I don't think religious institutions have to pay property taxes.
Ok, I looked it up: “states subsidize religions to the tune of about $26.2 billion per year by not requiring religious institutions to pay property taxes for property worth about $600 billion. This subsidy is of particular interest because property taxes pay for services such as firefighting and police, which religious institutions use the same as corporations and private citizens.”
> But non-profits have to pay property tax, right?
No, non-profits do not have to pay property tax.
So by that measure states also subsidize non-profits. And your math does not take into account the amount of services religions provide residents.
If you went by the internet religions do nothing except take money, but if you visit the real world, religions are the backbone of social services in the US.
Are we sure this is not a Submarine (PR-placed) article?
"In a normal Costco purchasing example, a company might sell their product for $0.95 and Costco might retail it for $1.00. This would result in a 5% margin (in reality the margin is a bit lower, but let’s use these numbers for estimates)."
They actually list their margins in their normal SEC filings. For merchandise it's usually around 11% on average. Obviously it will be higher or lower than that for specific products. Costco is able to have margins way lower than retail average (Target runs around 28% for comparison) by having much lower per-revenue dollar operating costs and by doing an absolutely stupid amount of revenue per location (a single location will average close to $200M in sales per year).
Costco has been annoying the drugstore industry by marking up the drug section at the same markup as the rest of the store. Markups at CVS, etc. are much higher. Costco has a smaller selection and only sells the big sizes, so it works out well for them.
Just cuz it is a submarine -- god knows like 30% of the internet these days is subtle marketing -- doesn't mean the stats are fake.
Costco is able to go toe-to-toe with Walmart and Amazon for a reason: they have the margins. And as another poster mentioned, they're a publicly traded company with SEC filings that discuss revenue, costs, and other details; we can check those numbers.
The fundamental problem with counterfeits is that they aren't held to any published spec, so comparing your experience to mine isn't really meaningful...other than being not genuine, you can't generalize anything about counterfeits.
It was so long ago, I had to dig up notes.
On the performance side, the counterfeits I received couldn't be clocked anywhere near the 10 MHz limit specified by a genuine MAX7219; one package pin that should be tied to GND was floating internally (contributing to poor thermal performance); but the real showstopper was that intensity control didn't work for shit.
My records reflect nigelectronics on eBay as the counterfeit seller. This is the address I was instructed to return the counterfeits to when I called them out on it for a refund (I eventually got the refund, but threw these counterfeits in the trash where they belong):
Cheng Kwok Hang
15F, BLK 1, Aldrich Garden, 2 Oi Lai Street, Shau Kei Wan, Hong Kong
On the business side, I effectively wasted 10 days lead time in a tight pipeline just waiting for this garbage to arrive + more time/frustration isolating why the chips were failing initial tests; swallowed ~$700 out of pocket + expedited shipping for a single BOM line item to purchase genuine replacements from an authorized distributor; and looked like a complete hobbyist amateur to a collaborator in NYC (who was working on the mechanical side) as I had to explain why my stupid decisions meant he'll have to wait another 2 weeks before receiving the pre-production prototypes I had promised (which meant his clients ultimately had to bear that burden). Then there was all the manual rework which I didn't even keep track of.
This was my first semi-pro side gig out of college, and juggling all the unexpected curve balls with a fulltime day job was quite stressful.
So for Germany I do in fact go through JFK. But for Japan I have a hard time with such a long direct so I look specifically for a flight with a domestic connection. (Those flights are also often cheaper when booking last minute.)
One computer had a hard drive failure, BTSync deleted all the files from the computer that didn't.
Doubleplus ungood.