Do you support local?

[Cutlass]

fixed

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That is really just asking for trouble though. The tax authorities aren't daft. You might get away with not declaring cash on a bit of casual gardening, or cleaning jobs, but anything else and they're going to have a really good idea of how much business you're doing and the extent to which you're likely not declaring income. And besides, when it comes to finding additional finance from a lender like a bank, don't you want not to have any undeclared income?

As for money laundering activities (which seem to be related to cash transactions in a way), well... you tell me. It's a major problem for criminal organizations to re-legitimize their income streams and I think it costs them dear. To the extent that it might be worthwhile them considering legitimate businesses in the first place.

Casinos are excellent places for money laundering, btw. Who knows how much money really walks in the door and how much walks out? And who's going to tell anyone?

When I was a criminal I washed all my money through casinos, but it wasn't laundering, which is done as you say to legitimize the income. I just wanted to trade serial numbers. It generally cost me about five percent, but I always had a hellacious good time. However, if you turn up with large amounts of money above your claimed income and try to say "I won it at the casino" the tax people will fry you.

As to keeping the occasional cash transaction off the books, the authorities are not anywhere near as ubiquitous as you might think. If the cash goes in your pocket instead of the til and the customer leaves without a receipt there is no indication that the product wasn't shoplifted. Obviously you can't do it half the time and pretend that half your inventory disappears to shoplifting without you noticing, but as long as you stay reasonable it is pretty much risk free.

Laundering money works exactly the opposite way. You take a business that may be a little bit profitable or may even lose money, and generate false transactions as you feed cash into the til. It is expensive, because you are making the business show a falsely large profit which you then have to pay taxes on as income, but you can use the money without any mismatch between your documented income and your lifestyle.

 

[NovaKart]

Hardee's? Why do all the bad American chains get exported...



No. Just an inconsistent one, depending upon your reasons.

The Hardee's in Iraq is pretty good. I think they only have them in Erbil so I don't go there often but most times when I'm in Erbil I go there.

 

[azzaman333]

I buy the best product for my needs.

 

[Narz]

I support local when I can, though I do shop on Amazon occasionally because its easy.

Outside of that, I pretty much exclusively use cash (beyond paying bills), especially at small businesses.

 

[downtown]

I love the idea of local, and do it when I can, but without a car, I'm also sort of limited by what's around me...and that means I do quite a bit of shopping at Target.

We've been getting better at buying more local food, and if given the option, I'll hit up a small business, but I am often geographically constrained. I'm not gonna spend two hours on the stupid train to buy something that I can get at the Mall down the street from my house.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I support local when I can, though I do shop on Amazon occasionally because its easy.

Outside of that, I pretty much exclusively use cash (beyond paying bills), especially at small businesses.

Huh...do you find using cash gives you any benefits over using cards?

I haven't used cash in years, due entirely to laziness.

 

[Narz]

Huh...do you find using cash gives you any benefits over using cards?

I haven't used cash in years, due entirely to laziness.

Well studies show people are more wasteful with cards. When I drop $120 in cash I 'feel it' more.

When you use card money theres always a worry that you're overspending. If I know I'm giving myself say $250 for the week I can feel see visual evidence that I'm getting low (which may be motivating to get more).

 

[warpus]

One business I support as much as I can is Mountain Equipment Co-op

It's a company built around the ideals of community, quality, environmental awareness, and .. well, they don't care about profits so much, so they give you good deals.

It's not a local company - they have stores in a whole bunch of Canadian cities.. But they don't have shareholders they need to answer to. The people the company answers to is a democratically elected board. $5 gets you membership for life, meaning you can run in their elections and/or shop at their stories. They provide excellent quality hiking apparel at reasonable prices. As soon as they moved into town, they put a competing company out of business - they couldn't compete with their low prices.

Anyway, you don't need to support local to support good businesses. If more companies out there were co-operatives, then .. well, it would make it easier for me to shop without feeling like a dick. But it's the only co-op that I know that I regularly shop at.

 

[Whomp]

We also get Thursday deliveries from a CSA (vegetables) farm in Wisconsin and a local dairy.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Well studies show people are more wasteful with cards. When I drop $120 in cash I 'feel it' more.

