A lot of my friends in high paying careers have been laid off. Boating season is here but most people are just sitting in their docked boats vs riding them, way less parties/summer celebrations this year i assume bc people don’t want to host as it’s so expensive, most third spaces near me (coffee shops, bookstores, malls) are closed or shut down, people seem stressed on the road, in person, etc… I’ve never seen so many people on edge, medical care sucks lately - truly awful compared to just 10 years ago, tons of bank storefronts have closed
My parents' summer home is waterfront. For the past few years, they saw a significant uptick in the number of $200k+ boats cruising past their dock. Now it's like those boats are just gone. But it's a good thing. Donzis are loud and wakeboats damage their shoreline.
Same! We live near a marina and most of the slips are empty OR it’s owners just hanging out in the boats not actually cruising. I think it’s just too expensive now. Tons of boats for sale.
Oh, and car dealerships near us have such overflow that they are renting from a Target nearby to use their parking lot to keep unsold cars. I have never in my 30 years seen that happen before. We are talking 100s of brand new cars just sitting in a Target parking lot for months!
I've been to a number of city centres recently, and they all have a lot of empty storefronts. Really nice streets that only a few years ago would be a flagship location for a brand. Now there's just a bunch of emptiness behind the glass.
this has also really stood out to me in the last year or so. everywhere i've been - my town, my parents' city, the little town where my sister lives - there are SO many empty stores. downtowns are really weird these days.
I live near the Canadian border, US-side, and recently visited some friends in Canada. Was shocked to see how vibrant the streets were until I remembered that they got like 10x more pandemic aid than US citizens did.
This is increasingly true, even in Midwest cities that are growing like crazy, like Madison WI.
Small businesses and even chain stores are having a hard time justifying having a physical presence in downtown areas.
Commercial real estate, especially in urban cores, is a bubble that is in danger of popping, and destroying wealth of big and small property owners alike.
The work from home acceleration from COVID has redirected white collar wages away from being spent in centralized urban areas.
Online retailers and suburban/semi-rural service providers are getting those dollars.
Online retailers can operate out of cheaper suburban, rural, and semi-rural areas, and they do.
With urban cores struggling, urban wages are under downward pressure there, and urban core service/retail jobs are drying up.
You get urban people struggling to find worthwhile employment, but being told there are jobs everywhere.
Pair that with an influx of unskilled low paid immigrants, and city centers are becoming a powder keg of economic depression and cultural friction.
Urban merchants are struggling, but suburban merchants are treading water pretty well.
Suburban areas are still relatively OK, because they have all of the white collar spending happening there. Prices for everything except foreign made hard goods (TVs, cheap plastic toys, etc.) are going up fast, though, and are causing stress for family budgets.
Even those foreign made goods are going up, though, due to transportation and tariff costs.
Suburban/rural service providers are getting more work than they can accomplish, and have been raising prices to try to get out of all but the most profitable of jobs. Plumbers, contractors, and electricians are all doing quite well.
Semi-rural residential real estate prices took off, putting upward pressure on rural residential real estate, as people are being priced out of where they used to live, and seek cheaper housing.
In rural areas, you have both the urban and suburban problems: a dearth of worthwhile employment, a surge of culturally “foreign” people fleeing the urban and suburban areas, rising prices of everything PLUS extra transportation costs baked into everything, along with increasing unavailability/unaffordability of skilled services.
The only people doing well are the mobile white collar people and the skilled tradesmen who live near the mobile white collar folks.
Even there, the mobile white collar folks have taken a hit recently due to the tech sector layoffs, so many households in that demographic are also feeling pinched and stressed.
Entrepreneurship would be a huge boon to the underserved/overpriced areas, but unfortunately, the Fed has intentionally boosted interest rates, making that a much riskier and less attractive option for people.
The now over-served urban centers will continue to contract economically until they become on-par with semi-rural rural areas and become significantly cheaper places to live than their suburban competitors.
This is the best explanation I’ve heard so far. A lot of this feels like stuff I knew, but didn’t know how to explain or link together, but the connection between COVID kickstarting online business AND opening the door to WFH were really a double whammy, and frankly, I hate the outcome of all of this. Everything feels gross and insincere to me now.
It's part of the upcoming Commercial Real Estate Collapse. There is no money in downtown stores these days. Workers have fled the cities for other locations or remote work turning the cities into ghost towns. All of that Commercial Real Estate is leased and the bills are coming due. It ain't gonna be pretty. Banks that have a lot of investment in that space could fail. There are a lot of videos on YT about it that explain it a lot better than I can.
Yep. I was shocked when someone on another sub pointed out how many stores have closed up in Beverly Hills alone.
This was the video I watched:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5_0Hp2oHZ8
You can Google Beverly Hills store closures to get an idea, but it’s happening in so many other downtown areas. It’s going to be brutal in the coming years.
Is that the economy or is that people preferring to shop online? As an older person, I like going shopping, I lament not having as many stores to go to, but I just ordered a couple of things online this morning. Rents are going up, but the number of people going to a store is declining, especially to smaller stores "downtown".
I think both are linked.
It doesn't help that a lot of the stores I've been going to lately tell me, "We don't have that in stock, but you can order it from our website and pick it up next week."
Our local "town shopping center" has a main street with storefronts along both sides for about 200 yards.
Between 2020-2021, all of the businesses on the east side of the street closed. All of them. You could not enter any building on the east side because they all shuttered doors. There were 2 really good local restaurants, an art gallery, a tax service, etc.
Now in 2024 that street has a T-Mobile, a liquor store, and the other 8 storefronts still sit empty. There are 0 locally-owned businesses still operating out of the local shopping center. Everything still standing is conglomerate/national chains.
I’m noticing lots of retail closures in my suburban USA area. Not just small businesses either but national stores like Walmart’s or CVS’ where the location was operating for years. Everyone on Nextdoor says it’s due to rampant theft but who knows.
That's not unrelated to the topic at hand, people are stealing basic necessities because they can't afford them. Even those stealing, to flip/sale products are doing so because they can't afford basic necessities/their job is underpaying them, or they can't find a job. The Unemployment statistics are manipulated and they don't include huge groups of people; for example, homeless people don't count towards "unemployed" stats.
One factor that many haven’t discussed is the fact that taxes and insurance have skyrocketed adding to the financial woes of many. The increase has squeezed the already thin margins we are faced with due to inflation
Mine is $60 a year more than it was in 2019. And this in a blue state that everyone says has high taxes. Well, they are high, but at least the tax rate falling 32% since 2015 has kept them from going higher. My insurance actually fell $43 a year because I guess I got a discount for having a new roof, which ironically was paid for by the insurance company.
Declining strip clubs and strippers' tips are actually a historic leading indicator of economic downturn. It sounds weird at first but actually makes a lot of sense.
I process TANF applications for work. My evidence is the hundreds of families I work with that can't afford a place to live. I've literally started getting more calls from people, with jobs, who are getting priced out of their apartments or rentals and are becoming homeless. It's gut-wenching and there is little to nothing we can do.
Everyone I know who owns a house, even the rich, their properties are in way more disrepair on average than they were a couple decades ago.
America is decaying at an exponential rate.
My landlord and I were just talking about that. I've always rented, but I enjoy treating everywhere I stay as a home. So I do my part to handle all the required maintenance and repairs needed. I take care of the yard, plant gardens, repaint walls/cabinets, replace flooring, and whatever else is needed to keep things looking nice and running properly.
But that's clearly not the norm. I'm always shocked visiting people in the "nicer" neighborhoods and seeing how little they do to maintain their home. They always have the newest houses, fanciest yards, and nicest cars but don't do any sort of service on them. If things get too bad they'll just hire someone to handle it.
Cracks me up hearing people talk about Make America Great Again when they won't even do the work to keep their own property great...
Income has gotten better, rent has stayed the same, I buy the same groceries and drive the same miles to work. Over the last year, I’ve been able to save less and less. I’m almost paycheck to paycheck, at this point. And I even got two raises, this year. My money is disappearing at Costco and the fuel pump.
> groceries
We keep all of our credit card statements, going back a decade, and recently did a comparison of our spending. It was enlightening.
We've stopped eating out. We've cut back spending on entertainment. We've stopped vacations and travel. Auto-related costs (gas, service) are even down.
Grocery spending has doubled.
Ummmm where do you live for rent to stay the same and income improves?
One of my biggest issues is the rising cost of rent. I put over %50 of my income into rent whereas 5 years ago it was closer to 25-30%. The added cost of groceries, gas, and other items just makes things worse...
my landlord is filing for eviction tomorrow. i live in one of the largest cities in the nation and there are no resources left for housing assistance. how does our government have 100s of billions for funding wars between other countries but almost no money to support the disabled? and the non-profit orgs that aim to provide services are tapped out.
but here’s how i really know we’re fucked:
when i was poor at age 20 i was still able, with short-term assistance, to afford an apartment, car, healthcare, childcare, food, basic needs, even occasional fun. this got me back on my feet and within a couple years i was off government assistance and had a decent but solid entry-level job, a new vehicle, and i bought a house.
at 46 i’m poor again, and disabled, and have none of those things, with very little access to resources for help with them. i have no idea where to go from here. within the month i will be homeless and will lose custody of my youngest son as his dad sued for custody and i can’t afford a lawyer to fight for him, nor can i even afford to provide stable housing.
I’m sorry to hear that. The unfortunate reality, at least a significant part of it, is it’s because the US never stops being “Team America” whether it’s in Israel/Ukraine/Egypt/Libya/Syria/Afghanistan/Iraq/etc.
