I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized.
But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking about it.
IKEAs ability to produce products that people actually need, at such a scale, is amazing to me. It does what it promises. It's cheap. It fills most people's needs fully. Customer support is perfect. I know in 10 years replacements for their core products will still be available. Their way of innovating the products is genius.
I can't think of any other company that even comes close. Well, maybe LEGO.
Personally, I dislike IKEA for registering as a non-profit, when they're very clearly not. To me, this belongs in the same bucket as any number of tax avoidance schemes that ensure wealthy individuals pay far lower tax rates than the average person, and that large corporations pay effectively nothing.
If they're able to provide great customer service - well, good on them, but I'd much rather the public purse have the money necessary to support people in general. I'm very, very tired of "innovation" being used as an excuse to completely ignore relevant taxes and laws, especially when said innovation is often possible only because of extensive public investment in research, supply chain stability, etc.
(If you're not sure what I'm talking about with that last sentence: read The Entrepreneurial State, or talk to anyone who's ever received a DARPA / NSF / etc. grant, or maybe even just go look at an actual public sector budget sometime.)
> Personally, I dislike IKEA for registering as a non-profit, when they're very clearly not.
They're clearly not a charity. But there are TONS of tax-sheltered businesses that aren't charities.
To me, it's morally equivalent to eg churches that use tax-free money to buy and operate super nice concert venues. Or any other non-profit that uses pre-tax money to pay salaries.
IMO, Ikea > Churches.
> or talk to anyone who's ever received a DARPA / NSF / etc. grant
Y Combinator recently published an article about how to bootstrap a biotech startup on a small seed round, and they included an example company. Step Zero was "get NSF/NIH grants and hire a student/post-doc at a university". Incidentally also the Step Zero for lots of tech companies in the 80s, 90s, and even today.
The NIH and NSF have two funding programs, the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, that specifically fund startups/spin-outs from their research programs. More here: https://www.sbir.gov/ Some DARPA programs also have similar commercialization milestones: our PMs were pushing people to think about FDA approval and manufacturing.
Completely agreed! I didn't mean to give that impression at all. I was simply giving a specific recent example demonstrating GP's statement that "especially when said innovation is often possible only because of extensive public investment in research, supply chain stability, etc.".
It's less about the size of the church and more about the % of the church's untaxed revenue that is spent on salaries and mostly-single-use worship space. Plenty of small churches spend almost all of their revenue on pastoral salary and workship space. It's fine, to each their own, but treating that sort of tithing the same way we treat donations to actual charities seems weird. Both Ikea and non-charitable $ spent by churches should be taxes.
TBH though, it's not 1800. we should stop (not) taxing based on institution type and start (not) taxing based on where the dollars are going. This would solve lots of problems in the non-profit world (including IKEA and churches).
> we should stop (not) taxing based on institution type and start (not) taxing based on where the dollars are going
While I don't necessarily disagree, this seems like it would create a large administrative burden and a strong incentive for businesses to simply lie (or creatively disguise) where there money going. This seems easier than fraudulently registering a for-profit business as a non-profit. Although I suppose it's hard to say whether the current or your proposed approach would result in tax breaks really happening where we want them.
In the US, they are very specific, distinct things.
Tax Evasion[0] is not paying taxes you legally owe. Tax Avoidance[1] is finding ways to owe less tax. Evasion is considered illegal, but Avoidance can practically be considered encouraged, as it's perfectly legal and rewards practitioners with lower tax bills.
It is openly encouraged. All those little policies, those loopholes, are there to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. Want to funnel profits into live insurance on your employees in order to avoid tax? (Walmart does this) Go right ahead. That bit of tax code is there specifically to encourage the use of life insurance. If it is in the code, it is there because the government wants you to use it.
Most people reading this are probably aware of the distinction in technical, legal terms. But it doesn't matter, because we're not prosecutors or the IRS.
But I still call it tax evasion colloquially, because I'm just an average Joe who can't prosecute anyone so my legal opinion doesn't matter. My judgement is not whether it's illegal, but whether it's immoral and scummy.
My neighbor, a self-employed painter, claiming his work truck (that he also uses to pull the family camper) as a depreciating business asset is tax avoidance, and I can get behind that. Ikea registering as a nonprofit with 99% overhead is tax evasion, and it's scummy.
Society, as represented by the government, wants charities to exist to assist with causes that society values, like, I suppose, architecture. They encourage this through the tax code. Society also want for-profit businesses to pay their fair share of taxes. This is blatantly a deceitful manipulation of the tax code, whether it's legal or not I don't care, they've abused the law to do things it wasn't intended to do
The difference between avoidance and evasion is very important. One of them is legal and economically encouraged, the other one is an accusation of a crime.
Also, most people learn this in high school. Calling it evasion when it is avoidance only confuses people as to what you mean, and makes people think you don't know what the terms mean.
> My neighbor, a self-employed painter, claiming his work truck (that he also uses to pull the family camper) as a depreciating business asset is tax avoidance, and I can get behind that. Ikea registering as a nonprofit with 99% overhead is tax evasion, and it's scummy.
But objectively speaking, you are aware it's the exact opposite? It's like trying to defend a function in C that causes UB by claiming it works on your machine. Yes, ok, but it is still UB. Your opinion does not change that, or what other people assume you mean when you say things.
The exact opposite of tax avoidance is tax evasion? I think not. Tax evasion is legally tax avoidance that has been proven to be illegal. What about tax avoidance that hasn't yet been proven so, or maybe the charge has been thrown out on a technicality, or maybe it rests on exploiting a loop-hole? To me, that might not be tax evasion legally, but surely it's tax evasion in spirit. And since we're not in the middle of some courtroom proceedings, in spirit is how we should understand these words.
Small misunderstanding, he gave two scenarios, one which he claims is tax avoidance, one which he claims is evasion. My "opposite" referred to him swapping which one is by definition either avoidance or evasion.
> And since we're not in the middle of some courtroom proceedings, in spirit is how we should understand these words.
Agreed that one should be charitable with their interpretations. That said, not caring (or knowing) about this important difference between the two terms is a signal that one only has a shallow understanding of these matters. What useful opinion could one hold about how companies should be taxed when one doesn't understand basic economic terms?
edit: changed you->one so as not to seem accusatory
The merit in clarity and precision has less to do with your particular occupation or averageness and more to do with raising the floor for intelligent discussion upwards.
One of the things we debate as a society is taxes, because we live with them, pay them and discuss the services and salaries these taxes pay for. It is therefore incumbent upon participants to put their best foot forward in the larger discussion, and equating avoidance with evasion mimics vapid and hollow rhetoric. Else why bother to participate?
It is fair to criticize IKEA and you can certainly stake out a position as an adversary to their tax avoidance scheme without equating it with tax evasion out of a sort of intellectual laziness for one is within the realm of legislative discretion and the other within the real prosecutorial discretion and lead to two entirely different discussions.
> But I still call it tax evasion colloquially, because I'm just an average Joe who can't prosecute anyone so my legal opinion doesn't matter. My judgement is not whether it's illegal, but whether it's immoral and scummy.
