20 Facts About The Great U.S. Retail Apocalypse That Will Blow Your Mind

The Economic Collapse ^ | March 9, 2014 | Michael Snyder

[Buckeye McFrog]

Yes, thanks for the clarification.

Retail chains are run by IDIOTS and THIEVES.

[palmer]

Nice rant. Have a good one!

[VRW Conspirator]

...but I think with obamacare, the democrats finally outdid themselves in raiding the family budget. where did they think most people would have all that extra money?

A while back, I watched a Sean Hannity segment with a panel of guests, both left and right. Hannity asked a Lib, "is there a limit to how much a person should be taxed?" The first reply was a deer-in-the-headlights gaze and then a mumbled incoherent response. ALL of the rest of the Dem/Libs in the panel could not or would not answer the question, except for a some unrelated and distracting blathering. My first thought was...we are so screwed.

[sweetiepiezer]

Follow it daily..........Job cuts and Store Closings........
http://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

[gdani]

For years, there have been economists warning the U.S. has severely over-extended itself with the amount of retail establishments, shopping plazas, shopping malls, etc it has.

This is the correction.

[cuban leaf]

So if I rented a semi trailer went to Seattle, smoked some legal weed of course, went around bought everything at yards sales and went to KY I could make a good profit and get high to boot?

---

Actually, my wife and I mused about if shipping and travel was free, one could make a killing doing exactly that, sans the dope.

And it kinda works both ways. Antique furniture that sells for $3k in Seattle typically goes for something in the $800 to $1,000 range over here. But crystal is almost worthless over here for some reason.

[GOPJ]

Problem with stuff like this article is that they sometimes forget to include the stores that are doing better.

You're right on this cuban. Yes, McDonald's is having problems... but it's because their store are increasingly staffed by people who are borderline crooks.

[2ndDivisionVet]

My late father many times told me that the only men who consistently had money during the depression were successful salesmen. Even “useless” degree holders can learn to sell. I recommend Tom Hopkins, but there are several good programs.

[EnigmaticAnomaly]

"As more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck, the only people I see freely spending are 1) government workers, particularly tenured teachers and others with seniority (protection from layoffs) and 2) wealthy childless people."

Where are you seeing these people? Tenured teachers are things of the past now that many states are right-to-work states. Hell, I don't even KNOW of a tenured teacher anywhere come to think of it.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Importantly, an economic reality is that economic change is buffered by time.

That is, if you have a stock market plunge in a week, it is a “panic”; but if it takes an entire year, it is a “correction”. This is because when there is time, people can try to mitigate the damage, and others will try to exploit the damage.

But other conditions apply as well. Often economic changes do not happen at the international and national level, but at the regional, or even state and local level. For decades, the US would have regional changes, where a prosperous region would “take the pressure off” an adjacent region having a downturn.

However, what we are seeing today is long term international and national erosion, in which economic policies, even philosophies, have run their course and are starting to fall apart.

If politicians try and cling to collapsing ideas, like Keynesianism, despite the reality, there will be a bad fall, sooner or later. But those with better ideas, such as conservatives, can hopefully take over and start to replace failure with the success of the new economic idea.

[DuncanWaring]

Hmmmm ... per-capita spending “Up”, “em”-ployment rate flat at a 30-year low, must be lots of deficit spending going on.

Not a good sign.

[3Fingas]

True enough. There will always be a demand for good salespeople. If you are good at selling a product, you will also be good at selling yourself. Isn’t that what successful people really do. They sell their talents, their special insights. They have the “it” factor that other people are willing to pay for. These sorts of people will always land on their feet. A college degree in a marketable major is not a requirement to be successful, but it certainly helps.

[ELS]

Much of tthis list is anecdotal as consumer spending has shifted to online purchasing.

From the article (emphasis mine):

But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing. In fact, some retail experts estimate that the Internet has accounted for only about 20 percent of the decline that we are seeing. Most of the rest of it can be accounted for by the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer.

[ckilmer]

A lot of the companies mentioned in the article have been going out of style for years like sears staples office depot—and especially radio shack. Heck I’m glad to hear radio shack is going down. I hated nearly every darn thing I’ve bought from them. sears used to be great but not anymore. as more office material changes to bits and bytes, staples and office depot will naturally slim down.

[SeaHawkFan]

The “dollar” stores are hurting Wal-Mart. They carry quite a few basic items, and their overhead is very low. Usually just two employees on duty at any one time. The owner of the store is the manager, and may own 2-5 locations.

[Wyatt's Torch]

This is all FRED has for Household Debt as a % of GDP.

Here is debt payments as a percent of disposable income:

[DuncanWaring]

Nice, pretty charts you’ve got there.

Now reconcile them with the fact that “Em”-ployment has been stuck for five years where it was during the dying days of the Carter administration.

[Wyatt's Torch]

Well that has the misfortune of not being true...

"Em"ployment is near an all time high. Since you mentioned the Carter administration here is the total non-farm payrolls from 1976-Present:

Enjoy!

[Wyatt's Torch]

Perhaps you are referring to labor participation rates. yes those have been declining (part structural part demographic). The peak of participation rate was in the 90's and has been declining ever since:

[petercooper]

bttt