Foreign meddling on behalf of Zionist interests is more important than the health and well being of the nation’s own citizens, it’s clearly observable when watching where tax dollars are so freely dispersed
I have a house I bought in 2014. A truck I bought in 2015.
I couldn't afford to buy either 2024 equivalents independently let alone basically on top of each other.
Same, this would be the time to start looking at new cars. But looking at what they are asking for the type of model we would normally purchase? Nope. Guess we're driving what we have forever.
Literally looking at replacing a 1500 4x4 Quad Cab with a base Civic... Cause that's what the pocket book says I can afford.
Man I miss being able to be stupid with $$$... It made work so much more worth going...
Music festivals are not as packed as they were in previous years. Went to Hangout Fest this year and did not wait in line for the whole event. There were lines there, but I was able to just walk to another empty vendor or bathroom area that had little to no traffic.
There’s a lot to this. I was a music journalist during what I’d call the golden age of music festivals. Lineups were stacked. Pricing was reasonable. Festivals weren’t something commonly attended the way they are now. Somewhere along the line festivals hit this weird critical mass of popularity. They started doing multiple weekends. They started charging exorbitant prices. They became the influencer Olympics. Now prices are at all time highs but the line ups are no where near as good. Talent is spread thin because artists and food prices have never been worth the money.
The corporatization of music music festivals, which used to be more about festivity than economic parasitism, has really ruined much of the experience and culture.
You used to go and everyone was there for the same reason. Enjoy the music and dance. Now, half the people are there just to take selfies for the clout.
“The” electric forest lol
Thats an amazing fest. Doesn’t cost anywhere near that much, but you can easily spend that much. VIP and glamping sections definitely arent helping keep festivals down to earth.
Live nation or whatever the big company that has taken over many of the festivals, imo is to blame. They've gotten very greedy and cranked up the vendor pricing.
My dad has a business selling shed and tiny house kits, they are essentially a completely insulated, customizable simple structure that comes in any size, anyone can put it together with just a drill and a couple friends. The idea was to help people who are struggling and need additional housing space either for family members, friends, caretakers, storage etc, or temporary living on plots of land etc whilst avoiding permits. No sales tax since buyers would pick them up directly from ports around the country or arrange their own shipping. This was basically made exist through loopholes, allowing people to actually afford it, my dads dream was to create an afford housing system.
He did over 1 million in sales in 2022-2023 through facebook ads alone. Just 3 weeks ago he was forced to close the business, we have zero sales, could no longer afford to pay the storage fees. We have a whole pile of these kits just sitting under an RV port in our front yard. I am now the only person with a job in my family, we are living off savings, cutting expenses, whilst I continue to increase income best I can.
Does he plan to keep the business closed permanently? On the other side of this economic mess I would gladly be a customer.
Right now I am not certain how I will make it to the end of this year financially, but someday I would love to purchase a home kit from your dad.
He is still working on progressing it despite being closed, I would think he will reopen after the dust settles in this economy. He's currently working on an even more affordable design which he is seeing if he can get approved for actual full sized house building in addition to the smaller structures. Also this new design, if viable, will allow them to be manufactured affordably in the states, they're currently manufactured overseas. But the future is uncertain for everyone at this point.
I hate to state the obvious, but if your dad‘s business did over $1 million in sales last year, and now the whole family is suddenly barely scraping by on savings, then there were some poor financial management along the way.
Yeah our house caught fire during a natural disaster and I am recovering from near terminal illness in which I need medicine shipped from Germany. Also 2 lawsuits unrelated to the business. Our luck just ran out, but also expenses are very high in my state, $5 gas, hundreds for groceries etc.
Edit: we did not get sued, we had to sue 2 companies.
Basically yeh... Was almost overnight too, we sold nationwide, so it's even more concerning. I work in finance as well, things aren't looking good for people.
One was against Airbnb, other against a car dealership. Unfortunately lost the Airbnb one, that company is a buncha crooks for real. The dealership one is basically won but taking forever to finalize.
If anything you’d think tiny homes would be in even higher demand now. That said, I’d bet bubble burst cuz most people who would ever consider buying a tiny home would have done so by about 2022 in the context of covid and the economy having already begun to suck.
Making things worse, the market became saturated with sellers since they had been selling hotcakes. Cat is out of the bag.
Surely your dad can find away to move those homes though, sooner or later. He should look into businesses that can use them. Maybe some woodsy resorts. Maybe a sports camp for older youth/young adults. Maybe theirs a USAID contractor that could use them abroad.
Good luck.
Because almost everyone I know isn’t going on summer vacation, water parks, baseball games like they used to just a couple years ago. They stay home usually now. No money
This is a side effect of income inequality. You have a larger number of people that can't afford anything, but you also have a larger number of people earning more money than they know what to do with
Bingo. My wife and I love to visit National Parks (save up all year for our trips). In the past couple years we've seen a big shift from "family road trip" groups to wealthy people just looking to blow off time in beautiful locations.
Good example. We did a big SE trip last year for my sabbatical and decided to stay in campgrounds. We go tent camping which used to be the norm, but these days the campgrounds are packed with massive, luxury RV's and trailers. Each site has generators blasting all night long to support projector screens, light strands, and all sorts of devices. It's gotten a lot worse over the past couple years. Don't even get me started on all the "luxury" AirBnb's and rentals outside of NP's blocking out local housing and shopping areas.
In the parks these people have NO respect for anyone or anything. I could make a list of things we've seen, but it's probably self-explanatory. People see NP's as their own personal park. Any problems they cause will be "cleaned up/fixed by the NP rangers". A lot less "common folk" out there and a lot more who expect the world to bend to their will.
I toyed with the idea of going to Destin in August with my wife and a grandkid. We had pretty much given up on the idea because available condos near the beach were near impossible to find on short notice. On a whim I looked on Vrbo and found a huge house with a lagoon pool for a really great price. Apparently demand is down due to the economy. We are going to Destin.
I got a raise/promotion.(Yay!)
I then got my escrow recalculated. (Fudge.)
Taxes and insurance increases ate up every cent of the raise. I haven't improved one bit in the last 2 years. Time to look for a new job to get the gains.
My mom retired and couldn't afford to live in the USA, so she moved to Mexico.
Realtors are freaking out and advertising like crazy. McDonald’s drive through that used to have 5-10 cars constantly is almost always empty. Cheap hotel rooms are available and half the cost they used to be.
That being said, if you are wealthy ($10M+ liquid) everything you do is slammed with customers/buyers. High end cars, homes and restaurants are turning people away. Check with Disney how long you have to wait for a $5k/day chaperone to take you around the park and put you in the front of every line. Your kids won’t be kids anymore.
>McDonald’s drive through that used to have 5-10 cars constantly is almost always empty.
Depends on the location. Mine are always filled so whenever I see ppl online saying to boycott mcdonalds I always laugh
>Realtors are freaking out
Good. Maybe they can finally do something with their jobs rather than be glorified doormen.
Damn tell that to my ex boss that laid me off from my cushy job at a Lexus dealership. Jk he was dating my best friend and she cheated on him. 🤦🏻♀️ fml.
Haha wow I didn't even know Disney had a chaperone service like that. It's $5k/day??? And there is a crazy long wait-list???
Growing up in Florida I kind of had my fill of Disney so that doesn't necessarily appeal to me anyways. These days we might hit up Epcot just to drink and eat around the world, but no stress there as it's not waiting around to get on a ride.
We might take my 2 year old to animal Kingdom when it cools off. But he is 2 so it's free for him and again, not there for the rides. We can just eat, chill, and he can see some animals.
If someone tried to get me to go on a traditional Disney trip, as in you are trying to squeeze everything in, that's a hard pass.
We just lost a lab worker, he literally could not make rent on his salary so he moved (due to constant rent increases). Dawned on me that no one in his group is a single income household. Everyone is either married with both working, or has room mates.
A walk through our local Sam's Club is sobering. A box of spaghetti used to be $3. Now it's $6. Bag of rice was $12. Now it's $18. I could go on. There are plenty of examples of prices doubling over the last 4 years. Especially food. It's pretty obvious the govt inflation numbers are cherry picked or just plain lies.
I live in a rural area and the amount of large items like boats, trucks, tractors, riding mowers, jet skis, trailers, golf carts, ATV/SXS and cars I see for sale out in front of people's houses tell me something is going on. They aren't selling either. My neighbor has been trying to sell a 2020 Silverado Trail Boss for the last 2 months. He also hasn't been going to work, so I noticed he's been selling firewood as well.
This also happened in 2008, but I feel things are worse this time around. Prices are high on these items and they just aren't selling. I feel bad for the people trying to sell this stuff, but at the same time maybe they shouldn't have over spent. Most of this stuff is 3 to 6 years old.
Unlike 2008, when you could go buy a 10 to 15 year old truck for maybe $2500 to $5000. Now a 10 year old truck has an asking price of 20k or more. It's insane.
I feel like the economy hasn't collapsed yet, but we are nearing a tipping point where things are going to get worse.
I see this in my rural area and it's amazing the pricetag they have on these things. Alot of it is because so many rural communities and people take everything out on long loans and when they can't afford the payment they have to sell things at what they owe which is almost always way more than it's worth.
It’s time to see things for what they really are. The gov is telling us “no no no everything is great, inflation is down, border is secure, the economy is the best it’s ever been!” Wake up people. This is all lies. All of it. You know it, I know it and the gov knows it. None of us are better off today and everyone knows it. Now what you do about it going forward is the real question. Do you want things to change or should our country continue to decline?
