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Wed 15 Sep, 2004 06:06 pm
Cheney: Economic Stats Miss EBay Sales
(AP) -- Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.
"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."
San Jose, Calif.-based EBay Inc. is an Internet auction site where anyone can sell just about anything, including clothing, cell phones, jewelry, memorabilia, trinkets and automobiles.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush are with the economy.
"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said in a statement.
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Did Cheney even consider that many of these people are having to sell off personal belongings in order to survive? Or, that many have lost their jobs over the last few years?
I suppose if we could count Ebay "Traders" the economy would be much rosier than it currently appears. Come January we'll throw in the Girl Scout Cookie sales and the economic growth will be off the charts!
Edwards was certainly right about the "Two America's, and ONE doesn't appear anywhere close to understanding the other.
400,000 e-Bay shoppers, huh? Wow! That's the population of a real small city. I can't believe that even Cheney would make that dumb a statement. How'd he forget about garage sales and sheriff's foreclosure auctions?
Apparently a lot of people, Edwards included, are unaware that there are several hundred businesses that use E-Bay as an on-line sales portal. I somehow doubt that "The Sharper Image", "La Rouche Diamonds", "Hewlett Packard" or "Sears", etc.. are selling of their personal belongings to survive. Those 400,000 sellers managed to sell $8 Billion worth of stuff in the 1st quarter of this year alone.
Of course, if I had Edwards money I probably wouldn't use E-Bay either.
what a complete maroon. out of touch is a bit of understatement.
"Mr Vice-President, but not everyone has a home computer"
"Whaaaat eehhh, well let em use laptops''
Hey Cheney, they even have scanners at grocery stores too...
When I was in Bolivia there was talk about a guy up in Ecuador, an exhippie refugee from the 60's, who was buying up native crafts and selling them on Ebay (It kept him in Cocoa leave or whatever) In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. He knew how the system worked, the natives didn't. So Cheney has a point, but only sort of. Ebay is still more potential than fact and I doubt it is a major factor in the economy at present.
Major? Perhapos, perhaps not. Consider that E-bay is on track to sell in excess of $24 billion in merchandise this year. That would be $3 Billion more than Coca Cola Corp sold world-wide last year.
Earlier today Coca Cola announced that their earnings would be lower than analysts estimates (they'll still be making money, just less than analysts predicted) for the next 6 months and as a result the DJIA dropped 86 points (almost 1 full percentage point) today.
Reminds me of the old joke about the three merchants who were shipwrecked on a desert island.
They were marooned naked except for one battered hat.
When they were rescued, it turns out that all three had become fabulously wealthy by selling the same hat back and forth between them.
Sorry, the joke made me laugh in my economics class many MANY years ago and I still love to tell it.
EBay has always reminded me of a giant, world-wide garage sale where the population of the world sells the same junk back and forth across the net.
Ebay is a market, it facilitates the exchange and presumable a more efficient distribution of things, but it produces nothing. I am at a loss to understand how it would contribute in a major way to the well being of an economy on its own.
Because people are making money and creating new micro-economies.
Though e-bay itself produces nothing, it facillitates a large number of monetary transactions that otherwise may not have occured.
Maybe maybe not McG. I have bought very little on Ebay and most of that was small lot items that under normal circumstance would have ended up in the discount bin at a retailor. Ebay as potential but I think it is limited. It can not handel mass market items. As Federal said it is more on the level of a global garage sale at the moment.
I had a short list of people who would show up to defend Cheney's statement.........
Let's don't forget to count drug deals as a major part of the economy...they may be illegal (well unless it's the CIA) but they should count right?
Actual brick-and-mortar business, most of them small, who sell on E Bay are supplementing their over-the-counter sales. It's just stupid to believe they are making a living solely off of selling through the Internet, especially with the price wars that go on that make it extremely competitive. Amazon makes money of the interent without brick-and-mortar stores but they are one of the few exceptions. It's silicone snake oil even though I have bought new and used DVD's and CD's from Amazon's similar service to E Bay and Half.com. The vacuum cleaner I just purchased was from a brick-and-mortar store back East who has a Website. It was almost a toss-up between paying the sales tax and buying the same vacuum from Target except for the free freight on this particular model. I save about 15%.
If anyone here believe it is really easy to set up a Website and have it make a living equal or better than the job they have now, be my guest. Just try it.
Lightwizard wrote:If anyone here believe it is really easy to set up a Website and have it make a living equal or better than the job they have now, be my guest. Just try it.
What does "easy" have to do with anything? It isn't "easy" to setup a auto manufacturing plant or a railroad either.
Lightwizard wrote:If anyone here believe it is really easy to set up a Website and have it make a living equal or better than the job they have now, be my guest. Just try it.
very true - I know a lot of ebayers and none are living on that alone - but I must say it gives my sister a lot of toys she wouldn't otherwise have. (from selliing - mostly collectibles)
Good point, husker. I, too, know people who use e-bay for profit, but in most cases it's just an adjunct to their other business enterprises. For example, I know an antique dealer in Hilo, HI, who buys merchandise on e-bay and re-sells it at a profit in his brick-and-mortar shop. It's just one of the places he gets his wares. He also makes buying trips to the mainland and to other Hawaiian islands. The point is I don't know anyone who relies on e-bay for a living. The examples fishin' used -- e.e. Sharper Image -- are high-end businesses with an established base in other venues.
Making a comparison to the setting up a Website and expecting customers to flock to your door to setting up manufacturing automobiles is ludicrous. Just try to sell those automobiles over the Internet and make a living. A railroad? Even sillier.
Hint: you have nothing to sell unless you invest in an inventory which also means you need a warehouse. What does anyone here know about the great meltdown of the dot.com companies? Apparantly nothing. CDNow, for instance, was an effort which has not become absorbed by Amazon.
Out-or-work people buying an inventory and selling it on E Bay? A fantasy.
Lightwizard wrote:Out-or-work people buying an inventory and selling it on E Bay? A fantasy.
Really?
Have you ever heard of a game called Magic: The Gathering? It is a collectible card game and I personally know two people that make enough money buying and selling magic cards that they no longer have regular jobs. They make the majority of their profit in shipping and they have a rather large inventory they have bought and sold on Ebay.
Now, their wives work regular jobs to pay for insurance for the family, but were they single, this is what they would be doing.
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