Do you contribute to a 401(k)? Deduct home mortgage interest from your taxes? If so, you've participated in legal tax avoidance, too! I don't think either of those are scummy.
That’s right. The US uses its tax system to incentivize behavior. Say the government wants its citizens to buy more electric cars than ICE cars. It can put a ban on selling ICE cars but because the US by and large detests regulation, that has a huge political cost. So instead the government gives you a tax credit for buying a Tesla.
Or the government wants to encourage home ownership, so it makes mortgage interest tax deductible.
Or it wants you to get married so it gives you a tax break for filing jointly.
Or it wants you to live in Alaska so it gives you a tax credit to move there.
Or it wants you to revive an economically insecure geographical area so it gives your business a tax break for operating there.
Or it wants you to hire ex convicts so it gives you a tax credit for each one you hire.
This is a mechanism that is used by the federal and state governments to drive behavior. Arguably churches being tax exempt then is the government encouraging its citizens to participate in church activities because we are only one nation “under god”.
The tax system is effectively an operant-conditioning system, functioning on both corporations and individuals, where the negative stimuli are taxes and the positive stimuli are tax credits.
Seen under this lens, any individual or corporation who is not practicing optimal "tax avoidance" — i.e. doing the things required to qualify for tax credits, and avoiding the things that would cause taxes — is not putting themselves as fully under the thumb of the state's operant-conditioning apparatus as the state would like.
The state wants you to min-max your taxes. The tax system is designed around the assumption that taxable entities will min-max their taxes. If you're not doing it, you're not just leaving free money on the table; you're also being sub-optimally pro-social in the state's (society's?) opinion. "Tax avoidance" is to Western states, as "social credit score" is to China: a score of how well you're living up to the government's expectations for you. Of course they want you to aim for the best score you can!
(I can understand people refusing to minimize their tax burden for ideological reasons — i.e. refusing to be manipulated into certain behaviors by the state. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone espouse this stance. Most people don't even understand that taxes are the state attempting to manipulate you.)
People don’t like thinking this way... it’s difficult for a lot of people to grasp, for example, that if they have children and claim those children as a deduction they are thereby avoiding federal income taxes. Individuals avail themselves of the parts of the tax code that benefit them just like Big Corps do. You are not required to claim offspring as a deduction, so I guess by the logic of many people in this thread anyone who does is scummy because they are avoiding taxes? Seems kooky.
"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands."
I most people wouldn't your example tax avoidance. That deduction is meant for that particular situation and claiming it is to be expected. Exploiting some complicated loop-hole is something else entirely. That's what most people would label as tax avoidance.
You are making a distinction that doesn't exist. What you might consider a complicated loophole might be what every company with a CPA considers standard practice. Just because it's not obvious to a layman doesn't mean it's not the obvious standard operating procedure for corporate taxes. They are both "avoidance" in the same way, which is taking advantage of specific provisions that benefit that tax paying entity.
It's the same with the mortgage interest deduction. You avoid some level of taxes as a homeowner by deducting your mortgage interest. Until you have a house and need to do so, it may seem like some weird loop-hole in the taxes, and when you have a house and use it, it's just something you do every year.
Don't expect a multi-national company worth hundreds of millions or billions to view the tax system as being as opaque and complicated as it seems to an individual. Their situation is vastly more complicated than an individuals, and their capability to navigate the tax system is vastly higher as well with multiple CPAs on staff or a large firm hired, so they can take advantage of those provisions put into the system specifically for them.
That is effectively my point. It may be worth reassessing your perspectives if you are comfortable saying “when I use the tax code to my benefit, it is okay” but “when he uses the tax code to his benefit, it is not okay.” Fundamentally it is the same thing. The only difference is the scale. I’m open to arguments as to why this conclusion is correct, but it really seems like the classic case of hating on Big Corps because they are big, not because they are doing something bad (which they often do, but not in this case. To my mind).
We would all be better off if corporate taxes were reduced to low single digits in favor of regular individual income tax and VAT bit the optics aren't good so it's never gonna happen except if you're big enough to have creative accountants and political/economic clout like Ikea and others.
I've held that point of view, but heard something recently that gave me pause: The high tax rates of the 1960's were the reason that companies paid their employees more and/or invested in research, producing things like Bell Labs.
The reasoning was that when corporate tax rates are low companies will use the extra money to play financial games, and when corporate tax rates are high companies know they are better of off giving the money to retain/recruit good employees or spending it on research to grow the business instead.
I'm not sure I entirely buy that. Sector monopolies were much more common around that time too which makes broader research investments easier to recuperate and there was also strong market incentives to do so because the bottom kept getting eaten up by foreign and particularly asian manufactuerers.
Its amusing and depressing that we are in a situation where all experts, from across the political spectrum, can agree on what a more optimal tax system would be. Yet the structure of our democracy basically makes a more optimal solution impossible.
If you respect freedom and tolerance of religion, I will hold you to respect my worship space in the IKEA showroom. Plywood is my god and IKEA is his messenger. For this reason, I think it's perfectly fair that IKEA gets the same treatment as any Church. If I ever open my own business, I will make sure to register is a non-profit religious organization as well. If you don't like the loophole, take it out of legislation -- everything here is above board, legally speaking.
What I don't understand is how Inter Ikea Systems (the company that holds the rights to the Ikea concept, that is paid by the nonprofit) avoids having to pay taxes.
"The IKEA group has a complex corporate structure, which members of the European Parliament have alleged was designed to avoid over €1 billion in tax payments over the 2009–2014 period."
It seems easy to sell cheaper if you just pay less taxes.
I'm not hating IKEA, but it's obviously not black or white.
When people deduct taxes for donations to universities to increase the odds of their child being accepted?
When people deduct taxes for charity to their church/temple/organization/other tribe in order to direct resources in a way that might benefit them more directly versus the nation as a whole?
It's either legal or it's not. If you want the "abuse" to stop, then elect the legislators that will make the loopholes illegal.
You seem to be making the argument that if it’s legal, it’s not immoral. I reject this argument completely. By necessity the law does not (and cannot) cover every single aspect of human behavior. Just because what IKEA is doing is legal does not make it right. Nor is it inappropriate for a private citizen to condemn behavior they disapprove of, whether or not it’s legal.
As far as where the ethical line is, that is a very complicated subject not conducive to generic discussion. But I am extremely certain that “we configured our multi-billion dollar international furniture business as a non-profit” is certainly well on the wrong side of the line. We can discuss other scenarios in their appropriate context, but the existence of other grey areas does not excuse the unethical behavior of IKEA here.
I do wish legislators would get their <explicative deleted> together and fix the tax code so that IKEA will pay their fair share, but condemning them for their behavior is a necessary prerequisite to that change actually happening. One can’t chastise other citizens for complaining about unethical behavior and suggest that instead someone else should change the law, that makes literally no sense. I have no direct capability to change the law, and it’s incoherent of you to tell me to stop complaining about it until the law is changed.
>You seem to be making the argument that if it’s legal, it’s not immoral.
Yes, I would say that legally reducing one's taxes is not immoral.