When you use card money theres always a worry that you're overspending. If I know I'm giving myself say $250 for the week I can feel see visual evidence that I'm getting low (which may be motivating to get more).

That makes sense. I keep pretty tight tabs on my bank account, so I have a pretty good idea of what's available at all times, but paying with cash would almost certainly reduce my expenditures as I would never feel comfortable carrying the equivalent amount of my bank account with me

 

[Kennigit]

Not really. I generally try out the local places just because

my main expenditures are rent and food/groceries. I will say there are a few quality washington/oregon companies that are spread throughout the US northwest or western US that i like better than truly national chains, but they are still 'chains' and not true local or only a 1 or 2 location kind of deal.

I eat plenty locally because, well, there are a few local places I like.

I will say various athletic gear or outdoor gear are way better online through amazon or some online shopping. I bought microspijes online for my hiking boots and have bought my most recent running shoe and a racing road flat all online.

'Buying local' really only gets my heart stirred on those issues. Because local running or sport apparel stores are usually so great for the community but they are so much more expensive than warehousing options online.

Other stuff i just go by preference (if I like a local chain, it's because I like it period. If they grew into evil nation wide corporation but stayed the same I'd probably stay)

 

[thecrazyscot]

Gene editing is not working. Yet.

Er...what?

 

[Borachio]

Eh?... What's that, Mr Scot?

Gene editing uses a method called Crispr that has rapidly become a research stalwart. It exploits a system that bacteria use to protect themselves from viruses and allows researchers to cut out selected genes and insert new ones.

A pressing question, said Rudolf Jaenisch, an M.I.T. biology professor, is why anyone would want to edit the genes of human embryos to prevent disease. Even in the most severe cases, involving diseases like Huntington’s in which a single copy of a mutated gene inherited from either parent is enough to cause the disease with 100 percent certainty, editing poses ethical problems. Because of the way genes are distributed in embryos, when one parent has the gene, only half of the parent’s embryos will inherit it. With gene editing, the cutting and pasting has to start immediately, in a fertilized egg, before it is possible to know if an embryo has the Huntington’s gene. That means half the embryos that were edited would have been normal — their DNA would have been forever altered for no reason. “It is unacceptable to mutate normal embryos,” Dr. Jaenisch said. “For me, that means there is no application.”

 

[thecrazyscot]

Sorry, I'm just confused as to what this has to do with this thread? Was it perhaps meant for a different discussion...maybe the GMO one?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Wrong thread, wrong thread, goddamnit, sorry.

 

[warpus]

No worries, at least you're not posting about manhole covers for some reason or something.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

No worries, at least you're not posting about manhole covers for some reason or something.

If he were posting about manhole covers I would be afraid he was a robotic monitor.

Spoiler :

Strange literary reference explained on request.

Spoiler :

All the Myriad Ways - Larry Niven

 

[Borachio]

Sorry, I'm just confused as to what this has to do with this thread? Was it perhaps meant for a different discussion...maybe the GMO one?

Ha!

See how confused I was? I didn't even realize it was nothing to do with "Do you support local?"

 

[Mise]

My purchasing decisions are based on a large number of variables, of which price is the biggest one. Localness is another, but much less important. The problem with most "local" shops is that the thing typically costs more and is of a lower quality, so there's little compelling me to "shop local". However, when it comes to things like coffee, in which you're already paying more for the ambiance and nice place to sit/chat than you are for the actual coffee (which is pretty much the same everywhere to me), I'll usually go to a "local"/independent coffee shop than a Starbucks or Costa.

There are good reasons to shop local: it might be more environmentally friendly; it's more likely that the money you spend will be ploughed back into the place you actually live, rather than be held in a dodgy offshore bank somewhere; the "what goes around comes around" factor, in which, if I ever started my own business in the local area, I would like it if local people supported me by buying stuff from me instead of from the multinational chain; the competition might drive down prices and drive up competition; it helps the place stay in business, which might be valuable on its own e.g. if the owner is a personal friend, or if the place is one you like to windowshop in (e.g. the board game shop). Anyway I'm sure there are good reasons other than those. But when you pay £x in a local shop, you are in part paying for those things as well.