after 5 years and pay the loan off, I should have around 5/30 equity. But no - almost all of that went into interest payments.

The place you could have called me out is that doing this helps them keep rates lower overall because they make a lot of their profit this way (people who keep moving and don't get to the point where they have much equity). But that is a type of subsidization.
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This whole system is a giant scam. Looking at these stats: http://www.nahb.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&genericContentID=110770&channelID=311 about half of homeowners have moved out of their home after 15 years. That means the majority of your interest is paid, with some amount of principal. Principal is all that matters. If you have only made a small dent in the principal amount, then you haven't really accumulated any wealth. Your only hope is that maybe in those 10-15 years, the value of your home has increased more than inflation.

The banks in this case make out like bandits. People hop from home to home paying outrageous amount of interest and never really building any wealth.

The system only kind of works if you stay in the home for the full life of the loan.

The other smaller benefit is the tax deduction on mortgage interest. But even that seems like it benefits the rich more.
 
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