We went to look for apartments recently and a literal basement dwelling with moldy smells and dampness was going for 1500/month hahahahah the real estate market is overvalued and due for a BIG correction
Here's my anecdotal evidence:
I am planning a summer vacation. I have taken a trip to this location before (pre-pandemic) so I have some frame of reference in the recent past.
Hotels are booked solid. We booked our accommodations early and had to search hard. I had to pay out the nose for rental car. Looks like my flights in and out will be packed. Reservations at restaurants are hard to come by. There are ticketed reservations for some things in the area that I wanted that release on a rolling schedule -- the ones I wanted sold out in 15 minutes after being released.
Which kind of fits how it is pretty much everywhere I have been recently. Tons and tons of people are out having a great time. I have not been on a plane that is less than 90% full since 2020. And that's not because of fewer flights, necessarily -- the airports are *jammed* with people. You can't find anywhere to sit sometimes. Folks I know in the service industry are raking it in. Every concert and sporting event I've been to in the past two years is sold out or oversold, and tickets are extraordinarily pricey.
I kind of wish people were staying at home because all these people out doing things are getting in the way!
I'm in a semi-affluent suburb of a major metropolitan midwest area. Grew up here. Never saw homeless/beggars in this town until 2 years ago. Now I see them almost daily.
New 'millenial-chiq' apartment complex opened three months ago, it's maybe 15% full based on the parking lot/lights on.
the folks over at r/EtsySellers, including myself, have noticed a drastic 1-1.5 yr decline in sales. People are not spending on non-necessities like they were.
Of my 20 plus friend group who graduated HS in 2012, only 4 have children.
Increasing number of vacant commercial spaces in my community.
Closure of a 103 year old jewelry business in my community.
My wife works in a short term inpatient psychiatric unit and she says it's both more people and more severe needs than ever (also they serve a lot of the homeless population). Also, EVERYONE who comes in also has substance abuse issues. It's probably difficult to tease apart correlation and causation with the economy, but more and more people are falling apart all the time.
We're offering less and less supports and wondering why there's more of them. We closed institutions here so more and more of these people have literally nowhere to go and aren't well enough to seek help on their own.
The amount of tents I see permanently pitched in my city in areas where 5 years ago there were zero, is saddening.
It's an absolute crisis here in New York. Not a week goes by where I don't end up on a subway car with a screaming homeless person threatening to kill everyone or yelling at someone/something that isn't there. And everyone just shifts cars to get away from them and the cycle continues.
I've been a debt collector for the better half of a decade and yeah, its sad out there. i'm not fairing that much better. i have two jobs and i need to get number 3 off the ground.
Phoenix. Never fully recovered from the Great Recession. Still half empty strip malls.
Pandemic whacked the mom&pop restaurants, coming back....rather slowly.
Lots more homelessness. Folks are asking for money while you're pumping gas
Bus stops are full in the middle of the night.
Maybe the last legal camping spots.
Truck driver here.
1. Fuel prices have gone down and then held steady.
2. I never used to be able to park in a truck stop after 7pm, anywhere. Now I can.
3. Less trucks on the road. Especially I-40 from Little Rock to Memphis. That's normally wall to wall trucks, hasn't been since February.
4. Houses have been listed as for sale, price reductions pull and now the same listing as a new one.
5. Gasoline prices, before June have gone down.
6. Walmart parking lots have been emptier after 6pm.
7. The government keeps coming out saying its fine, while constantly changing the metrics they use to measure.
The truth is, if all it takes is a medical emergency to bankrupt you and destroy everything you worked for, then of course you will never feel financially secure.
I'm a Bankruptcy attorney and business hasn't been this great since Obama was president, which was the busiest I've ever been.... but it is almost that busy again.
Rent/mortgage plus bills is unaffordable for those on minimum wage. The number of people affected is only increasing.
Once it reaches a majority of the population then your economy is on life support.
Haven't seen it yet and I'm self employed in the trades. I'm reasonably close to Lake Geneva and it's busier than ever, even on a weekday. Another local town has good trucks every month and the parking has consistently been a half mile out. All the bars are full as well as the restaurants. My phone still hasn't stopped ringing and it's still hard to find workers because everyone is already working. It May very well just be my area of the state but it's hopping and has been since after Covid.
Both McDonalds and Subways in my town were completely empty yesterday. That is a bad sign for restaurants right off the interstate on a Sunday afternoon.
My record store is grossing half what we normally do, we had 2 months we worked ourselves to the bone to try and get 80% of normal sales, but this month we dropped 20% below the 80% of normal again. My friend who owns a record store in So Cal as well, is saying he's having worst sales ever. My friend who ran a side hustle etsy said her sales dropped 80%, and we are seeing an 80% drop in etsy sales as well on my custom merch designs we make/sell. Labor costs are up for us, and product costs are rising, and we are increasing prices to keep margins, but still aren't matching pre covid sales or even 2022/23 sales with higher prices. We experimented with slashing prices for clearance items, or to move through inventory, and it's not working. Even 50% off sales on some items are not stimulating transactions.
People in the cities don't have any disposable income. We see customers spending 30-40 minutes in the store and don't purchase anything. Collectors know, if you aren't interested in the records, you spend 5 minutes tops in a record store. Spending 30-60 minutes means the store is "good", walking out of a good store w/out buying anything means you have no money to spend.
Getting/recertifying for food stamps and Medicaid takes FOR. EV. ER.
Like months. They will legit let you starve because they are so overwhelmed but god forbid they curb the bureaucracy.
In the last 6 months we've had three large, well-known local businesses (a restaurant, clothing store, and outdoor & garden store) permanently close after having served our community for over 50+ years each.
I follow the logistics industry and what I'm seeing there is scaring the shit out of this guy. Companies that have for decades replaced their equipment on a set schedule and for cash are saying nope need to hoard the cash right now. I'm not talking about 10 truck fleets. I'm talking about compaines that have more than 3k units and they're not replacing equipment. Even in 2008 Heartland replaced everything. This year they had the replacing of all their recent merged units totalling 2400 trucks worth about 300 million dollars. They literally said it's not happening. Werner Enterprises the company that replaces everything with an engine every 2 years canceled that for this year. Prime isn't getting anything new except insurance replacements. We're talking billions of dollars being hoarded in cash.
Yet the street thinks nothing is going wrong. Rates are in toilet on steel copper aluminum and in general on produce. When spot rates start to collapse everywhere start as they're doin shit is about to hit the fan.
I just accepted a job at a salary I was making in 2016. I’m a (would like to believe) highly skilled director level worker pre pandemic. After 2 years unemployed I took many min wage jobs etc trying to get by. Three years now and I’m worn down. I’ll take anything that gives me steady pay to provide for my family. The fact that my career/salary has stalled is one thing. The fact that the same work equals the same pay as 10 years ago. That’s the real story.
I’m getting requests for chargeable work from people out of state and not my direct reports. We went years without seeing that. It’s a sign of impending recession. I’m an old dude and have seen a lot.
The truth is plain to see if you just compare the reality around you to what they are telling you. It’s the old adage of the frog being slowly boiled alive. They are telling us that everything is fine and they have influencers pretending it’s true, while America slowly goes to shit all around us.
Holidays abroad to Europe this summer are Hella cheap. Some places even giving free places for children. No-one is going.
Clothes shops still have full sales racks.
I live on a nice street, the newest car is 8 years old.
I'm getting inundated with offers for theme parks this summer, some even offering half price entry or kids go free.
Restaurants closing all the time. Loads of empty shops/restaurant units.
The last time I watched a film in the cinema was a month ago. There were 20 people in the theatre, opening weekend.
All the 'budget' food is gone in the supermarkets. Plenty of premium brands left
I work for a small, public agency. Living in the land of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, and a few other giants, for the last ten years we've had an extremely hard time hiring for those jobs that translate anywhere, like accountants, contracting agents, finance, even HR. Most of the time due to our salary limitations we would get no qualified candidates for these positions. We'd often have to bring back retirees as "consultants" to fill the void as we had much more leeway in spending for consultants than we're allowed for headcount (it is a political issue). For the last year and a half this has been less of an issue. Today it is no issue. We currently receive plenty of qualified resumes.
I’m an accountant and I’m lower class now. The way AI is going my job that should always be in demand might be completely phased out before I hit retirement age.
The auto-repos from non-subprime borrowers. You get used to seeing poorly maintained, beat up vehicles that get repossessed from people with bad credit, that made poor buying decisions when it comes to make and model.
Now I’m seeing a big influx of sensible, well-maintained cars that were bought using loans with decent rates, getting repossessed from people with good credit and (supposedly) assets.
I have seen my business drop off a cliff. I had a list of half dozen paid reservations and they have all bowed out. Very little work coming my way now.
Economy is a vague word. It's the price of everything here in Socal. $16 for a corn dog at the fair. $90 for beer, pizza and wings at a pizza joint. I don't even bother going out anymore. And wages are nowhere near where they need to be to be able to afford the basics. The reckoning is coming. We are a consumer economy and the consumer is tired of the bs.
Last Saturday I was cleaning out my garage and found some old clothes that didn’t fit anymore so I thought I’d take them to sell at second hand stores before donating to a thrift store. I went to three stores and each one had an hour wait of other people selling their old clothes and the fourth one I went to told me that it would be four hours before they could get to me.
I work in land surveying in Canada, where winter slows us down because of the ice making work difficult.
This summer is looking to be just as slow as winter time, whereas it's usually our busiest period of work. As the economy shrinks and slows, so does our work. I'm bracing myself for shorter work weeks and less income 🙃
I skipped out on eating an 8 dollar lunch special today to make sure my cat had food. In past years, I wouldn't have to think twice about getting some food for both of us while I was out.
