heimidal

No. Sales tax in the US is determined based on the location where the customer takes possession of the merchandise.

Unfortunately, that is not a political reality. The federal government does not have the power to enforce sales tax rules on the states.

Gotcha. In the US, if you tried to keep that system, you’d need a different printed MSRP per tax nexus and books in warehouses would no longer be fungible.

It doesn’t “cost extra”, it has a different tax structure. Sure, there might be no sales tax in OR, but there sure is income tax. Just north in WA, it’s the opposite where there is sales tax but no income tax.

My experiences outside the US do not match yours, I guess.

“Local” advertising is not practical. There are 13,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the US.

Yes, it's on top of VAT. It's usually "discretionary", meaning you can ask to have it taken off the bill, but you must ask and it usually results in being glared at.

What is certainly true is that Americans are culturally more friendly toward strangers. Americans smiling and talking a lot is a cliche at this point. However, I would bet the "best friend" experiences that you have had would be nothing but simple pleasantries to a typical American. Tipping culture has little to do with it; "friendliness" is regarded as an element of excellent service here. Even in situations where no tip is ever expected, such as in a clothing store, workers are trained to be as friendly and overly helpful as possible.

For what it's worth, I have memories of extremely friendly waitstaff in Europe -- dare I say "American-esque". Just this summer, a French bartender in the Marais asked where we were from. When we answered "the US", she launched into a story about a trip she'd taken to New York. She talked about how much she loved seeing a Broadway show, Central Park, and MoMA. I watched her carry on with a British couple and many French patrons in the same way, returning to grab us another glass of wine and chat some more. The French people present seemed just as happy to chat with her as we were.

I have similar stories from London, Florence, Barcelona, and Tokyo (just off the top of my head). It's certainly not common, but I've seen it several times.

Americans often say most Europeans are stiff and uptight. Europeans often think the opposite of Americans. You seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about it, but it's just a cultural difference that you're choosing to find distasteful.

You're not wrong, so I'll revise to "what they believe he will sign."

I'd consider adding a fee that isn't included in the listed menu price to be predatory, even if you can ask to have it removed.

Given the only practical alternative I can imagine would mean to never show a price... yes, the current state of things is more beneficial to the consumer. Again, seeing an pre-tax MSRP price in an ad is better than not having any MSRP in an ad at all.

If you have a practical alternative that could somehow allow for advertising with prices that include tax, I'd love to hear it. (Just to make sure we're on the same page ahead of time: amending the Constitution to strike the Tenth Amendment so that the Federal Government can prevent states from levying their own taxes is not "practical".)

In general, their stance has been "vote against anything the governor is willing to sign."

If tipping is banned in a place (by the local government I mean), where exactly are the "best workers" going to go? Are they going to pack up and move somewhere else?

Tipping was banned in seven US states about a hundred years ago. For the most part, People simply ignored the laws. They were all repealed or found unconstitutional after a couple decades. I am not aware of anywhere in the world where tipping a server is illegal.

Also, how are the tipped staff the "best workers"? They're just servers. All they have to do is take an order.

"Best workers" would include highly competent servers who are a direct cause of repeat business. A good server adds to the experience beyond the food and ambiance and help turn new customers into regulars. Regulars are the lifeblood of most restaurants.

It's incredible how much money they expect for this, when it's something that would be more efficiently done with an iPad.

Servers can make suggestions based on your preferences, make sure your dietary restrictions are handled, answer questions about the menu... these are experiences I have all the time and I'm certain an iPad would be worse.

In US restaurants, they're even too lazy to bring the food for you; I guess they're too busy trying to act like the customer's new best friend.

Servers bring out the food I order. I don't even know how to respond beyond that.

Maybe you're just going to really bad restaurants?

It would require a massive overhaul of the tax code in every state, not to mention that it would require state-by-state coordination because Congress cannot force them to comply. Other countries do it because their constitution generally does not include a clause like the Tenth Amendment.

But wow, the things it would do to national marketing. Imagine an iPhone launch. Tim Cook gets to the pricing slide and it says, "Starting at $1099 in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. Check your local store for your pricing in your location." That's our cue to mentally add our local tax rate like we do already, now with the added benefit of feeling bad about where we live.

You often see the same thing in the UK (a 12.5% "discretionary service charge" listed in small text that you must ask to have removed from your bill).

FYI, ZIP code is not enough to calculate tax rate. You need city and county. 9,000 ZIP codes cross county borders.

Currently, consumers can generally tell if they are getting a reasonable price by comparing the MSRP they see in an ad against the price they see in store. For example, if the nationally advertised price of an Xbox is $500 and Best Buy has it for $500, I know I'm not being swindled.

But if the in-store price is $550? I guess I have to haul out my calculator and ask for the store's tax rate so I can determine whether or not Best Buy is ripping me off and I should take my business elsewhere.

