Tag Archives: Dollar Tree

THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY AT A DOLLAR STORE.

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1. Anything that you plug into an electrical outlet. Why risk burning down your house or electrocuting yourself to save $1 or $2? The only way you can sell a power strip, extension cord, or night light for $1 is by making it on the cheap.

2 Electronics. Cell phone charger cords are cheap, but good ones cost more than $1. Why risk frying your cell phone to save 2 bucks on a charger cord?

3. Batteries. Cheap batteries leak and can damage your gadgets. Brand-name batteries at dollar stores are often old and near the end of their shelf life, which is why they are cheap.

4. Vitamins. Most vitamins sold at dollar stores are brands you never heard of. You have no way of knowing if anyone tested them for potency or safety. Like batteries, brand-name vitamins sold at dollar stores are often old and near the end of their shelf life.

5. Makeup. Who knows what cheap makeup is made out of? They don’t list the ingredients, and anything you put you put on your face will be absorbed into your skin.

6. Anything that makes fire. This includes matches, butane lighters, candles, flares, fire starters, lighter fluid, etc. It’s just too dangerous.

MY FAVORITE THING TO BUY AT DOLLAR TREE is Häagen-Dazs ice cream cups. They usually have them in a freezer next to the cash registers. These cups are small, but I like this size. There’s a little spoon under the lid.

Does Häagen-Dazs come from Denmark? No, but they have tried to give people that impression. Häagen-Dazs even used to have a map of Denmark on the lid with an arrow pointing to Copenhagen. (See photo below.) Häagen-Dazs was started by a non-Danish couple in New York. They wanted a name that sounded Danish because Denmark is noted for its high quality dairy products, and Americans have a positive image of Denmark, but Häagen-Dazs means nothing in Danish. Besides, there is no umlaut (the 2 little dots over the ‘a’) in Danish. There are some characters in the Danish alphabet that we don’t have in the American alphabet, like the letter that looks like an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ squashed together, like in ‘Julius Cæsar,’ but there’s no umlaut. In 1980, Häagen-Dazs sued Frusen Glädjé, a competing ice cream brand with a fake Swedish name. Frusen Glädjé means nothing in Swedish and was never made in Sweden. Häagen-Dazs argued that selling ice cream with a fake Scandinavian name was their idea and that no one else had a right do it. They lost the lawsuit. Kraft sold Frusen Glädjé to Unilever, which discontinued the product. Häagen-Dazs is now made in countries all over the world – but not in Denmark.

Berkeley’s Soda Tax.

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In November, 2014; Berkeley became the first city in the U.S. to pass a soft drink tax. The tax is 1 cent an ounce, a high rate as a percent of the wholesale price of the product The Berkeley soda tax is collected in an unusual way. It is not paid like sales tax. Instead, the tax is paid by wholesale soft drink distributors. I think that method of collecting this tax will become a problem for Berkeley.

Wholesale vs. Retail. Taxing wholesalers has largely disappeared in America. That is because club stores and the internet have blurred the line between wholesale and retail. My father owned a furniture store back in the 1960s. In those days, you couldn’t buy furniture directly from a furniture manufacturer or distributor. Only retailers could buy furniture from the big manufacturers. Today, you can buy furniture at Costco at nearly the same price that retail stores pay for the stuff.

Costco. A lot of stores and restaurants in Berkeley were already buying their soft drinks at Costco even before this tax was passed. Now, more of them are driving to Costco for their soft drinks. Costco does not and will not pay the Berkeley soft drink tax because they are not located in Berkeley.

Dollar Tree. Other stores in Berkeley have just stop selling soft drinks. Dollar Tree stores in Berkeley used to sell a lot of soft drinks. Now as a result of this tax, Dollar Tree has stopped selling soft drinks. They are not alone. A number of other stores in Berkeley have also stopped selling soft drinks. This soft drink tax was supposed to raise money for the city of Berkeley, but if enough retailers decide to stop selling soft drinks, the city could wind up with a net loss of revenue instead.

The University. However, the big question is this – will the university pay the tax? U.C. Berkeley is, by far, the largest vendor of soft drinks in Berkeley. There are over 200 soft drink vending machines on campus, plus there are self-serve soft drink dispensers in nearly all the dining halls, and bottled soft drinks are sold in stores around campus. The university says that according to the state constitution, a city cannot force a state agency to pay a city tax and that the university will not pay the Berkeley soda tax. The people who wrote this law claim that the city can make the university pay the tax.  I don’t know how that will play out, but in the past, whenever the city of Berkeley tried to tax the university, the city of Berkeley lost in court.