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.)
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.".
There are smaller churches that would benefit from the Govt policies.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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”.
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.)
"Tax avoidance" is the perfectly legal practice of (more or less aggressively) minimising the amount of tax lawfully due.
Everyone engages in tax avoidance at least to a degree.
"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."
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.
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112042116/https://www.econo...
Did you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA#Criticisms ? There seems to be many reasons to dislike the company, even as a happy customer.
One thing that stuck with me is this:
"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.
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.
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.
No point in continuing this conversation then.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112042116if_/https://www.ec...
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.thebalance.com/do-tax-cuts-create-jobs-3306325
Don't business taxes (whether US taxes on profits or European VAT) ignore the costs of goods?
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 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?
Corporations and politics are not two separate entity that act independently.
> 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"
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?
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-ikea-ab-taxavoidance-e...
https://www.tax-news.com/news/EU_Expands_Investigation_Into_...
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
Off the top of my head, I think it was Pottery Barn, not IKEA.
Oh, and hardwood furniture is often lighter ironically. MDF is really heavy.
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.
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. ;)
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.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/gerton-tabletop-beech-50106773/
A set of metal legs is about $30.
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.)
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 don't like the huge maze, but luckily there are shortcuts...
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.
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 fitted two IKEA kitchens to past homes I lived in, 14 and 17 years ago. Not professionally fitted either, I did the hard work.
I found the properties had both recently been sold and had a look at the listings - both of the kitchens were still doing great.
The kitchen I fitted had solid oak door frames with a veneered panel, Quaker style if you will, with standard chipboard cabinets.
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.
Even most woodworkers seem to actually recommend Ikea cabinets, even if they despise the rest of their products.
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.
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.
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.
Isn't plywood actually stronger than real wood? It's even used for aircraft construction.
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.
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 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.
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.
IKEA is almost universally made with cheap materials, but not everything needs high quality materials to last.
Edit: ah, they've got some acacia pieces (dining room pieces, mostly).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But agreed on the rest of your points.
>it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime.
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.
>Yes it needs a lot of wood.
Carbon sink. Better than plastic.
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.
Their bold claims of "just bring it back" were totally bogus.
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
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/25/172869585/ho...
That's right, if I recall correctly, for some reason the press really obsessed about IKEA and another steakhouse chain whose name I forgot.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4dl14d/what_does_fi...
^ It's fiction. I just thought people here are the kind that would enjoy it.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA#Possible_illegal_timber_i...
Snobs, basically.
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).
Eg. If you want rechargeable NiMH batteries, IKEA's are some of the best you can get. Their smart bulbs also have a good reputation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/2...
I asked a friend of a friend that's a carpenter and he made way better desk for same amount of money.
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.
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.))
Price of labor is way less. And so is cost of materials.
The price for IKEA piece was materials plus delivery.
The price for that desk was design, delivery and assembly on the spot.
What IKEA item were you comparing it to?
I need drawers to store stuff next to my computer.
This just to say that YMMV based on the item you buy, where you live, what's your experience with "self assembling" items, etc.
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.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/skarsta-desk-sit-stand-white-s8...
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.
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.
Anything made of solid wood or laminated wood is great because it will take knocks and bumps and ast basically forever. Things like chairs and tables.
Lots of their all-metal stuff is good. One of their desk lamps with springs is a design classic, very cheap and amazing value.
Their non-stick kitchen pans are very good value as is most of their kitchen stuff, including glass, ceramics and some plastic stuff.
Anything made of MDF or manufactured wood is just pure trash.
Also, with the relative prices of labor and machines being what they are nowadays, fewer people can afford to buy the traditionally made stuff.
It’s the same with housing. You may want a house built with hand-made bricks laid in complicated patterns, but few people can afford that.
I didn't say it as an argument for this? But there is an impact on the environment that effects us all.
IKEA design often deservedly wins awards, and their products are a great fit for many use cases that otehrs don't even cover.
It's closer to fast casual than to junk food. More Shake Shack than McDonalds, but not a steakhouse.
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.