adzoox's Journal: How eBay, Flea Markets, & Latinos are hurting the economy

I go to the flea market every Saturday & Sunday morning & most times on Wednesday. I enjoy the walking and the feel of commerce in a capitalist market. I also can pick up a few small things I need like vegetables, boiled peanuts, Zip Disks, AC adapters, and an occasional cable. But this morning, something struck me when a "flea market salesperson" said, " Yeah, I bring everything I can't sell on eBay out here" Now what's particularly interesting about the comment coming from this selller was that he was selling "pirated CDs and DVDs" Does he sell music & movies on CDR on eBay? A swarm of people were buying from him. He sold two Matrix Reloaded DVDs while I was there. (yes, you read that right, Matrix Reloaded) I overheard the conversation in bits & pieces, so I didn't ask the seller to elaborate. What also struck me is that at this very same moment I was buying vegetables in a nearby area from a Latino. This Latino could barely speak English. I believe I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that more than 70% of the Latino population in my area are illegal immigrants.

Now, let's look at the 3 of these observations together. eBay= no taxes. I believe I may be the only eBay seller on the planet that pays taxes based on my eBay sales and the only one that actually pays the quarterly sales tax if I collect it from an eBay buyer in my state. Back to topic: eBay = no tax revenue. At 15 billion in sales on eBay last year, that makes a lot of lost tax revenue. Next: flea markets - I doubt I would be far off to say that Yard sales, Flea Markets, Swap Meets, etc account for 100 billion in sales each year. (probably a lot more) Next: latinos - (couldn't find a coherent link to REAL figures) By estimates from the dozens of charts, graphs, and studies I searched through this morning - it is estimated that there are 45 million illegal mexicans in this country. Each one, doesn't pay income tax, doesn't pay property tax, and doesn't pay sales tax in the majority of circumstances. (It is sort of hush hush here that Mexican markets around my area don't charge fellow Latinos state sales tax) They also do not pay or collect tax at Flea Markets. My local flea market is made up of about 25% Latino seller. It is obvious they aren't tax paying citizens. They pretty much rule produce at all flea markets in my area (of which there are 6 big ones that I know of - two - the largest in the country)

I would estimate that there is at LEAST 150 Billion in lost revenue/taxpayer redistribution due to illegal immigrants.

Where this hurts the economy is the less people that pay taxes, and the more people depend on government social programs, the more the "true taxpayer" is going to have to start paying.

Taxes are too high now ... but that's a whole other journal entry.

If you can add any coherency or addition to this journal entry - out of all the entries I have here, this is the one I want you to post on.

Here is one source I used for information:

http://www.theistudio.com/whois_online.html

I tried to Google most of my statistics but a lot are filled with racist diatribe or statistical bias.

illegals

[larry bagina]

I don't care much for illegal immigrants, but they do serve a purpose in our economy. There's a lot of shit work that most "native" "Americans" doesn't want to do -- like being a migrant worker. The farmer gets cheap help that won't unionize or complain, and the illegal gets more money than s/he would get in $south_or_central_american_country. Maybe the answer is to require all able bodied welfare recipients to work every other month at some shit job, thus reducing demand for illegal immigrants (and for

Re:illegals

[larry bagina]

When you, I, or Joe Taxpayer pays taxes, that money doesn't disappear from the economy. A small amount (relatively speaking) is sent to other countries as foreign aid, UN dues, etc, but most stays in the US. Taxes changes where the money is spent (I'd rather have a new stereo than a new bunker buster bomb), but not that it is spent.

I'd still prefer lower taxes for personal reasons, but also I don't believe that 536 elected individuals plus thousands more unaccountable beaurocrats spend money as prudentl

So what do we do about it?

[perfessor multigeek]

It very quickly becomes a very intimidating decison tree/truth table.

We ship 'em back and, as l.b. pointed out, we lose the bottom of our labor pool. And even beyond that, if they're doing so well selling produce (as they also do here in NYC) part of that is probably a willingness to work longer and worse hours for less money. Things like sitting and cutting up mango at five in the morning so they can sell the resulting cointainers of fresh fruit for a buck each during morning rush.
We let them become lega

Re:So what do we do about it?

[perfessor multigeek]

Not that I should bother to respond to an AC, but "Close the borders for 3 or more years completely" how ?
If the point is to maximize government revenue and we already know that it takes tens of billions of dollars PER YEAR just to seal off the obvious border stretches, then how does that solve the problem?

Border patrol costs how much? Walls how much? Aerostats, vehicles, blah, blah, blah.
We've got many thousands of miles of border, much of it deadly hot, brutally cold, or intermittantly both, and almost

Sales tax

[Phroggy]

As a native Oregonian, I've always felt sales tax was a stupid idea anyway, and this is just another reason why. We have no sales tax here, so the government doesn't lose any money when I buy from Amazon.com.