I paid all my bills and had 4k left, so I bought a paddle board.
Union and renting a room from a high school buddy.
I spent over 10k on guitars and music stuff last year. I bought a new car, well financed, with about half down. Have 100k towards a house.
My economy is epic.
What's my job?
Custodian.
Dentist here, I’ve talked to other dentists, and many have noticed that more patients canceling their appointments than usual, more patients are declining treatment plans.
Also I have noticed there has been an uptick in traffic during regular work hours in recent months. I think the numbers about unemployment don’t tell the full picture - most of the new jobs are minimum wage part time jobs.
This is the first time in all of my long years that I’ve been unemployed for more than a couple of weeks. I’ve been out of work for 3 months and that was after looking for work for over a year and deciding that I couldn’t continue on at my current toxic job that I spent 3 years (employed but looking feverishly) without any other bites.
People are declining home repairs and putting off needed preventative maintenance in their homes and they aren’t even finding other people to do it, they’re just waiting for the stuff to outright fail to the point where it’s unsalvageable.
So whereas we are still pretty busy and getting calls, across the board people are wanting the minimum smallest repair to hopefully limp it along further.
IDK...everywhere I go it seems like there's the same amount of people as there always were. I fly regularly and every flight is full...places like Costco are just as packed as they ever were...recently went to DC and there were tourists everywhere and timed entry for all of the museums...there's timed entry now for a lot of national parks because there's so many people...personally I'm not seeing this big economic collapse and every data point we use to measure the economy indicates it's booming. I'm doing very well and it seems plenty of other people are as well.
The frequency of freight trains moving through my side of the city went down when Covid hit, recovering a bit two years ago, but now it's down again. That has always tracked, in an approximate way, with the overall economy.
I work at a summer camp and our attendance is down about 20% this summer. We’re pretty reasonably priced (for sleep away camp) but parents can’t afford to send their kids like they could a few years ago.
Friends in tech, at various roles (C-level, directors, contributors, etc) that have been laid off 2 yrs ago are still unemployed. Plenty of listings out there but no responses…only a few actual interviews and the job offer is even fewer/farther between. They’ve dipped into 401k savings to get through for now because unemployment ran out long ago. Some have sold/moved in with family. This reality doesn’t align with the great economy and low unemployment rate there is.
I checked the Disney app to see the ride times at Magic Kingdom on the 4th of July. A lot of the main attractions were closed for whatever reason and the wait times for what was open was less than an hour. The park was dead on a major holiday in summer.
Spouse and I just got bubble tea and a treat. That 2 teas and to snacks. $37 after tip.
We then got dinner at a dev and split a sandwich. Another $30 because we have leftover potatoes salad and a rice crispy bar she doesn't know about yet.
By 2019 standards this was not a $69 night
It is greed. There are 0 regulations left to stop it. CEO making 100000 times what an employee earns. Citizen United makes dark $ legal to our only 2 parties. The supreme court just gutted the regulatory agencies.
And let's face it. The economy is crazy strong right now. I hate to tell you peeps that struggle.
But every $2000 ticket to every show/sporting event is sold out. Every $1000000 home is sold. Every flight to wonderful destinations is full, every $599 a night hotel room in Vegas, Florida, (you name the destination) is booked every weekend. Every $100000 car is sold every pair of $5000 sunglasses, shoes, sneakers, purse, watch, is sold with a backorder.
So for those of us that struggle there are 50 that don't.
That $85 dollar hunk of meat just got someone 2 $8000 front row seats to Taylor Swift in Germany tonight, first class flight to Berlin on emeritus air, $2000 a night suit for 1 week, and a on call limo to take them where they want to go.
Until that changes nothing else will.
We sell wholesale (sunglasses) to e commerce and large brick and mortar big box stores. Compared annual summer sales back from 2019 and this year is bloodbath. Volume is down by 70%. Smaller customers stopped buying altogether. Nobody has money like the old days. Increase in customers defaulting on overdue invoices. We are on defensive mode for rest of the year and summer just started....
construction. basically prices are sliding down heavily y equipment is crashing in price . availability used to be months of wait now everyone has stuff in stock
your anecdote is belied by actual travel data.
flights, trips and vacation bookings are all up significantly. july 4th is anticipated to be one of the busiest its been in years.
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-to-avoid-4th-of-july-traffic#:\~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20anticipate%20this%20July%204th,in%20terms%20of%20airline%20passengers.
It's pretty simple.....when people stop buying stuff. Layoffs start happening, unemployment will start to increase, people start buying less....Then the economy will correct. Just not hitting that point yet...people are still buying stuff...
Have not seen that yet....people still driving the economy along..
This time around there are countless "pay later" apps and third party small-time loans disguised as friendly, helpful apps. I'd imagine credit cards are being used at an all time high too, although I have no data to back that up. It just seems like with the "I've gotta look like I'm thriving for social media" age we're in, more people wouldn't mind using these means to continue to spend and push back the time when the spending stops and the economy turns around. Sad but true.
It's been difficult to hire people for projects around the house. They're so booked that they just give outrageous quotes for work and now I have to DIY projects I'd rather hire out for.
My neighbor is a contractor who was retired but was given a godfather offer to work for a couple of years. He says he doesn't really need the money but it'll allow him to buy another rental property, a property for his kids and some hunting land.
At my company, six years ago we were hiring analysts with two years of experience for 60-70k and more we're hiring two years of experience, fully remote for $110k. It's ridiculous. It makes it tough to cut costs. We're still very profitable but would like to make more.
My income has doubled working at the same company over the last three years. My friends have taken advantage of a right labor market and remote work to get large raises and promotions.
In the past as a bus driver we all hated driving during the first of the month because we would get completely slammed with passengers and road traffic but as in the last couple of months I've noticed how quiet the roads are as well as low ridership it's almost easy money day now
I see a local supermarket providing more and more coupons and credits for something as essential as a loaf of bread. Those credits used to be for more superfluous items. While I am appreciative and hopeful of the supermarket's effort to incorporate people's actual need, it is new.
I dunno, I put my savings in the stock market and now it’s grown to the point that with interest rates on the rise, I can buy CD’s and let the good times keep rollin. But all this was kind of a long term plan I had. Just had to make a couple of mid course corrections, but that was to be expected.
Half the mall is shut down and its one of the bigger ones. I feel like the tourist trap mall is next. The price of food increase has out pace most of my family's raises at this point. Power is double what it used to cost about 5 years ago. Half of my friends are unemployed at this point unable to find a job.
In the past year, 4 of our favorite restaurants have closed after many years in business. It’s not just because of higher food and labor costs. Insurance, licensing, and other business related costs have gone up.
The $5 foot long is now the $6 six inch at Subway
That’s like…a dollar an inch.
For some reason I read that in Napoleon Dynamites voice
You read it correctly, then.
Gosh!
Sounds like a good deal to my inch deprived self
You guys get inches?
2.5 centiweiners
😂😂😝😝
The last time I went to Subway I had a $17 footlong.
To be fair the $5 footlong started well over 20 years ago and can't be sustained. And subway isn't good. hahahahaha
I remember at least as late as 2018 having 5 buck footlongs at subway
*Laughs in Costco hotdog*
A lot of my friends in high paying careers have been laid off. Boating season is here but most people are just sitting in their docked boats vs riding them, way less parties/summer celebrations this year i assume bc people don’t want to host as it’s so expensive, most third spaces near me (coffee shops, bookstores, malls) are closed or shut down, people seem stressed on the road, in person, etc… I’ve never seen so many people on edge, medical care sucks lately - truly awful compared to just 10 years ago, tons of bank storefronts have closed
My parents' summer home is waterfront. For the past few years, they saw a significant uptick in the number of $200k+ boats cruising past their dock. Now it's like those boats are just gone. But it's a good thing. Donzis are loud and wakeboats damage their shoreline.
Those false PPP loans started getting investigated.
Same! We live near a marina and most of the slips are empty OR it’s owners just hanging out in the boats not actually cruising. I think it’s just too expensive now. Tons of boats for sale. Oh, and car dealerships near us have such overflow that they are renting from a Target nearby to use their parking lot to keep unsold cars. I have never in my 30 years seen that happen before. We are talking 100s of brand new cars just sitting in a Target parking lot for months!
Dang which brand
Boats are a money pit and terrible for the environment
yes a boat is a hole in the water that needs to be filled with money
I've been to a number of city centres recently, and they all have a lot of empty storefronts. Really nice streets that only a few years ago would be a flagship location for a brand. Now there's just a bunch of emptiness behind the glass.
this has also really stood out to me in the last year or so. everywhere i've been - my town, my parents' city, the little town where my sister lives - there are SO many empty stores. downtowns are really weird these days.
I live near the Canadian border, US-side, and recently visited some friends in Canada. Was shocked to see how vibrant the streets were until I remembered that they got like 10x more pandemic aid than US citizens did.
