Interesting how the feminist presenter and Art Laffer both push the same delusional PC barrow. Talk about the blind leading the blind, as time has shown, straight over a cliff! Peter Schiffer should demand the penny owing!
To understand why Schiff is such a media-addicted loudmouth it's instructive to see what family he's from
When I started seeing all those storage shed buildings going up I had to laugh. Americans actually pay to store crap they really don't need. I see lots of folks already clearing out their spaces and cutting their monthly costs on anything they really don't need but thought they did when they were living high on the credit hog. Short the crap out of Delaware and anything to do with those pos nonsense storage buildings. Wake up AMERICA, stop being slaves to media advertising and quit worrying what people might think of you if your not wearing the latest fad or driving a fancy car. Free yourselves. But if you do have the cash on hand then do whatever the hell you want, but do it for your own reasons not for the sake of social status or acceptance.
The Walmarts and the Targets will remain standing. The Costcos and malls will die off. The supermarket chains will grow and expand their store offerings simulating what Walmart is doing. Your one stop shopping center to cover the basic needs of living. New times coming for sure, but better for all in the end. Costco may have a chance of survival. But as earlier poster mentioned, buying in bulk will be too costly for many. They have the right business model. More is less and less is more.
Those storage units have 'auctions' every week. The owners of the facilities 'auction' off the contents of storage units for a set price - winner takes all - you don't get to pick and choose what you do and don't want. The auction bid is used to pay delinquent rent on the storage unit itself. I am not making this up. There are records amounts of delinquencies in storage units as the housing crisis spreads.
I agree 100%. Most niche shops are in for extremely rough sledding. The Big Boxes will slow down, but have the best chance of survival - even though specialty Big Boxes such as Mervyn's (bankrupt), Dick's Sporting Goods, Media Play (bankrupt), Circuit City (nearly bankrupt), etc., will struggle greatly.
I'm starting to notice two things in my area (north metro Atlanta) that I have never seen before. There are a hell of alot of vacant shops in the strip malls these days. Every time I drive by one of these, it seems another small business has either folded or gotten kicked out for not paying the rent. But even more disturbing, is the amount of blank billboard signs I'm seeing on major roads. Only months ago, they almost all had ads on them.
Buying in bulk isn't too costly. Their bulks are not all that bulky (2 jars of spaghetti sauce instead of one, 3 bottles of salad dressing, etc.). So, if your income is limited, you buy one thing one time, a different thing next time. Costco will be just like Walmart among the survivors... (Actually, Costco should be better.. their food court pizza is GREAT!) Assuming there are a few ETers who don't know about or believe the Costco savings are "all that much"... And while not everything is cheaper, I'd say shopping at Costco saves an average of about 30% on the entire bill. And some things are super deals. For example.. Rug Doctor carpet cleaning machine... $899 on the website, $499 at Costco.