>By necessity the law does not (and cannot) cover every single aspect of human behavior.
Yes, but in the case of tax law, the complications are created specifically to allow loopholes, and/or to allow the government to not have to transparently state costs. I would posit that any goal of tax deductions is more transparently accomplished by the government spending the cash outright and having to account for it.
>Just because what IKEA is doing is legal does not make it right.
In the context of tax law, I think it's all fair game. If the people want to close loopholes, then close them for everyone. As a business, I'm going to do whatever I need to maintain a competitive advantage. As a voter, I'm going to support legislation that levies taxes according to the quality of life I think people should have in society.
Morality doesn't need to be codified into exact terms in order to be relevant. At what point does killing become a crime? When you kill an ant for no reason? When you kill an animal for food? Or when you kill another human for survival? Intuitively I know the differences. But articulating my intuition into words can lead to loop holes so I'd rather not.
The moral module in your mind is not perfect but when looking at Ikea, it's telling me Ikea is an getting an unfair advantage with this loop hole and it's ethically wrong. That's enough for most people.
>It's either legal or it's not. If you want the "abuse" to stop, then elect the legislators that will make the loopholes illegal.
You don't need a law to tell the difference from right and wrong and nothing is as simple as electing the right person to make things right again. Who do I elect to save dying infrastructure in the US? Who do I elect to stop corporations from paying less taxes than me? It's not so clear cut, what I'm voting for or how to fix this.
I don't know where you're reasoning comes from, but one thing is for sure. I'd share your exact attitude if I'm a beneficiary of said loop holes in laws. My mind would twist the obvious logic to justify my own crimes if I myself were the ass hole that was committing them.
>You don't need a law to tell the difference from right and wrong and nothing is as simple as electing the right person to make things right again.
A business that tries to do the "right" thing in a system that allows everyone else to do the "wrong" thing, will not survive.
Is it wrong to not offer a new mother sufficient time to bond with her newborn and breastfeed her newborn for a minimum year per the recommendation of medical research? Yet almost no employers in the US, and especially no employers of lower paid workers can afford to give a mother proper time for maternity leave or to pump breastmilk. The margins are so cutthroat that the business would not exist anymore.
I'm not saying this is comparable to IKEA's tax avoidance, or that IKEA would cease to exist if it didn't do what it was doing. But almost all businesses are doing the "wrong" thing, some more than others, but I won't blame them if they're playing within the rules.
However, if IKEA is then using its proceeds to lobby politicians to continue the existence of a tax code that allows it to steal from society, I do consider that morally repugnant and would judge IKEA negatively for that.
In my new mother not being able to breastfeed scenario, I'm not going to blame the individual business for only giving 15 min of break time. I'm going to blame the government, which only forced employers to give 15 minute breaks for pumping milk, which anyone who has ever pumped milk would tell you is an impossibly short time to travel to the break room, setup supplies, pump milk, store it, and go back to work.
I myself take advantage of various tax loopholes, such as the 1031 tax exchange. However, I use it to keep up with my competition, and further, I contribute and lobby those who I can to remove these tax loopholes.
Your initial argument painted the problem as a moral conundrum questioning where we draw "lines." I cannot agree with this sentiment. Codifying such intuitions into axiomatic rules is challenging but classifying a given situation without being aware of the codified rules is simple and intuitive.
As for your new argument, this is something I can partially agree with. If the landscape allows for such immoral behavior and thereby as a consequence requires everyone to adopt the same immoral behavior as a means to survive and stay competitive then I can't fully blame you for your actions.
That does not fully excuse it though. A Man dying of starvation may have no choice but to kill and eat his own child. The situation does not absolve the man of all guilt. Obviously, your situation is not as extreme, but the similarity it shares with you and your circumstances is the fact that you having no choice does not make you completely innocent. Apologies to everyone reading for the extreme example, the extremeness of the example helps fully elucidate the moral ambiguity associated with hard choices.
Also self justification flies far, people will come up with all kinds of excuses to give merit to their own actions. Is exploiting those loopholes truly absolutely necessary for survival? Or is it something you tell yourself without really knowing the full details? I don't know your exact case, but the above is a common trope people use to lie to themselves. People will refuse to look deeper into certain details that make them uncomfortable so they assume a reality that best justifies their actions.
'abuse' is a subjective word, you could have left off the 'ab' and you sentence would still be correct, arguably more correct. Also, why not consider that by using the complex web of tax laws to their advantage allows them to sell products at a lower price. This allows folks with lower incomes to enjoy similar products to those who can afford getting their stuff from more posh places. One could judge Ikea to be more ethical for this practice.
This is the same kind of mental gymnastics that gave us trickle down economics.
The societal ethics, morality and the spirit of the law should all be taken into account when judging behaviour. Exploiting tax structures in order to conceal income is absolutely immoral and shouldn't be tolerated.
This is especially egregious when the tax loopholes are effectively gated behind behing a multi-national corporation. It leads to even greater concentrations of wealth in the hands of these companies which damages the health of the local markets they operate in.
To be fair, trickle down economics is just fantasy. Tax avoidance is something everyone with a 401k does and is encouraged by the tax code.
If there's something unique about what they're doing, especially as a result of them lobbying for certain parts of the tax code, then I can see it being judged harshly.
If anyone can do what they're doing, then I don't see it as particularly negative.
A 401k has the specific purpose of helping individuals fund their retirement years, something society has agreed is worth providing some benefit for. There is an element of intention to the exemption and it serves a specific purpose.
> If anyone can do what they're doing, then I don't see it as particularly negative.
Typically not just anyone can do this, smaller firms do not have the resources set-up these schemes. Smaller firms are also much more likely to be slapped down by the government. The result of this is that larger corporations are further advantaged.
I think attempting to equate personal and corporate taxation is a mistake. Corporations are increasingly transnational in a way that people cannot be, and they are leveraging not just local tax codes, but often established treaties and differences between national tax codes that were introduced with different intent.
In the same way that a 401k is set up for a specific purpose, IKEA's foundation was also set up for a very specific purpose. If anything, the purpose was criticized as being overly narrow, and they recently updated it to be more broad.
Whether a firm can do something similar depends on the specifics. I'm not sure how large IKEA was when they set up their corporate structure in the early 80s, but I doubt they were as large as they are today.
I'm not trying to equate personal and corporate taxation though. If IKEA wants to funnel a large portion of their profits into a foundation to control themselves rather than paying taxes to the government instead, I don't see how that is tax avoidance. Many other foundations around the world are set up so the controlling interests of companies can choose how to disperse money instead paying taxes and letting the government choose how to disperse it. Not that there's anything wrong with that either, but having a corporation designed to minimize taxes by funneling profits into a foundation doesn't scream tax avoidance to me.
With that said, there could be other aspects of their corporate structure that I'm not aware of, but like I said, if other companies can also implement the same structure, even if it's across national boundaries, I don't see it as being particularly unethical. Although if someone believed for instance that companies should always repatriate all profits, then I could see how they would think this is unethical, so as usual YMMV.