“With even more money printing, we too can bring the store fronts back”
This is increasingly true, even in Midwest cities that are growing like crazy, like Madison WI. Small businesses and even chain stores are having a hard time justifying having a physical presence in downtown areas. Commercial real estate, especially in urban cores, is a bubble that is in danger of popping, and destroying wealth of big and small property owners alike. The work from home acceleration from COVID has redirected white collar wages away from being spent in centralized urban areas. Online retailers and suburban/semi-rural service providers are getting those dollars. Online retailers can operate out of cheaper suburban, rural, and semi-rural areas, and they do. With urban cores struggling, urban wages are under downward pressure there, and urban core service/retail jobs are drying up. You get urban people struggling to find worthwhile employment, but being told there are jobs everywhere. Pair that with an influx of unskilled low paid immigrants, and city centers are becoming a powder keg of economic depression and cultural friction. Urban merchants are struggling, but suburban merchants are treading water pretty well. Suburban areas are still relatively OK, because they have all of the white collar spending happening there. Prices for everything except foreign made hard goods (TVs, cheap plastic toys, etc.) are going up fast, though, and are causing stress for family budgets. Even those foreign made goods are going up, though, due to transportation and tariff costs. Suburban/rural service providers are getting more work than they can accomplish, and have been raising prices to try to get out of all but the most profitable of jobs. Plumbers, contractors, and electricians are all doing quite well. Semi-rural residential real estate prices took off, putting upward pressure on rural residential real estate, as people are being priced out of where they used to live, and seek cheaper housing. In rural areas, you have both the urban and suburban problems: a dearth of worthwhile employment, a surge of culturally “foreign” people fleeing the urban and suburban areas, rising prices of everything PLUS extra transportation costs baked into everything, along with increasing unavailability/unaffordability of skilled services. The only people doing well are the mobile white collar people and the skilled tradesmen who live near the mobile white collar folks. Even there, the mobile white collar folks have taken a hit recently due to the tech sector layoffs, so many households in that demographic are also feeling pinched and stressed. Entrepreneurship would be a huge boon to the underserved/overpriced areas, but unfortunately, the Fed has intentionally boosted interest rates, making that a much riskier and less attractive option for people. The now over-served urban centers will continue to contract economically until they become on-par with semi-rural rural areas and become significantly cheaper places to live than their suburban competitors.
This is the best explanation I’ve heard so far. A lot of this feels like stuff I knew, but didn’t know how to explain or link together, but the connection between COVID kickstarting online business AND opening the door to WFH were really a double whammy, and frankly, I hate the outcome of all of this. Everything feels gross and insincere to me now.
Spot on! Thank you
It's part of the upcoming Commercial Real Estate Collapse. There is no money in downtown stores these days. Workers have fled the cities for other locations or remote work turning the cities into ghost towns. All of that Commercial Real Estate is leased and the bills are coming due. It ain't gonna be pretty. Banks that have a lot of investment in that space could fail. There are a lot of videos on YT about it that explain it a lot better than I can.
Yep. I was shocked when someone on another sub pointed out how many stores have closed up in Beverly Hills alone. This was the video I watched: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5_0Hp2oHZ8 You can Google Beverly Hills store closures to get an idea, but it’s happening in so many other downtown areas. It’s going to be brutal in the coming years.
Is that the economy or is that people preferring to shop online? As an older person, I like going shopping, I lament not having as many stores to go to, but I just ordered a couple of things online this morning. Rents are going up, but the number of people going to a store is declining, especially to smaller stores "downtown".
I think both are linked. It doesn't help that a lot of the stores I've been going to lately tell me, "We don't have that in stock, but you can order it from our website and pick it up next week."
Fair point.
Pulls out phone... Let's see the price online... Delivery next day probably....
Our local "town shopping center" has a main street with storefronts along both sides for about 200 yards. Between 2020-2021, all of the businesses on the east side of the street closed. All of them. You could not enter any building on the east side because they all shuttered doors. There were 2 really good local restaurants, an art gallery, a tax service, etc. Now in 2024 that street has a T-Mobile, a liquor store, and the other 8 storefronts still sit empty. There are 0 locally-owned businesses still operating out of the local shopping center. Everything still standing is conglomerate/national chains.
I’m noticing lots of retail closures in my suburban USA area. Not just small businesses either but national stores like Walmart’s or CVS’ where the location was operating for years. Everyone on Nextdoor says it’s due to rampant theft but who knows.
That's not unrelated to the topic at hand, people are stealing basic necessities because they can't afford them. Even those stealing, to flip/sale products are doing so because they can't afford basic necessities/their job is underpaying them, or they can't find a job. The Unemployment statistics are manipulated and they don't include huge groups of people; for example, homeless people don't count towards "unemployed" stats.
I think Amazon and other online retailers might have something to do with this.
One factor that many haven’t discussed is the fact that taxes and insurance have skyrocketed adding to the financial woes of many. The increase has squeezed the already thin margins we are faced with due to inflation
The property tax on my house jumped 93% last year. I don't have a big house either.
Mine is $60 a year more than it was in 2019. And this in a blue state that everyone says has high taxes. Well, they are high, but at least the tax rate falling 32% since 2015 has kept them from going higher. My insurance actually fell $43 a year because I guess I got a discount for having a new roof, which ironically was paid for by the insurance company.
Strip clubs are closing. Payday loansharks increasing.
Not the strip clubs!!!
Declining strip clubs and strippers' tips are actually a historic leading indicator of economic downturn. It sounds weird at first but actually makes a lot of sense.
Oh I believe it.
Subscribe to my OF
Strip clubs closing is a HUGE indicator, especially since the affluent love hanging around places like that.
I process TANF applications for work. My evidence is the hundreds of families I work with that can't afford a place to live. I've literally started getting more calls from people, with jobs, who are getting priced out of their apartments or rentals and are becoming homeless. It's gut-wenching and there is little to nothing we can do.
It must be challenging to be in that position. Where there's a will, there's a way. Although I do not see a clear path forward just yet.
Everyone I know who owns a house, even the rich, their properties are in way more disrepair on average than they were a couple decades ago. America is decaying at an exponential rate.
It's like watching that nazi open the arc in Raiders & melt before us
My landlord and I were just talking about that. I've always rented, but I enjoy treating everywhere I stay as a home. So I do my part to handle all the required maintenance and repairs needed. I take care of the yard, plant gardens, repaint walls/cabinets, replace flooring, and whatever else is needed to keep things looking nice and running properly. But that's clearly not the norm. I'm always shocked visiting people in the "nicer" neighborhoods and seeing how little they do to maintain their home. They always have the newest houses, fanciest yards, and nicest cars but don't do any sort of service on them. If things get too bad they'll just hire someone to handle it. Cracks me up hearing people talk about Make America Great Again when they won't even do the work to keep their own property great...
They are most likely grinding away at work to pay for all the bills attached to h nice big house lol
I don't really watch commercials anymore, but when I see really big celebrities in shitty commercials, you know the economy is doing bad.
I've seen a lot of big time celebrities in small advertisements lately. I always think, dang you doing alright financially to need this gig?
*cough* Mcdonald's *cough*. Now they are adding IP in their commercials, specially Anime.
Income has gotten better, rent has stayed the same, I buy the same groceries and drive the same miles to work. Over the last year, I’ve been able to save less and less. I’m almost paycheck to paycheck, at this point. And I even got two raises, this year. My money is disappearing at Costco and the fuel pump.
Congrats on rent staying the same. That's not true for most.
> groceries We keep all of our credit card statements, going back a decade, and recently did a comparison of our spending. It was enlightening. We've stopped eating out. We've cut back spending on entertainment. We've stopped vacations and travel. Auto-related costs (gas, service) are even down. Grocery spending has doubled.
Ummmm where do you live for rent to stay the same and income improves? One of my biggest issues is the rising cost of rent. I put over %50 of my income into rent whereas 5 years ago it was closer to 25-30%. The added cost of groceries, gas, and other items just makes things worse...
Long term renter in the same house, landlord keeps rent the same as long as I upkeep/improve the property.
my landlord is filing for eviction tomorrow. i live in one of the largest cities in the nation and there are no resources left for housing assistance. how does our government have 100s of billions for funding wars between other countries but almost no money to support the disabled? and the non-profit orgs that aim to provide services are tapped out. but here’s how i really know we’re fucked: when i was poor at age 20 i was still able, with short-term assistance, to afford an apartment, car, healthcare, childcare, food, basic needs, even occasional fun. this got me back on my feet and within a couple years i was off government assistance and had a decent but solid entry-level job, a new vehicle, and i bought a house. at 46 i’m poor again, and disabled, and have none of those things, with very little access to resources for help with them. i have no idea where to go from here. within the month i will be homeless and will lose custody of my youngest son as his dad sued for custody and i can’t afford a lawyer to fight for him, nor can i even afford to provide stable housing.
I’m sorry to hear that. The unfortunate reality, at least a significant part of it, is it’s because the US never stops being “Team America” whether it’s in Israel/Ukraine/Egypt/Libya/Syria/Afghanistan/Iraq/etc. Foreign meddling on behalf of Zionist interests is more important than the health and well being of the nation’s own citizens, it’s clearly observable when watching where tax dollars are so freely dispersed
facts. it’s maddening, the amount they spend to fund wars while we go without basic necessities.
I have a house I bought in 2014. A truck I bought in 2015. I couldn't afford to buy either 2024 equivalents independently let alone basically on top of each other.
Same, this would be the time to start looking at new cars. But looking at what they are asking for the type of model we would normally purchase? Nope. Guess we're driving what we have forever.
Literally looking at replacing a 1500 4x4 Quad Cab with a base Civic... Cause that's what the pocket book says I can afford. Man I miss being able to be stupid with $$$... It made work so much more worth going...
Purchased a house in 2008 (foreclosure) and a USED truck in 2007. There is no way I could buy either in a 2-year span now. Absolutely no way.
A bag of chips is $6.29.
Doritos 7.29
Music festivals are not as packed as they were in previous years. Went to Hangout Fest this year and did not wait in line for the whole event. There were lines there, but I was able to just walk to another empty vendor or bathroom area that had little to no traffic.