Ideally, they'd show pre-tax price, tax rate, and calculated total price on every tag. Maybe, one day, we'll see action on this in a state or two, but I don't suspect it is high on the lists of any lawmakers.

I'm curious, do books have prices printed on them in the UK? Here in the US, the suggested retail price (pre-tax, obviously) is generally printed by the manufacturer on the back or inside the dust cover of every book.

The "12.5% service charge" you see all over London would beg to differ.

Core to this is that the US constitution explicitly enshrines federalism in the tenth amendment (the last part of the "bill of rights"), that explicitly limits the power of the federal government.

I think this is the part that non-Americans fail to understand; we have no central tax authority and that principle is enshrined in our Constitution. Like it or not, so long as the US exists in its current form, so too does our wildly disparate tax code.

They really shouldn't be advertising false claims in the first place.

Just to be clear, you're suggesting that all pricing be removed from all advertising nationwide. This would clearly be to the detriment of the consumer.

That one has an easy solution: Just ask for the destination.

Again, this is to the customer's detriment. They have to provide their personal information just to see the price of any item on any website they visit? And that's somehow worse than having to mentally add a percentage to any price they see until checkout? You must be kidding.

Tax depends on the location the item is shipped to.

AFAIK (I'm American), the UK has a VAT rate for any good a consumer might find in a shop: 20%, 5%, and 0%, depending on product type. Because this rate is country-wide, the manufacturer can include VAT in their RRP. For example, if I go to the Sony website, a PS5 is £479.99 incl. VAT. If I go to the Amazon UK site, it's £466, or 3% off, incl. VAT.

If we locate the same product on the Amazon US site, it's $499.99 before tax. Amazon has two choices: show their price before tax or require shipping information from the user to see a price at all. (An estimated geolocation is not precise enough to determine a price.) For most consumers, I suspect seeing a pre-tax price upfront is better than having to provide personal information to see a price at all.

That explains online sales, but let's address brick and mortar retail. Imagine you go to Best Buy to comparison shop against Amazon and the price says $550 including tax. Is tax on this item in this location 10%? Or is it 5% but Best Buy's base price is higher than MSRP? It's up to me to find out the local tax rate and do the math. Let's say they agree to price-match Amazon; the clerk will need a function on the register to input a pre-tax price to facilitate this.

So, given this complexity and disparity, US manufacturers list MSRP without tax. Retailers display pre-tax prices for marketing and competitive reasons, generally never exceeding MSRP. Customers have come to expect this nationwide, so changing now would be challenging. (There are other good reasons to stick with pre-tax, too. In grocery stores, for example, pre-tax prices are very useful for SNAP beneficiaries.)

Do I think it would be useful to display tax calculations on signage in-store? Absolutely, and for some goods in some states, they do. But without laws or customer demand, retailers have no incentive to put themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

She-Ra is a show that takes place in a world where people _wield magical swords while riding around half-naked on giant armored tigers_. Yet your chief complaint is that a friend group having several non-heterosexual relationships is a "misrepresentation of reality"?

Seriously?

From the same article:

The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated.

"Squatting" a trademark generally isn't possible; if you can't prove use of the mark, the USPTO will simply cancel your registration. I imagine their activity related to the mark would be covered in any potential court proceedings and would be Facebook's primary defense.

If you want legal advice, you should seek out a trademark attorney. In general, though, you'd be infringing if the company has the name registered for use in your industry.

Their answer will probably be "Facebook knew they were infringing so they contacted us and attempted to purchase the mark."

If they have a registered, accepted trademark (and it appears they do), they can reasonably argue that Facebook has damaged their ability to establish the brand's identity despite significant outlay for design, marketing, and advertising -- those are dollars already spent. "Livelihood" includes income, sure, but it can also be read to include lasting damage done to their brand by Facebook prematurely usurping their ability to control the mark.

I will echo this. After we were acquired, I was incredibly hesitant about Pat. Over the past year, I’ve come to believe he is an excellent leader who has fantastic vision and insight even if we disagree on many things.

I’d be incredibly happy to have him if I were an Intel employee.

None of the examples you've cited are the only option. Can't use Google, Facebook, or Twitter? Advertise on TV, buy billboards, or hand out flyers on the corner. Can't use CloudFlare? Buy another solution or spend millions to build one yourself -- CloudFlare is, by no means, the sole provider of such services.

The minute you force a company to do business with people they don't want to do business with is the minute you've nationalized the business. So that's the solution -- if the US government so strongly believes that these resources are vital to society in the way that, say, the electric grid is, they need to turn them into regulated utilities. Until then, they are profit-seeking companies who believe they are protecting their shareholders by choosing to refuse service to a customer.