Edit - To put it another way, there don't seem to be laws restricting investment firms from buying controlling interests in companies to manipulate asset prices/consumer behavior, which to me is far more detrimental than someone who may be pathologically frugal deciding they want to minimize taxes by setting up a complicated corporate structure with a foundation.
> In the same way that a 401k is set up for a specific purpose, IKEA's foundation was also set up for a very specific purpose. If anything, the purpose was criticized as being overly narrow, and they recently updated it to be more broad.
Non-profit taxation laws were not set up with the intent of allowing for profit businesses to avoid taxation. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the outcome.
> Edit - To put it another way, there don't seem to be laws restricting investment firms from buying controlling interests in companies to manipulate asset prices/consumer behavior, which to me is far more detrimental than someone who may be pathologically frugal deciding they want to minimize taxes by setting up a complicated corporate structure with a foundation.
The existence of a worse scenario doesn't prevent us dealing with the current one.
That's true, but practically speaking, that's the outcome when for profit company can create a foundation. Kind of like 401k rollovers to an IRA.
The worse scenario doesn't preclude us from addressing less bad scenarios, but I think we should focus more time and effort on that than on reforming the laws around foundations and non-profits, and by we I mean HN readers and the general public.
I guess it depends on the ratio of effort to reward.
Personally I think arguing for levelling the playing field through tax reform would lead to quicker/easier results than arguing for altering the ways in which companies may invest in one another but that could just be because I've been involved in less discussion around the latter issue.
>A 401k has the specific purpose of helping individuals fund their retirement years, something society has agreed is worth providing some benefit for. There is an element of intention to the exemption and it serves a specific purpose.
A 401k has the specific purpose of helping large businesses maintain a competitive advantage over small businesses. If the government wanted to help individuals fund their retirement years, then there is no reason to involve employers in the tax code. They could simply issue the same rules and contribution limits for IRAs.
But they don't. They punish you if you're employed by an employer that doesn't offer a 401k, by setting your contribution limit to a paltry $6k while 401k participants get tens of thousands, and your contribution limit is zero if your spouse is eligible for a 401k and your income is over a certain amount.
While there are certainly issues in the tax code, you’re absolutely just making up the history and intent of the 401k. The 401k was not setup to help big business, quite the opposite. They were setup as an explicit alternative to the pension systems that historically were how employees retired, and pensions absolutely favor large companies that can afford them. 401k programs allow much more employee choice and mobility, which they’ve arguably achieved.
Whatever the history is, it's been 40+ years since it started, and legislators have subsequently gone through a lot of effort to create a two tier system (IRAs vs 401k) which heavily favors employees of large businesses than can afford to pay high wages.
When something so blatantly tilted towards the rich, white collar world exists, and can so easily be fixed (by simply matching the terms of the IRA to the 401k), and has not been fixed for over 4 decades, I then take it to be intentional.
It's possible to be technically correct but still be an asshole.
Making use of the ability to employ considerable resources to reduce your corporation's tax burden in ways that organisations without those resources cannot is absolutely a violation of the social contract surrounding taxation, which typically follows the convention that those who profit the most from society should return the most. As a result it's no longer shrewd but immoral.
That assumes that they need more employees in the first place. Even then I don't believe companies hiring more employees is necessarily a good thing, unless you believe in work for work's sake.
Robust corporate taxation pays for decent social safety nets/UBI, such that people aren't at the mercy of the whims of whatever mega-corp they're dependent upon for survival. This has the added benefit of naturally improving wages and worker's rights, while allowing for the removal of a minimum wage.
It also has the added benefit of decoupling artistic expression from corporate funding.
Do you think your arguments against the tax code and increased employment presuppose a more perfect world than we have and increased employment could be considered an intermediate step along the way?
That is, right now, we don't have UBI and the safety net, at least in the US, is very weak, so employment and decreased unemployment _are_ necessary for the time being and the ideal state described here is many more steps away than the current status quo.
I think increased employment would have a negative effect on the road to that more perfect world by masking the underlying issues.
Pursuing increased employment as the goal distracts from the real changes that have to be made in order to facilitate those social safety nets, since these inevitably require raising taxes in order to fund them.
The efficacy of job creation through tax cuts is also a matter of debate. This article[1] (which appears fairly well sourced) seems to imply that the expansion of unemployment benefits is at least as effective as cutting corporate taxes and potentially more so when taxes are already low.
There's simply no other furniture retailer the size of IKEA, by far. So we actually don't have anyone else to compare to.
Someone defending IKEA could argue that if companies like Walmart of Target, which I think are the closest competitors to IKEA, were in the same position they would do even more nefarious tax evasion. It's a "lesser evil" argument but it does ring kind of true.
The problem is the fact that they are willing to do shady things like that to avoid taxes. The fact that they're allowed to do that is a bug in the law, yes, but doesn't take any of their blame away.
It is pretty simple that businesses have to pay more taxes than non-profits. Unethical businesses mususing this for tax evasion force legislation to create more complex laws to prevent such tricks.
>It is pretty simple that businesses have to pay more taxes than non-profits.
The simple thing would be to have every organization have the same tax rules, and then all tricks are prevented.
Once you start getting into what is and isn't for profit, and what is and isn't charity, is when things become complicated. Should megachurches where the leader flies in a private plane be taxed differently than a business? Should Scientologists get a tax break?
Gotta love victim blaming. The problem isn't complicated tax laws, the problem is that the governments making them are national entities that have to answer to their national voting population and companies like IKEA are international entities, so have a very easy time to do stuff that is inside the letter but outside the spirit of the laws of the various countries.
> have a very easy time to do stuff that is inside the letter but outside the spirit of the laws
That's like saying "My buggy spaghetti code isn't the problem, the user should just never do something that hits an edge case. My code doesn't need to change"
I'm not sure how "complies precisely with the tax law as it exists" is a point against anyone.
Surely if you believe the state is entitled to levy taxes, then you wish for people to obey the laws they put in place dictating them, do you not?
This idea "people should be paying what we want, not what we specifically legislated" is insane to me. If people aren't to comply with the law as written, what should they be doing?
There's been an ongoing investigation of IKEA by the EU Commission for the past several years because they believe IKEA is not complying precisely with the tax law as it exists.
Easy example: Some entities are exempt from taxes, because they are not there to enrich individuals, but to profit a higher cause. Like Amnesty International. I think it is great that we exempt AI from paying taxes. Now it might be very difficult to write legislation that precisely encodes the difference between AI and McDonalds. After all, McDonalds funds children hospitals! If McDonalds tries to avoid taxes by trying to look like a NGO, the LEAST we can to is to be outraged and punish them as customers - because the only solution for the legislator might be to make AI pay taxes as well.
As a soccer player, it might be a good move to fall to the ground when the ref cannot see you. But you are an asshole if you do it. The rules of the game are fine, the player is an asshole.
Maybe you should consider the hate of the public just as part of the game these companies are trying to play?
> Now it might be very difficult to write legislation that precisely encodes the difference between AI and McDonalds.
Perhaps that's because you're trying to legislate emotion instead of an objective difference.