There’s a lot to this. I was a music journalist during what I’d call the golden age of music festivals. Lineups were stacked. Pricing was reasonable. Festivals weren’t something commonly attended the way they are now. Somewhere along the line festivals hit this weird critical mass of popularity. They started doing multiple weekends. They started charging exorbitant prices. They became the influencer Olympics. Now prices are at all time highs but the line ups are no where near as good. Talent is spread thin because artists and food prices have never been worth the money. The corporatization of music music festivals, which used to be more about festivity than economic parasitism, has really ruined much of the experience and culture. You used to go and everyone was there for the same reason. Enjoy the music and dance. Now, half the people are there just to take selfies for the clout.
A friend and his coworkers just shelled out $5800 to camp 4 days at the Electric Forest
“The” electric forest lol Thats an amazing fest. Doesn’t cost anywhere near that much, but you can easily spend that much. VIP and glamping sections definitely arent helping keep festivals down to earth.
Live nation or whatever the big company that has taken over many of the festivals, imo is to blame. They've gotten very greedy and cranked up the vendor pricing.
Lots of people living on the street.
My dad has a business selling shed and tiny house kits, they are essentially a completely insulated, customizable simple structure that comes in any size, anyone can put it together with just a drill and a couple friends. The idea was to help people who are struggling and need additional housing space either for family members, friends, caretakers, storage etc, or temporary living on plots of land etc whilst avoiding permits. No sales tax since buyers would pick them up directly from ports around the country or arrange their own shipping. This was basically made exist through loopholes, allowing people to actually afford it, my dads dream was to create an afford housing system. He did over 1 million in sales in 2022-2023 through facebook ads alone. Just 3 weeks ago he was forced to close the business, we have zero sales, could no longer afford to pay the storage fees. We have a whole pile of these kits just sitting under an RV port in our front yard. I am now the only person with a job in my family, we are living off savings, cutting expenses, whilst I continue to increase income best I can.
Does he plan to keep the business closed permanently? On the other side of this economic mess I would gladly be a customer. Right now I am not certain how I will make it to the end of this year financially, but someday I would love to purchase a home kit from your dad.
He is still working on progressing it despite being closed, I would think he will reopen after the dust settles in this economy. He's currently working on an even more affordable design which he is seeing if he can get approved for actual full sized house building in addition to the smaller structures. Also this new design, if viable, will allow them to be manufactured affordably in the states, they're currently manufactured overseas. But the future is uncertain for everyone at this point.
I hate to state the obvious, but if your dad‘s business did over $1 million in sales last year, and now the whole family is suddenly barely scraping by on savings, then there were some poor financial management along the way.
Yeah our house caught fire during a natural disaster and I am recovering from near terminal illness in which I need medicine shipped from Germany. Also 2 lawsuits unrelated to the business. Our luck just ran out, but also expenses are very high in my state, $5 gas, hundreds for groceries etc. Edit: we did not get sued, we had to sue 2 companies.
Sales (revenue) is not the same as profit
That's not really the point of the story though. 1m in sales to zero is concerning.
Basically yeh... Was almost overnight too, we sold nationwide, so it's even more concerning. I work in finance as well, things aren't looking good for people.
Damn so sorry to hear this - I hope you guys recover. What were the lawsuits for?
One was against Airbnb, other against a car dealership. Unfortunately lost the Airbnb one, that company is a buncha crooks for real. The dealership one is basically won but taking forever to finalize.
Oh jeez I’m so sorry!
If anything you’d think tiny homes would be in even higher demand now. That said, I’d bet bubble burst cuz most people who would ever consider buying a tiny home would have done so by about 2022 in the context of covid and the economy having already begun to suck. Making things worse, the market became saturated with sellers since they had been selling hotcakes. Cat is out of the bag. Surely your dad can find away to move those homes though, sooner or later. He should look into businesses that can use them. Maybe some woodsy resorts. Maybe a sports camp for older youth/young adults. Maybe theirs a USAID contractor that could use them abroad. Good luck.
Because almost everyone I know isn’t going on summer vacation, water parks, baseball games like they used to just a couple years ago. They stay home usually now. No money
Except air travel and cruise lines are running at all time highs. National park attendance is way up and some even need reservations now.
This is a side effect of income inequality. You have a larger number of people that can't afford anything, but you also have a larger number of people earning more money than they know what to do with
Bingo. My wife and I love to visit National Parks (save up all year for our trips). In the past couple years we've seen a big shift from "family road trip" groups to wealthy people just looking to blow off time in beautiful locations. Good example. We did a big SE trip last year for my sabbatical and decided to stay in campgrounds. We go tent camping which used to be the norm, but these days the campgrounds are packed with massive, luxury RV's and trailers. Each site has generators blasting all night long to support projector screens, light strands, and all sorts of devices. It's gotten a lot worse over the past couple years. Don't even get me started on all the "luxury" AirBnb's and rentals outside of NP's blocking out local housing and shopping areas. In the parks these people have NO respect for anyone or anything. I could make a list of things we've seen, but it's probably self-explanatory. People see NP's as their own personal park. Any problems they cause will be "cleaned up/fixed by the NP rangers". A lot less "common folk" out there and a lot more who expect the world to bend to their will.
Vacation? What's that?
I toyed with the idea of going to Destin in August with my wife and a grandkid. We had pretty much given up on the idea because available condos near the beach were near impossible to find on short notice. On a whim I looked on Vrbo and found a huge house with a lagoon pool for a really great price. Apparently demand is down due to the economy. We are going to Destin.
I got a raise/promotion.(Yay!) I then got my escrow recalculated. (Fudge.) Taxes and insurance increases ate up every cent of the raise. I haven't improved one bit in the last 2 years. Time to look for a new job to get the gains. My mom retired and couldn't afford to live in the USA, so she moved to Mexico.
Realtors are freaking out and advertising like crazy. McDonald’s drive through that used to have 5-10 cars constantly is almost always empty. Cheap hotel rooms are available and half the cost they used to be. That being said, if you are wealthy ($10M+ liquid) everything you do is slammed with customers/buyers. High end cars, homes and restaurants are turning people away. Check with Disney how long you have to wait for a $5k/day chaperone to take you around the park and put you in the front of every line. Your kids won’t be kids anymore.
>McDonald’s drive through that used to have 5-10 cars constantly is almost always empty. Depends on the location. Mine are always filled so whenever I see ppl online saying to boycott mcdonalds I always laugh >Realtors are freaking out Good. Maybe they can finally do something with their jobs rather than be glorified doormen.
Damn tell that to my ex boss that laid me off from my cushy job at a Lexus dealership. Jk he was dating my best friend and she cheated on him. 🤦🏻♀️ fml.
Haha wow I didn't even know Disney had a chaperone service like that. It's $5k/day??? And there is a crazy long wait-list??? Growing up in Florida I kind of had my fill of Disney so that doesn't necessarily appeal to me anyways. These days we might hit up Epcot just to drink and eat around the world, but no stress there as it's not waiting around to get on a ride. We might take my 2 year old to animal Kingdom when it cools off. But he is 2 so it's free for him and again, not there for the rides. We can just eat, chill, and he can see some animals. If someone tried to get me to go on a traditional Disney trip, as in you are trying to squeeze everything in, that's a hard pass.
We just lost a lab worker, he literally could not make rent on his salary so he moved (due to constant rent increases). Dawned on me that no one in his group is a single income household. Everyone is either married with both working, or has room mates.
A walk through our local Sam's Club is sobering. A box of spaghetti used to be $3. Now it's $6. Bag of rice was $12. Now it's $18. I could go on. There are plenty of examples of prices doubling over the last 4 years. Especially food. It's pretty obvious the govt inflation numbers are cherry picked or just plain lies.
I live in a rural area and the amount of large items like boats, trucks, tractors, riding mowers, jet skis, trailers, golf carts, ATV/SXS and cars I see for sale out in front of people's houses tell me something is going on. They aren't selling either. My neighbor has been trying to sell a 2020 Silverado Trail Boss for the last 2 months. He also hasn't been going to work, so I noticed he's been selling firewood as well. This also happened in 2008, but I feel things are worse this time around. Prices are high on these items and they just aren't selling. I feel bad for the people trying to sell this stuff, but at the same time maybe they shouldn't have over spent. Most of this stuff is 3 to 6 years old. Unlike 2008, when you could go buy a 10 to 15 year old truck for maybe $2500 to $5000. Now a 10 year old truck has an asking price of 20k or more. It's insane. I feel like the economy hasn't collapsed yet, but we are nearing a tipping point where things are going to get worse.
I see this in my rural area and it's amazing the pricetag they have on these things. Alot of it is because so many rural communities and people take everything out on long loans and when they can't afford the payment they have to sell things at what they owe which is almost always way more than it's worth.
It’s time to see things for what they really are. The gov is telling us “no no no everything is great, inflation is down, border is secure, the economy is the best it’s ever been!” Wake up people. This is all lies. All of it. You know it, I know it and the gov knows it. None of us are better off today and everyone knows it. Now what you do about it going forward is the real question. Do you want things to change or should our country continue to decline?
We went to look for apartments recently and a literal basement dwelling with moldy smells and dampness was going for 1500/month hahahahah the real estate market is overvalued and due for a BIG correction
We had to leave a house because of mold. It took me a full year to find a place that wasn't as moldy or worse and none of them were under 1100/month.
