Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I read an article on Forbes (IIRC) recently that said Best Buy is doomed, and now BB is announcing that they're closing 50 stores. With my luck they'll close the one in Las Cruces and leave the two or three in El Paso alone, just like they did for Toys R Us.

With Toys R Us, they were bought out by a rather mercenary capital group who thought that in some cases the land the stores were on were more valuable than the stores themselves, never mind if they provided services to the community that were profitable for the corp. I've seen many such sites still vacant after the stores closed, not unlike when Mervyn's died.

In this case, I think most of the blame can be laid at the feet of poor customer service and constantly pressing people to buy extended warranties. They're blaming a lot of their woes on Amazon, which demonstrates that they're failing at the customer service game, something that Amazon is well-regarded for.

BB reported a $1.7 billion US loss for their fourth quarter, versus a $651 million US profit the previous fiscal year. I told my wife after I read the Forbes article, which mainly blamed poor customer service, that I'm giving them four years before they're gone or bought out, but who would buy them out? Now I'm giving them less than three.

This saddens me, because if I need to buy some strange computer gear, locally I'll be limited to Staples, Radio Shack, and Walmart, or wait until I'm in Phoenix and can go to Fry's Electronics if I want to handle it and actually look at boxes, otherwise it'll be Amazon or similar.

You'd think that as well as Amazon is doing, that the US Postal Service would be doing better. I really don't like the concept of internet-only purchasing for people who live in somewhat remote communities like I do.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SBB0001424052702303404704577311322427071212.html

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/03/30/1830209/best-buy-closing-50-stores

"A Quinnipiac University poll this year showed nearly two-thirds of those with household incomes of more than $250,000 a year support raising their own taxes to reduce the federal deficit."
-- from WSJ story

I would imagine Congresscritters weren't included in that survey, and if I recall correctly, pretty much every member of said institution (and wouldn't it be great if they were institutionalized!) is in that income bracket.

Here's the story: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/20/tax-me-more-says-wealthy-entrepreneur/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

And here's an interesting quote from said story: An op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times by Garrett Gruener, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, makes two important points about taxing the rich. (Mr. Gruener founded Ask.com and is the CEO of Nanomix and is a co-founder of Alta Partners, so he’s got street cred.)

First, he says tax rates don’t make or break the success of an entrepreneur – or the jobs he creates. He says he’s paying the lowest rates of his working life. But “if you want the simple, honest truth, from my perspective as an entrepreneur, the fluctuation didn’t affect what I did with my money. None of my investments has ever been motivated by the rate at which I would have to pay personal income tax,” Mr. Gruener writes.

I don't have a cite for the survey mentioned, but I'm going to look for it. I'm interested in how big the sample was and what other questions they asked.