If the rules should apply to one type of organization and not another (your "higher purpose" opinion), then it should be straightforward to unambiguously describe the difference in law: a bright line test. If you cannot, it's likely you're just trying to encode your own subjective personal dictatorial preferences into the law, which is contrary to the values of a society that believes in the rule of law.
It's possible that you just don't like McDs, or do like AI. That's fine, but trying to shape tax law based on your own personal value judgements is contrary to the ideas of equal application of the law to all members of society. This is sort of the "I know it when I see it" approach, and it's, in my view, a somewhat dishonest way to try to legislate personal morality into the public sphere.
>the only solution for the legislator might be to make AI pay taxes as well.
What taxes would AI pay? They're not selling items for profit. The only change that would need to happen is removing the ability to deduct charitable contributions from taxable income. I don't see any problem with that. People can still donate to AI with after tax income.
Not-for-profit firms make profits all of the time, and while I'm not familiar with UK tax codes, at least in the US the only fuzzy line is that pursuit of profits not be the end goal... quite a few "non-profits", such as hospitals, sell a large number of services for a profit!
I didn’t know amnesty sold things. I meant that AI doesn’t sell any products and services, like a hospital or business would, therefore AI wouldn’t have income to tax anyway. But I guess they do sell some items for brand awareness/raising funds, and I think treating it like any other business is appropriate to prevent a loophole from existing.
If they are using the money saved on taxes to sell their products cheaper, then it is not themselves (only) that they are enriching thereby, but (also) you and I and everyone else who buys IKEA products. The consumers end up being the ones paying less money into governmental coffers.
Not sure where you're from, but round here taxes are used for the infrastructure that private business need to have a market - schools, roads, health care and sometimes even direct investments in private businesses. The two start-ups I've been working for in the past have been helped off the ground by both government and EU money.
If Ikea are using elaborate company structures to pay less tax than other furniture stores, they are stealing from the societies that enable them to thrive. Especially if they are using that advantage to depress prices.
I think IKEA represents plastic consumerism to people. A lot of people feel alienated from the modern world and IKEA registers as fake and therefore alienating. Mass produced, cheap culture with a copy in every house. The best criticisms of these kinds of "problems" are in pop art, as opposed to rational discourse.
Fight Club is the canonical example. The film picks IKEA to symbolize the enemy and justification for subversive nihilism ... it resonated well. "Friends" features IKEA the alienation theme as well. Phoebe thinks she has an antique apothecary table. You can smell the history of opium and medicinal brews. Turns out it's IKEA. She has a similar storyline with Nestle. Her grandmother's mythical cookie recipe turns out to be Nestle's.
I think the fact that IKEA does, in fact, have decent style/taste makes it a standout symbol of plastic consumerism. Does the cookie taste worse because it's Nestle. Does a handcrafted antique table actually have value? Is our culture worth anything or can it be replaced with mass produced, cheap alternatives?
I personally quite admire IKEA for doing what they do well. The corporate structure under a a charitable, tax-free organization is totally bogus and crass... but tax evasion is so prevalent that it's hard to single them out. That said, the cultural aspect is the relevant one and rationalisations aren't necessarily relevant to that.
As a side not, it's disheartening that what IKEA pretends to be doesn't actually exist. Imagine if an organisation with the size/competence of IKEA actually did exist for charitable reasons. 11,00 acres of wilderness might be an average afternoon.
Hand crafted furniture often has more value because the types of jointery used are more durable over time. A dovetail joined drawer will last much longer than one put together via plastic screws, but it’s also requires much more expensive materials and labor.
Oh, and hardwood furniture is often lighter ironically. MDF is really heavy.
Sometimes, maybe. But more generally, if you judge strictly along price performance and allow nothing for the subjective... I think IKEA/mass production comes out on top.
Great carpentry is valuable because people like it, because it's beautiful, maybe because it's impressive. The table will hold the dinner just fine without quality joinery.
Also, the furniture market is just insane. If you want a chest of drawers, you either pay $100 for a cheap flat pack self-assembled one from IKEA and take it home today, or similar prices for a similar one online from Wayfair.com (a bit more of a gamble), or you pay over $1000 for something that won’t show up for 6 months. It’s bizarre that you can buy a brand new car with cash and take it home today, but the supply chain for wooden rectangles is extremely underdeveloped.
I'd love some insight in how this industry works. I know there's some shops that literally do woodworking and upholstry for that bespoke furniture, but as far as I know, most of it is designed for industry production and mass produced. And indeed, if it's one thing IKEA is doing, it's exactly design for mass production at scale, but the quality is not super-high, perhaps even intentionally.
I think, when it comes down to it, lots of people can afford those $1000—or more—furnitures. When people here in the Nordics are done with their furniture, it's often just given away for free on our Craigslist equivalents. And not just the cheap stuff! Often you find really high quality stuff being given away for free. In fact, I found my favourite antique chair in a dumpster! All it needed was a bit of dusting off, and I've had it for over 20 years now. It's simply a very sturdy and high quality armchair. And their previous owners opted to throw it away rather than to even list it.
Personally I really like to list stuff, though, because it's an easy way to get others to do the heavy lifting for you. So probably that explains at least some of it. ;)
Ikea definitely has tiers of quality. A $50 desk is basically cardboard, a $500 desk has some MDF around the edges to make it feel sturdier, and the $1000 desk might even have some real wood in it.
The real problem with IKEA is that they use a supply chain that tends to bribe officials into cutting down old growth forests, destroying wildlife habitats.
They used to sell a solid wood desk for under $200. I have one. It lasted over 10 years, but the desktop recently warped and split. (Laptop overheated it, I think.)
If you're comparing it to cars, you can buy furniture with cash today from retail home stores. Online you can get something from Ashley or West Elm for around $500 within a few weeks, or online stores like Article or Joybird will hit that $1000 and ship quicker. Of course, a $100 dresser is not the same product as a $1000 dresser, which Ikea will also sell you.
I wouldn't say it's insane—shipping big things individually is expensive. Ikea is the crazy one, and they've certainly innovated to make furniture cheap. But everything cheap has a cost.
I consider IKEA to be more or less the ideal home shoppping experience. Some things are picked up along the way, larger things are grabbed at the end. The way they're laid out maximizes usable showroom space, while allowing for entire rooms to be built, with every part showing something you could buy. For anyone looking to furnish their place at a good quality/price, it's the first place I'd think of.
The way they're laid out maximizes the amount of time it takes to get through them by the "natural" path, making customers repeatedly make the decision not to buy things, thereby wearing down their willpower until they get to the end and can load up their cart with trinkets they didn't need when they showed up.
It's not Ikea that people hate, it's Ikea customers. People like to think of the moment they upgrades from Ikea furniture to something else as a life milestone where they ascend to another social class, and once they have done that they get to look down on the classes that buy Ikea furniture.
Sure, there's a whole list of supposed justifications, but most people's "upgrade" furniture is the same mass-produced crap, but with some marketing to position it as for the class of people who are too good for ikea. Restoration Hardware and Wayfair are making great money selling people what is essentially Ikea furniture plus a little bit of snobbery.