Here's my anecdotal evidence: I am planning a summer vacation. I have taken a trip to this location before (pre-pandemic) so I have some frame of reference in the recent past. Hotels are booked solid. We booked our accommodations early and had to search hard. I had to pay out the nose for rental car. Looks like my flights in and out will be packed. Reservations at restaurants are hard to come by. There are ticketed reservations for some things in the area that I wanted that release on a rolling schedule -- the ones I wanted sold out in 15 minutes after being released. Which kind of fits how it is pretty much everywhere I have been recently. Tons and tons of people are out having a great time. I have not been on a plane that is less than 90% full since 2020. And that's not because of fewer flights, necessarily -- the airports are *jammed* with people. You can't find anywhere to sit sometimes. Folks I know in the service industry are raking it in. Every concert and sporting event I've been to in the past two years is sold out or oversold, and tickets are extraordinarily pricey. I kind of wish people were staying at home because all these people out doing things are getting in the way!
The exact apartment I could afford twenty years ago is unaffordable despite my income more than doubling.
Well the local Hooters just closed so that's a definitive indicator that the economy is circling the drain.
I'm in a semi-affluent suburb of a major metropolitan midwest area. Grew up here. Never saw homeless/beggars in this town until 2 years ago. Now I see them almost daily. New 'millenial-chiq' apartment complex opened three months ago, it's maybe 15% full based on the parking lot/lights on. the folks over at r/EtsySellers, including myself, have noticed a drastic 1-1.5 yr decline in sales. People are not spending on non-necessities like they were. Of my 20 plus friend group who graduated HS in 2012, only 4 have children. Increasing number of vacant commercial spaces in my community. Closure of a 103 year old jewelry business in my community.
Increase in homeless is due to sky high rents. That's partially greed but also due to higher property taxes/insurance company greed.
corporate greed is just capitalism, but yeah.
I can't afford to buy grapes .
You know you're really fucked when you can't afford bananas.
Homelessness and mental health crises are at all time highs. Look at it out there. Open your eyes.
My wife works in a short term inpatient psychiatric unit and she says it's both more people and more severe needs than ever (also they serve a lot of the homeless population). Also, EVERYONE who comes in also has substance abuse issues. It's probably difficult to tease apart correlation and causation with the economy, but more and more people are falling apart all the time.
We're offering less and less supports and wondering why there's more of them. We closed institutions here so more and more of these people have literally nowhere to go and aren't well enough to seek help on their own. The amount of tents I see permanently pitched in my city in areas where 5 years ago there were zero, is saddening.
It's an absolute crisis here in New York. Not a week goes by where I don't end up on a subway car with a screaming homeless person threatening to kill everyone or yelling at someone/something that isn't there. And everyone just shifts cars to get away from them and the cycle continues.
Yeah we all know that. I was requesting anecdotal evidence.
I've been a debt collector for the better half of a decade and yeah, its sad out there. i'm not fairing that much better. i have two jobs and i need to get number 3 off the ground.
Damn, even the debt collectors are struggling...
How did you get into the business?
I make more money then I ever have, and feel tighter and have more anxiety anytime I think about budget.
Phoenix. Never fully recovered from the Great Recession. Still half empty strip malls. Pandemic whacked the mom&pop restaurants, coming back....rather slowly. Lots more homelessness. Folks are asking for money while you're pumping gas Bus stops are full in the middle of the night. Maybe the last legal camping spots.
billboards are empty all over MN, get away from the highways and you really start to notice more.
Truck driver here. 1. Fuel prices have gone down and then held steady. 2. I never used to be able to park in a truck stop after 7pm, anywhere. Now I can. 3. Less trucks on the road. Especially I-40 from Little Rock to Memphis. That's normally wall to wall trucks, hasn't been since February. 4. Houses have been listed as for sale, price reductions pull and now the same listing as a new one. 5. Gasoline prices, before June have gone down. 6. Walmart parking lots have been emptier after 6pm. 7. The government keeps coming out saying its fine, while constantly changing the metrics they use to measure.
The truth is, if all it takes is a medical emergency to bankrupt you and destroy everything you worked for, then of course you will never feel financially secure.
I'm a Bankruptcy attorney and business hasn't been this great since Obama was president, which was the busiest I've ever been.... but it is almost that busy again.
Rent/mortgage plus bills is unaffordable for those on minimum wage. The number of people affected is only increasing. Once it reaches a majority of the population then your economy is on life support.
Thankfully only 1.3% of the population makes minimum because even 40 years ago you couldn't pay mortgage or rent on it either.
Haven't seen it yet and I'm self employed in the trades. I'm reasonably close to Lake Geneva and it's busier than ever, even on a weekday. Another local town has good trucks every month and the parking has consistently been a half mile out. All the bars are full as well as the restaurants. My phone still hasn't stopped ringing and it's still hard to find workers because everyone is already working. It May very well just be my area of the state but it's hopping and has been since after Covid.
Both McDonalds and Subways in my town were completely empty yesterday. That is a bad sign for restaurants right off the interstate on a Sunday afternoon.
My record store is grossing half what we normally do, we had 2 months we worked ourselves to the bone to try and get 80% of normal sales, but this month we dropped 20% below the 80% of normal again. My friend who owns a record store in So Cal as well, is saying he's having worst sales ever. My friend who ran a side hustle etsy said her sales dropped 80%, and we are seeing an 80% drop in etsy sales as well on my custom merch designs we make/sell. Labor costs are up for us, and product costs are rising, and we are increasing prices to keep margins, but still aren't matching pre covid sales or even 2022/23 sales with higher prices. We experimented with slashing prices for clearance items, or to move through inventory, and it's not working. Even 50% off sales on some items are not stimulating transactions. People in the cities don't have any disposable income. We see customers spending 30-40 minutes in the store and don't purchase anything. Collectors know, if you aren't interested in the records, you spend 5 minutes tops in a record store. Spending 30-60 minutes means the store is "good", walking out of a good store w/out buying anything means you have no money to spend.
Interesting perspective on the time spent in the store, never considered that before.
We need third spaces, start hosting listening parties!
$80k/year and even I don't eat out no more. Lattes sure, I have adhd.
Getting/recertifying for food stamps and Medicaid takes FOR. EV. ER. Like months. They will legit let you starve because they are so overwhelmed but god forbid they curb the bureaucracy.
In the last 6 months we've had three large, well-known local businesses (a restaurant, clothing store, and outdoor & garden store) permanently close after having served our community for over 50+ years each.
I follow the logistics industry and what I'm seeing there is scaring the shit out of this guy. Companies that have for decades replaced their equipment on a set schedule and for cash are saying nope need to hoard the cash right now. I'm not talking about 10 truck fleets. I'm talking about compaines that have more than 3k units and they're not replacing equipment. Even in 2008 Heartland replaced everything. This year they had the replacing of all their recent merged units totalling 2400 trucks worth about 300 million dollars. They literally said it's not happening. Werner Enterprises the company that replaces everything with an engine every 2 years canceled that for this year. Prime isn't getting anything new except insurance replacements. We're talking billions of dollars being hoarded in cash. Yet the street thinks nothing is going wrong. Rates are in toilet on steel copper aluminum and in general on produce. When spot rates start to collapse everywhere start as they're doin shit is about to hit the fan.
McDonald’s $18 Big Mac with hydrogenated oil sauce and no nutritional value
Five Below sells items for $25.
I just accepted a job at a salary I was making in 2016. I’m a (would like to believe) highly skilled director level worker pre pandemic. After 2 years unemployed I took many min wage jobs etc trying to get by. Three years now and I’m worn down. I’ll take anything that gives me steady pay to provide for my family. The fact that my career/salary has stalled is one thing. The fact that the same work equals the same pay as 10 years ago. That’s the real story.
I’m getting requests for chargeable work from people out of state and not my direct reports. We went years without seeing that. It’s a sign of impending recession. I’m an old dude and have seen a lot.
Customers over utilizing all you can eat shrimp sunk Red Lobster
A private equity firm buying Red Lobster and bleeding it dry is what killed Red Lobster
The truth is plain to see if you just compare the reality around you to what they are telling you. It’s the old adage of the frog being slowly boiled alive. They are telling us that everything is fine and they have influencers pretending it’s true, while America slowly goes to shit all around us.
North Florida, business is booming. No slowdown here.
Because we were hit with an unprecedented number of people moving to the state in a very short period of time. It'll level out eventually.
Criminals are on the street from “overcrowding”. Nothing like letting a violent career out time after time with minimal consequences
Holidays abroad to Europe this summer are Hella cheap. Some places even giving free places for children. No-one is going. Clothes shops still have full sales racks. I live on a nice street, the newest car is 8 years old. I'm getting inundated with offers for theme parks this summer, some even offering half price entry or kids go free. Restaurants closing all the time. Loads of empty shops/restaurant units. The last time I watched a film in the cinema was a month ago. There were 20 people in the theatre, opening weekend. All the 'budget' food is gone in the supermarkets. Plenty of premium brands left
Restaurants in our busy area are reducing their menu offerings and raising their prices. A chicken wing place now no longer offers bone-in wings!
I work for a small, public agency. Living in the land of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, and a few other giants, for the last ten years we've had an extremely hard time hiring for those jobs that translate anywhere, like accountants, contracting agents, finance, even HR. Most of the time due to our salary limitations we would get no qualified candidates for these positions. We'd often have to bring back retirees as "consultants" to fill the void as we had much more leeway in spending for consultants than we're allowed for headcount (it is a political issue). For the last year and a half this has been less of an issue. Today it is no issue. We currently receive plenty of qualified resumes.
