What made you smile today?

[Buffalobiian]

Amazon is the online Walmart... running Mom and Pop stores and local retailers out of business because they cannot compete with Amazon's prices and free shipping. When you order from Amazon you don't have to pay sales tax unless you're in California (I think), so you save even more.

While it's nice to save money now, you're supporting a monster that will makes things more expensive and quality of life worse in the long run.

Things will only get expensive if Amazon becomes the sole player. As long as there is at least one more competitor, Amazon will be forced to stay competitive. Driving mum and pop shops out of business is a side effect of increasing efficiency that is often found in capitalist economies. Those that simply don't perform well enough to accommodate the market must go.

Supermarket chains did that years ago.

As for quality of life worsening, that's where government instruments such as effective progressive income tax are supposed to play their parts. I've heard that the USA doesn't tax the higher brackets enough for this to effectively redistribute wealth.