Heh, the first time I bought IKEA furniture I felt like a rich person, because that was the first time I even owned new furniture. Before then, all my furniture (except mattresses) came from the side of the road on large trash pickup days, or was second/third hand from relatives.
I previously would have dismissed this sort of comment with the thought "surely they are missing something." But recently we were looking for simple cabinets and found some we liked on Wayfair but just seemed expensive to me. On a whim I checked Target and found the exact same thing - same model number, even the same marketing pictures for about 33% less. The only difference, as you say, was the snobbery in the description.
I have alot of IKEA stuff, the quality complaints are mostly inaccurate IMO. If you buy mid-priced furniture from a big box furniture store, it costs more and very marginally much better. It does move better assembled though.
High quality furniture requires skilled labor and is very expensive.
I would say that having built an Ikea kitchen and dealing with a few relatively minor issues, their customer support sucks. The employees are great, but the friction in getting to them is awful. Maybe the NY/NJ/CT Ikeas are worse with this.
I did the same thing in the last house we owned. We had a build and design company who quoted us around $50K to remodel the kitchen. We paid them $100 for the design they came up with and parted ways.
We went to IKEA and picked everything out. IKEA hired a sub contractor and they came and installed everything in two days. We still had to do all the demo and prep for them, but we were able to get multiple discounts on everything we bought.
In the end, our tiny kitchen remodel went from $50K to $15K. We moved out about a year later, but all the cabinets and quartz counter tops were still in pristine condition, even after a solid year of use.
With my knowledge as a non-professional woodworker, there's not a lot to cabinets. Even professionally made cabinets use veneered plywood for the bases so what IKEA does isn't any different than almost all cabinets here in the US. The US mostly uses 'framed' cabinets instead of European 'frameless' cabinets, but the cabinet box is essentially the same.
wood expansion is a big factor for wide flat pieces. Non directional wood products like MDF are used in cabinetry because they do not expand to anywhere near the same degree as solid wood. If you want to use solid wood you have to float it in panels, like you sometimes see on doors. But that adds a lot of complexity. For cabinets where you have dozens of moving pieces using MDF (or plywood) is much better for the reliability of the moving parts.
I like IKEA furniture for what it is. It is thoughtfully designed, afordable and usually very easy to assemble.
However, their US customer service is essentially non exsistent. I had items delivered damaged and could not get in touch with anyone. I eventually gave up as the effort was not worth it.
As frustrating as that is (and I’ve had my share of it to know), if I turn the feeling upside down, maybe there is an iron triangle of cost, error rate and customer service responsiveness. If the price attraction rate is higher than the customer losses represented by product error times the fix error rate, then you win. If the error rate is pushed too far or the customer service white gloved, then costs must be higher.
That makes sense if you're talking about getting a stale loaf of bread once in awhile. But if you're talking durable goods, the overhead of one incident erases all potential savings or efficiencies.
I'm a fan of Ikea and their products, but their shipping in particular and any process that requires call center interaction are ridiculous and a complete waste of time.
It did used to last a lifetime though, my parents bought some items in the 1970s which they still use today (stools, shelves and the odd table), it still looks good as well.
Some of it is solely designed to hit a price point (“a $10 chair”) and is made of cheap plywood, cheaply connected.
Some of it is more the “can we pick some low hanging design fruit, apply massive scale, and create a decent chair for 20% of the price it would normally cost” variety. That furniture normally lasts a long time.
Bingo. Maybe people don't realize that Ikea makes both low-end and mid-range products. They will gladly sell you a $25 entertainment center (Lack-based) and a $500 entertainment center. The expensive items last and many classic designs remain at steeply discounted prices from original manufacture date. (For example, the Pöang originally costing ~$300 adjusted is now $79.)
Plywood is often stronger than solid wood, but most importantly it doesn’t bend when drying or in moist environments if it’s properly cross-laminated. However, cheap IKEA furniture is often laminated fibre, which is basically compressed sawdust. It’s an entirely different material.
Not just while the wood is drying, wood 'movement' is something woodworkers have to take into consideration in almost every project. Everyone lives in an environment with humidity (some more than others) and when seasons change solid wood will expand and contract. Plywood is very stable with respect to humidity.
That's a great idea, I'll definitely be doing that in the future!
I've added L-brackets to key spots on Ikea furniture before, and it often increases how sturdy it feels by an order of magnitude.
Just the other day I fixed a 5 year old Billy bookshelf (that I broke while moving it, while partly loaded with books) by securing the cardboard back with screws instead of finishing nails and adding a couple metal brackets to the bottom. Cosmetically, despite being (ab)used by my kid, it still looks fine, and now feels even more sturdy than before. Wish I had thought of adding some glue (or maybe No More Nails) to secure the back even more.
I only started doing it because I have a bunch of the Regissor line. It actually has a screwless assembly process, only being held by friction joints. Over time and after being moved a lot, the coffee table started to loosen. So I took it apart and reassembled it with wood glue in the joints, and now it’s as solid as a rock. I mainly buy the “higher-end” IKEA stuff with real wood or at least stronger particle or plywood or whatever it is except for the Kallax line, so that helps as well.
I just like IKEA so much because they have well designed stuff for good prices, even their more expensive things relative to their cheaper stuff. And with mild care and tweaks during assembly, it can be quite solid. I wish I had thought of the wood glue sooner as well because I’m too lazy to redo my bookshelves.
No, it depends on the application. There's a reason it's still called "solid wood".
If you look, most plywoods are "whitewood" or whatever is cheapest (most softwoods are incredibly strong as the term is just a synonym for coniferous). If you compare apples-to-apples -- Baltic Birch (or similar products with only birch layers) to solid birch...
The plywood doesn't have any noticeable wood movement;
The plywood can have fasteners and glue in any face (unlike solid where endgrain must be joined);
The solid wood usually has much better stiffness;
The solid wood is limited to shape and size by nature of trees; plywood can be found in larger sizes.
Good wooden chairs are impossible to find commercially now. The wood from the seat needs to be very wet and a wood that doesn't split easily, and the wood for the legs needs to be riven and dryer than what its final environment will be (so as close to 0% moisture as possible, at least <10%).
This is so that the legs expand a bit into the seat, which will continue to shrink, and make an incredibly tight fit. But it's not conducive at all to mass-production, which is why you often see them nailed, bracketed, bolted, etc, all sorts of dirty tricks.
Woodworking is a rabbit-hole you might find compelling or infuriating. You can't unlearn the knowledge when you do.
Anecdotal I know, but I've compared furniture from Ikea to equivalently cheap stuff from big box stores like target. The equivalent furniture from Target going through the same use cases as the furniture from Ikea - The Target ones are easily several times worse than the Ikea ones, in terms of build quality, safety potentials, etc...
I completely agree. Ikea really seems like a bit of unicorn in this space to my mind too. In the world of products that are affordable they tend to also be ugly or lacking consideration. Ikea offsets this by over-valuing considered design compared to nearly everyone and then making novel manufacturing concepts.
There really is something about a company that provides incredibly cheap products with a LONG return policy and good design to the masses. Plus their products might use a lot of wood, but they also offset it with renewable initiatives and by putting a lot of time into efficient shipping.
