If they change their gun laws....

Which means never.

And what's wrong with our gun laws?

You ARE kidding, right?

Everyone outside of the US can see it...but seemingly no-one inside can.

If you are an American you are incapable of comprehending just how fucked up US gun 'control' is.

Therefore there IS NO POINT in discussion.

people might like American prices of computer parts. i am not sure they like American wages or welfare cheques.

also, if Australians couldn't afford their computer parts they might just order them from China. much cheaper, much better and ruining the local economy.

Dollar for dollar I don't think Oz is all that bad...although if you compare IKEA price gouging here with how cheap it is in the US....you too would kick up a stink of negative press until they [IKEA] relented and lowered [some].

The absurdity was when they tried to tell us freight costs were higher to get to Oz...than the US...

Sorry, IKEA....you might be some furrener in Europe...but WE KNOW HOW FAR INDONESIA is from here....  [Oz price for an Indonesian-made IKEA desk was double what it was in the US].

i don't know how much of the goods IKEA sells in Australia are manufactured in Asia.

it might be true that shipping container from China (i doubt there are that many from Indonesia) to the US is cheaper than shipping it to Australia. less ships, so higher prices. same as with flights, there are more factors than just distance.

but the ships are insanely cheap anyways. the cost of transporting it overland to the stores and warehouses is a bigger factor.

Probably most of them, other than the ones made locally.

They do their pricing as 'what-we-can-get-away-with' .... in other words...if there's not a lot of equivalent product they put the price high enough not to get people thinking 'rookery'....until the WWW bites them in the arse because you could get a desk sent from the US cheaper all up than bying it local....and both options have the same manufacturing source - in this case Indonesia.

No, it is the same absurdity that could see an Aussie airmailing himself some Nikes from America....cheaper than they are sold here....and they too are NOT made in the US OR AUS.

The Internet means this bullshit pricing will eventually be a thing of the past.

Well Jafo that's the whole point. I don't agree with gun control either. I think we should be able to own whatever gun we like (with the exception of those weapons made for our military) without these stupid laws that try to control our guns.

Anyhow that's all I will say.

Er....the US idea of 'Gun Control' is an oxymoron.

Back a little [bit] closer to topic....at one stage the US was prohibited to export high-tech equipment [getting into the wrong hands crap] that saw the UK animators of Bab 5 having to SMUGGLE out the Amiga 3000s they used to do the Lightwave graphics...

it's by far not as easy as you think.

see, you live on an island (technically a continent, but the number of people living there makes it smaller) and are culturally very close to the US (maybe closer than to the UK nowadays?).

but come to Europe (or any other continent than North America) and things will get a lot more complex when you have different societies with different income levels and different cultural values. 

for example it would be impossible to sell goods in Switzerland or Norway for the same price as in Germany or Australia (sic!), as it would be impossible to make a profit with the costs of labour there. 

or look at how the French value their food. they are willing to spend a much higher amount of their income for food than other societies. that's why their supermarkets are so expensive (and provide much higher quality stuff than everywhere else). in Australia i hear ALDI is the place to get food. i pity you if that is really the case. there are companies that sell worse junk than ALDI in Germany, but it is still a place that feeds the lower class (and Germans do by no means consider their food as valuable as the French).

transport costs depends mostly on how much taxes a country's government puts on gas and toll roads and ports.

etc, etc ...

it's far more complex than "it's cheap there, so it should be cheap here is well"

Another example saw the same product half the price in Sweden and a third the price in the US.  It's PURELY local market-driven, and not as complex as you are trying to make out.

ANY LEGITIMATE discrepancy re transport...labour OR cost-of-living would see a MAXIMUM variation of around 20 to 30% .... not 300%.

Believe me....cos even IKEA now believes it...they got caught with their pants down treating their respective markets as ignorant savages.

A global economy [as that's what we are ending up with...like it or not] cannot tolerate such usury.

this is what i said.

[quote who="Jafo" ], and not as complex as you are trying to make out.[/quote]

those local markets are pretty complex

[quote who="Jafo" ]ANY LEGITIMATE discrepancy re transport...labour OR cost-of-living would see a MAXIMUM variation of around 20 to 30% .... not 300%.

Believe me....cos even IKEA now believes it...they got caught with their pants down treating their respective markets as ignorant savages.[/quote]

it doesn't really matter anyways. if the consumer thinks "Indonesia is closer to Australia than the US, so it should be cheaper here" it is hard to communicate with him.

they basically would have two choices:

- either lower the price of those particular items mentioned in the media and slighty raise the price of all other items.

- or just don't give a fuck, as they are now labelled as the evil foreigners. they are probably still cheaper than the "good" local competitors which likely import from exactly the same suppliers. and in the long run that is all that matters (sadly).

and the comment quote function on this site is a total mess.

Shan't be one then.  Least not with you.

moshi...this isn't rocket science.  Irrespective of the source of a product there is NOTHING differentiating the US from AUS that can justify a 300% markup.

"market-driven"....means they charge as much as they can get away with for each local market...not what it's worth...or what it costs - factoring in delivery charges etc.  As much as they can get away with....until they were caught and faced public backlash.

Just to be clear.... THREE HUNDRED PERCENT, not THREE, not THIRTY.  If you cannot get your head around the inequity then I give up.