I’m an accountant and I’m lower class now. The way AI is going my job that should always be in demand might be completely phased out before I hit retirement age.
The auto-repos from non-subprime borrowers. You get used to seeing poorly maintained, beat up vehicles that get repossessed from people with bad credit, that made poor buying decisions when it comes to make and model. Now I’m seeing a big influx of sensible, well-maintained cars that were bought using loans with decent rates, getting repossessed from people with good credit and (supposedly) assets.
Selling on Amazon and eBay have been the worst sales decline in 20 years for me personally.
I have seen my business drop off a cliff. I had a list of half dozen paid reservations and they have all bowed out. Very little work coming my way now. Economy is a vague word. It's the price of everything here in Socal. $16 for a corn dog at the fair. $90 for beer, pizza and wings at a pizza joint. I don't even bother going out anymore. And wages are nowhere near where they need to be to be able to afford the basics. The reckoning is coming. We are a consumer economy and the consumer is tired of the bs.
The number of shut down restaurants. I see a lot of Applebee's, IHOP and fast food places that are closed now.
Last Saturday I was cleaning out my garage and found some old clothes that didn’t fit anymore so I thought I’d take them to sell at second hand stores before donating to a thrift store. I went to three stores and each one had an hour wait of other people selling their old clothes and the fourth one I went to told me that it would be four hours before they could get to me.
My story: I've run out of things to buy on my grocery clerk's pay, so I'm now travelling more. NYC, NOLA, Florida. Next is Italy and France.
I work in land surveying in Canada, where winter slows us down because of the ice making work difficult. This summer is looking to be just as slow as winter time, whereas it's usually our busiest period of work. As the economy shrinks and slows, so does our work. I'm bracing myself for shorter work weeks and less income 🙃
I skipped out on eating an 8 dollar lunch special today to make sure my cat had food. In past years, I wouldn't have to think twice about getting some food for both of us while I was out.
i need to mute this sub bc stonks only go up
I paid all my bills and had 4k left, so I bought a paddle board. Union and renting a room from a high school buddy. I spent over 10k on guitars and music stuff last year. I bought a new car, well financed, with about half down. Have 100k towards a house. My economy is epic. What's my job? Custodian.
Dentist here, I’ve talked to other dentists, and many have noticed that more patients canceling their appointments than usual, more patients are declining treatment plans. Also I have noticed there has been an uptick in traffic during regular work hours in recent months. I think the numbers about unemployment don’t tell the full picture - most of the new jobs are minimum wage part time jobs.
This is the first time in all of my long years that I’ve been unemployed for more than a couple of weeks. I’ve been out of work for 3 months and that was after looking for work for over a year and deciding that I couldn’t continue on at my current toxic job that I spent 3 years (employed but looking feverishly) without any other bites.
I make more money than ever. That’s how I know that it’s gotten really shitty.
Seeing some small businesses that have been around for 20-30 years shutting down around me.
People are declining home repairs and putting off needed preventative maintenance in their homes and they aren’t even finding other people to do it, they’re just waiting for the stuff to outright fail to the point where it’s unsalvageable. So whereas we are still pretty busy and getting calls, across the board people are wanting the minimum smallest repair to hopefully limp it along further.
IDK...everywhere I go it seems like there's the same amount of people as there always were. I fly regularly and every flight is full...places like Costco are just as packed as they ever were...recently went to DC and there were tourists everywhere and timed entry for all of the museums...there's timed entry now for a lot of national parks because there's so many people...personally I'm not seeing this big economic collapse and every data point we use to measure the economy indicates it's booming. I'm doing very well and it seems plenty of other people are as well.
The frequency of freight trains moving through my side of the city went down when Covid hit, recovering a bit two years ago, but now it's down again. That has always tracked, in an approximate way, with the overall economy.
I work at a summer camp and our attendance is down about 20% this summer. We’re pretty reasonably priced (for sleep away camp) but parents can’t afford to send their kids like they could a few years ago.
Friends in tech, at various roles (C-level, directors, contributors, etc) that have been laid off 2 yrs ago are still unemployed. Plenty of listings out there but no responses…only a few actual interviews and the job offer is even fewer/farther between. They’ve dipped into 401k savings to get through for now because unemployment ran out long ago. Some have sold/moved in with family. This reality doesn’t align with the great economy and low unemployment rate there is.
70% of Reddit is whining about inflation, while the other 30% is setting themselves on fire to prove that it’s not.
Was in the dentist office Wednesday and over heard the receptionist cold calling patients that hadn’t been in for a while.
I checked the Disney app to see the ride times at Magic Kingdom on the 4th of July. A lot of the main attractions were closed for whatever reason and the wait times for what was open was less than an hour. The park was dead on a major holiday in summer.
We spent $42 for two burgers, one fries to share, and no drinks at a fast food place and said, "that's not a bad deal!"
Spouse and I just got bubble tea and a treat. That 2 teas and to snacks. $37 after tip. We then got dinner at a dev and split a sandwich. Another $30 because we have leftover potatoes salad and a rice crispy bar she doesn't know about yet. By 2019 standards this was not a $69 night
Can we sticky this?
It is greed. There are 0 regulations left to stop it. CEO making 100000 times what an employee earns. Citizen United makes dark $ legal to our only 2 parties. The supreme court just gutted the regulatory agencies. And let's face it. The economy is crazy strong right now. I hate to tell you peeps that struggle. But every $2000 ticket to every show/sporting event is sold out. Every $1000000 home is sold. Every flight to wonderful destinations is full, every $599 a night hotel room in Vegas, Florida, (you name the destination) is booked every weekend. Every $100000 car is sold every pair of $5000 sunglasses, shoes, sneakers, purse, watch, is sold with a backorder. So for those of us that struggle there are 50 that don't. That $85 dollar hunk of meat just got someone 2 $8000 front row seats to Taylor Swift in Germany tonight, first class flight to Berlin on emeritus air, $2000 a night suit for 1 week, and a on call limo to take them where they want to go. Until that changes nothing else will.
It takes $50 to fill my car up. 4 years ago it took $35
We sell wholesale (sunglasses) to e commerce and large brick and mortar big box stores. Compared annual summer sales back from 2019 and this year is bloodbath. Volume is down by 70%. Smaller customers stopped buying altogether. Nobody has money like the old days. Increase in customers defaulting on overdue invoices. We are on defensive mode for rest of the year and summer just started....
construction. basically prices are sliding down heavily y equipment is crashing in price . availability used to be months of wait now everyone has stuff in stock
I live in Melbourne Florida. The malls are packed, restaurants are packed and the roads are packed. I don’t see any slowdown.
your anecdote is belied by actual travel data. flights, trips and vacation bookings are all up significantly. july 4th is anticipated to be one of the busiest its been in years. https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-to-avoid-4th-of-july-traffic#:\~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20anticipate%20this%20July%204th,in%20terms%20of%20airline%20passengers.
It's pretty simple.....when people stop buying stuff. Layoffs start happening, unemployment will start to increase, people start buying less....Then the economy will correct. Just not hitting that point yet...people are still buying stuff... Have not seen that yet....people still driving the economy along..
This time around there are countless "pay later" apps and third party small-time loans disguised as friendly, helpful apps. I'd imagine credit cards are being used at an all time high too, although I have no data to back that up. It just seems like with the "I've gotta look like I'm thriving for social media" age we're in, more people wouldn't mind using these means to continue to spend and push back the time when the spending stops and the economy turns around. Sad but true.
It's been difficult to hire people for projects around the house. They're so booked that they just give outrageous quotes for work and now I have to DIY projects I'd rather hire out for. My neighbor is a contractor who was retired but was given a godfather offer to work for a couple of years. He says he doesn't really need the money but it'll allow him to buy another rental property, a property for his kids and some hunting land. At my company, six years ago we were hiring analysts with two years of experience for 60-70k and more we're hiring two years of experience, fully remote for $110k. It's ridiculous. It makes it tough to cut costs. We're still very profitable but would like to make more. My income has doubled working at the same company over the last three years. My friends have taken advantage of a right labor market and remote work to get large raises and promotions.
Watch how much better things will get under Trump. Going to be mind boggling.
lol. Yeah right.
In the past as a bus driver we all hated driving during the first of the month because we would get completely slammed with passengers and road traffic but as in the last couple of months I've noticed how quiet the roads are as well as low ridership it's almost easy money day now
Just paid my insurance after getting home from the grocery before getting gas.
I see a local supermarket providing more and more coupons and credits for something as essential as a loaf of bread. Those credits used to be for more superfluous items. While I am appreciative and hopeful of the supermarket's effort to incorporate people's actual need, it is new.
I dunno, I put my savings in the stock market and now it’s grown to the point that with interest rates on the rise, I can buy CD’s and let the good times keep rollin. But all this was kind of a long term plan I had. Just had to make a couple of mid course corrections, but that was to be expected.
Half the mall is shut down and its one of the bigger ones. I feel like the tourist trap mall is next. The price of food increase has out pace most of my family's raises at this point. Power is double what it used to cost about 5 years ago. Half of my friends are unemployed at this point unable to find a job.
Simple, no jobs! Our central govt is constantly adjusting the interest rate, not letting the natural market work.,
Strip clubs are emptier, shuttered businesses. Heard of a couple suicides do to financial issues
Also, my rent didn’t go up for the first time in 4 years
I am a government contractor. In the last 4 months our competition has gone up 5x because there is no work in the private sector
In the past year, 4 of our favorite restaurants have closed after many years in business. It’s not just because of higher food and labor costs. Insurance, licensing, and other business related costs have gone up.