> I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized.
It's mass production without the opportunity to posture about your means. It's also often a complicated and confusing experience to put together if you don't heed the instruction booklet carefully.
Personally, I think IKEA's instructions are dramatically better than the norm. An exploded engine diagram is a common approach from other vendors.
I don't buy the garbage at most furniture stores for the same reason. Real wood isn't that much more expensive and will last. Plenty of it to be found at the likes of goodwill for cheap.
Older people who lived in a world of more resources per person and better craftsmen are used to high quality furniture. That luxury isn't really available at the moment, which is a shame, but IKEA have helped a lot of people.
A close friend of mine filled his house entirely with furniture, including couches, from the 1800s. Antique grandfather clocks, pianos, tables, armoires, etc. Not surprisingly, this person is highly skilled with wood and works at a small furniture shop that makes high-quality tables and chairs.
Things made out of wood can last centuries. There's no need to further accelerate our throwaway culture with throwaway furniture.
For this reason primarily, I hate IKEA and do not buy from them. I prefer to buy actual furniture made by actual people. Reward local artisans, businesses, and shops and avoid waste. Reject globalism. It is what is eating the planet.
In 2008, I was on my own for the first time. I had to furnish my first apartment into livability. A family friend gave me a $300 gift card to IKEA. That gift got me a fully functional one-bedroom apartment that I could never have afforded at the time.
Now, as a well-paid adult advanced in my career, I can afford to buy high-quality things. I do this knowing full well that I'm buying status symbols. I'm a little skeptical that a highly skilled woodworker's output would have been available to 2008 me, or the modern equivalent, but I would love to be wrong.
Sure, nice things usually cost a premium. But used, secondhand stuff can be affordable too. There should be an economy of downcycling that allows for more affordable stuff, too. I just don't think that IKEA is that.
Case in point. When I moved in 2013 I had a ~$1500 dining table that I had paid $800 for. Due to the abruptness of my move, I ended up selling it on Craigslist for something like $200. Keep an eye out for deals, I guess?
BTW none of the 1800s furniture that my friend collected were particularly expensive. Just always looking for good deals and willing to driving 200+ miles for them.
> There should be an economy of downcycling that allows for more affordable stuff, too. I just don't think that IKEA is that.
You're absolutely right! There often this. This is rarely anywhere near the IKEA price point, though. A dining room table for $200, however nice, would have eaten up two thirds of my furnishing budget. How does one manage chairs, a bedframe, and so on of good quality for $100?
It's not been my experience that a person can do that by being willing to drive hundreds of miles and owning a car, but YMMV. IKEA lets you do this reliably, and offers delivery services.
When your answer to "How do I furnish?" is "Do without until the perfect deal comes along", do you think it might be worth considering that your answer might not be great for everyone?
The niche IKEA fills isn't "cheap but functional", it's "stylish, but cheap."
Why would you buy an IKEA table and chairs for ~$120 when you can buy a folding table and chairs for less? The folding table and chairs are not only more durable, but they can also be used in the future for other purposes after you replace them as your main dining room furniture. They store better. They last forever. (My grandmother plays cards with her friends on such tables that are older than my parents.) The IKEA table and chairs you get are inferior in every way except one: style.
> When your answer to "How do I furnish?" is "Do without until the perfect deal comes along", do you think it might be worth considering that your answer might not be great for everyone?
This is probably the best answer for most. No answer will be right for everyone. For instance, someone trying to entertain clients in their home will need better than a folding table for dining.
When you're starting out: buy inexpensive, durable, and multipurpose for anything you can't do without, otherwise go without until you can afford to get the right piece.
>Just always looking for good deals and willing to driving 200+ miles for them.
for a lot of us city dwellers, that already makes it unaffordable.
I think the Buy Nothing movement is really accelerating this trend of trying to connect people to drive the recycling community. Don't throw out old furniture, your local Buy Nothing group will be full of people happy to rehome it.
I was just about to chime in to say something similar. Even if you have a vehicle which can move furniture and a day to blow picking it up, you're gonna pay at least $40 just in gas for furniture which, from the sound of things, isn't that much cheaper per piece than the entire bedroom set they had purchased.
Not to say that I haven't done that before. In the right circumstances it can be a good decision, but I don't know that it's a general purpose replacement for IKEA.
My problem with antique hardwood furniture is that the logistics of delivery and assembly are sometimes too much for me to handle. If I hire movers and a carpenter to assemble it gets expensive and out of my reach very quickly. I'd love to learn some carpentry and also how to drive and also get a truck, but I don't love it as much as I love my other crafty or spending based hobbies, and I don't have room for a shop or parking space for a truck.
Most of my IKEA stuff can't even leave the room it's in without disassembly. I just leave them behind when I move or actually have to pay for someone to dismantle them and take them away from the place. Not sure if they sell them as scrap or as furniture but it's cheap because they get to keep whatever they helped me get rid of. Also sometimes I've just put it for free on Craigslist and they last days and get taken.
FWIW IKEA has a lot of solid wood (often pine) options that do last a very long time. My favourite thing is that they degrade gracefully. You get scuffs and dents rather than peeling laminate and engineered wood shavings falling out.
My wife and I bought a kitchen worktable from Ikea almost 10 years ago. It is made entirely out of pine and is actually pretty nice. The surface was getting very well used, as I had it in the garage for a workbench for a little while. I took the power planer to it and put some tung oil on it, it looks brand new.
Wait a sec. When the products are sold by IKEA, they are cheap but they are "products that people actually need". But when they are from China, they are "cheap crap from china"?
I've found if you buy something from IKEA when you're putting it together, using wood glue and better screws actually lengthens the life of their stuff considerably. I feel its not the wood that is the issue, just the crappy hardware they send with their stuff that is the issue.
The cheap stuff is ok but the 'higher-end' of IKEA products are just not good. For example, their couches are in the hundreds of dollars range but the cushions become flat and uncomfortable after a very short period of time. Investing a little more in a non-IKEA quality couch will feel like night and day.
It lasts longer than most people think. I have a few IKEA dressers that I bought in 2012 that still look like new. Will they become antiques? No, but I only paid 80 dollars for them so I don't care.
Honestly, I haven't found IKEA to be all that cheap? When I was looking for a bed frame they seemed comparable to other midrange furniture places. I could definitely have found a similar thing cheaper online or maybe even at Walmart.
I guess I'm used to buying furniture used, where the floor's the limit for how cheap it can be, but my impression of IKEA was that people go there for the showroom experience and the meatballs more than the price.
I have IKEA socks (probably illegally made by https://theholeinmysock.com/shop/women/ikea-socks/) and tend to wear them in summer. People often compliment me for this odd choice of socks. Others find it confusing. However when I ask them if they prefer IKEA or LEGO as a brand they still choose IKEA. Statistically insignificant but I thought I’d still share.
Besides not providing the most durable furniture, albeit at the most competitive price and reasonably good looking designs, they've had a few PR disasters over the years like this one :p
Pretty much everyone in Europe was caught up in the horse meat scandal. I suspect that IKEA was not the one at fault here. The horse meat was inserted into the supply chain right at the slaughtering stage.
>I know in 10 years replacements for their core products will still be available.
Lots of iterative design revisions and deprecation makes many of IKEA systems not particularly future proof. But in general I think there's massive ecological benefits to how far IKEA goes to value engineer their products. Though ironically this means all the savings are going to be redirected at other consumption.
The quality is such a big differentiator. In my household we have a mix of IKEA furniture and flat-pack stuff from other vendors (the Brick, Wayfair, etc), and IKEA is so much better on all fronts— the materials are thicker and tougher, the fasteners are larger and stronger, the designs are better thought out and easier to assemble; there's just no comparison.
Is that true? They make a big show of their environmentalism. In general, I'm very disappointed at how difficult it is to make informed consumer choices with respect to the environment. Maybe the idea is that consumer choices are small potatoes and we should all just pour our energy into campaigning for climate policy?
I've been very happy with my Ikea purchases. Some of the materials are cheaper, but usually the overall function is better than products that would cost some multiple of the price. We have the means to buy the more expensive furniture, but I can't find any retailers that offer things that are as well-designed as IKEA, and IKEA seems to concern itself with the environment (although it's frustratingly easy for a retailer to mislead about the degree to which they are environmentally friendly, and while I'm sure IKEA exaggerates, my other local retailers are far less convincing). I have been disappointed with IKEA's selection of bookcases, but otherwise I'm pretty happy. Most importantly, my wife and I really enjoy trips to IKEA as one of the few 'outings' we get to do during COVID (we like to browse around show rooms and get ideas for our home and also to try their Swedish-themed foods).
That said, I really do welcome suggestions for other retailers, whether they be retailers that are more environmentally friendly, or better designed, or with a more enjoyable shopping experience.
EDIT: one more grievance--somehow everything is still out of stock for the foreseeable future, and they are very tight-lipped about the specific nature of their supply chain woes and how they're going to work around them. I would expect that a year into the pandemic they'd have addressed some of their supply chain issues or at least managed to be more accurate about their shipping estimates (even if those estimates are still far off into the future).
I bought an IKEA desk and tried to assemble it myself. Between the poor wood quality, bad paint job, hard to connect components and painful assembly process, I gave up and got a refund.
I asked a friend of a friend that's a carpenter and he made way better desk for same amount of money.
In America at least, the only way to make a significantly better desk than an IKEA one at similar prices is to omit the costs of tools and labor.
Even after omitting the very significant cost of tooling (my corner clamp jigs for cabinetry cost half what a GALANT table does), getting good material you actually want will easily hit a hundred bucks for a fairly small, plywood-based desk. (Baltic birch isn't cheap! But it's cheaper than solid wood.)
I would rather own that desk, for sure, but it's not cheaper, and IKEA is pretty amazing at what kind of quality they offer at what prices--sure it's all fiberboard or cheap wood, but it's reasonably reliable and it's impressive that it's doable at that scale at all.
Yup. Anyone who starts to make their own furniture suddenly has a new-found appreciation for why furniture costs what it does.
That fact that you can easily spend $400-600 on the wood alone for a new dining table is staggering. (And makes you really, really careful while you build it.)
(My pandemic working-from-home desk was made of cheap box-store plywood, because I wasn't going to splurge on baltic for something that I hope I won't be using in a year. And it still cost what an IKEA desk would cost (but fits perfectly in my space, which is why I made it.))
I bought a mechanical IKEA desk (that goes up and down in height), spent at least 20% less than all the other online options I found available and they shipped to me in 5 days.
Knowing how to follow instructions, I just assembled it in 30 minutes and it's the desk I now use daily at home.
This just to say that YMMV based on the item you buy, where you live, what's your experience with "self assembling" items, etc.
It's the junk food of furniture. Produced at scale with poor materials, satisfies people's immediate need, locations are functional and service is fast. But don't you want something more substantial and created with more craft? You probably don't need more than one adult bed in a lifetime, for example. I've got furniture that's been in use hundreds of years.
There is a very high variability in the quality of their goods, that is for certain. Each of my daughters bought steel bed frames that will likely last a lifetime. They are really solid. The slats will probably need to be replaced someday, but they will last as long as any box spring.
But yes, a lot of their MDF beds are junk.
I bought a stand up desk from them a few years ago. They had three models available at the time, and two of them were 'wobbly' when fully extended, but one of them was not. After four (five?) years of use, both raised and lowered, it is still a great desk. It is hand cranked. It is solid, it is sturdy.
So yes, when you shop at Ikea, you have to know what you are getting into, and you need to actually go and see the piece assembled on the floor. The quality from piece to piece is hard to tell from looking.
One of my daughters bought an "Alex" dresser. The construction on that is solid, the drawers move beautifully. But many of their other dressers are fine for four years of college, or maybe a first apartment, and not much else.
Having said that, that 'temporary' market is huge.
Quick edit: If you are looking for a practical 'sit/stand' desk. Here is the one I have. It has been really good. It is not light (in case you live in a walk up). Available ina couple different lengths. Fully extended, it is very stable.
> But don't you want something more substantial and created with more craft?
No. My furniture is...part of the furniture. I care about it being practical. I don't care about its heritage. IKEA quality is perfectly adequate for me, so I'm not inclined to pay for any more.
I also appreciate light furniture that can be moved easily. Furniture that is more "substantial" and made from real wood[1], for example, is far more of a pain for me.
[1] As opposed to chipboard; I don't mean to imply that IKEA aren't using trees.
And that's fine, that's how some people view food and they're happy with junk food in the same way people are happy with junk furniture. Junk food and junk furniture are both consistent, cheap, simple, unsurprising, available anywhere, and sometimes that's what people want. But that's what it is - junk furniture.
No. I have several pieces of Ikea furniture that've survived multiple moves and are still rock solid. It's light, cheap, and sturdy. I don't care if my furniture has craft or history.
Honestly a lot of the furniture I've purchased one or two steps up from IKEA ended up being thoroughly underwhelming.
Based on my survey of what's available on the market, you have to go up nearly two orders of magnitude on price from IKEA to find solid wood furniture that feels like it has the craftsmanship to be an heirloom. And at those prices, it's not only more than most people can afford, it's more than most people who can are willing to spend.
That's great if it meets your needs, but I don't think that's a good argument for why other people shouldn't have the option to buy stuff from Ikea. Population growth alone dictates there's not enough furniture from a hundred years ago for everyone to furnish their homes.
I actually went to some high end furniture stores and was surprised that a lot of stuff on the floor was still IKEA quality. Maybe a slight step up, but a lot of it wasn’t solid wood. Additionally, a lot of it was a bit too fussy or looked like something my grandparents would like. When I went to IKEA, I was glad to see some simple furniture, as it suits my tastes.
But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking about it.
IKEAs ability to produce products that people actually need, at such a scale, is amazing to me. It does what it promises. It's cheap. It fills most people's needs fully. Customer support is perfect. I know in 10 years replacements for their core products will still be available. Their way of innovating the products is genius.
I can't think of any other company that even comes close. Well, maybe LEGO.