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Monday, July 23, 2018

Amazon Sets Sales Record While Average American Digs Deeper Into Debt


Poor Man Survival

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Amazon just held its big July Sale & Reaped Tons of Free PR

 

Despite near record debt levels, Americans set new spending levels for Amazon, making Jeff Bezos the richest man on the plant!

 91 percent of all retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar stores, and that means that online retailers only account for about 9 percent of all retail sales.  Sadly, there is a much bigger reason why thousands of retail stores are closing down and millions upon millions of square feet of retail space is now sitting empty all over America.  The mighty U.S. consumer base was once primarily made up of middle class Americans, but the middle class in America has been on a slow, steady death spiral for many years.

So now the experts tell us that retailers that cater to high income and low income Americans are thriving, and those that once did so well selling to the middle class are fading away

The middle is disappearing — low and middle-income customers increasingly shop at discounters and dollar stores, forcing retailers that once served these customers, like Bon-Ton and its subsidiary brands, to close shop,” analysts from intelligence firm Gartner L2 wrote in a recent report on department stores.

The slow decline of the middle class in America has had an impact on retailers that haven’t adapted to the change. Increasingly, the most successful businesses in the sector have become more distinctly split into two sections: luxury and budget stores.

When I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone that I knew was “middle class”, and the mall was the place to go on the weekends.

But now shopping malls are dying all over the country.  In fact, one new report says that shopping malls have not been this empty in the U.S. since we were coming out of the last recession

Not  long ago, I shared with you some absolutely shocking numbers about the decline of the middle class, and I would like to share them with you again now…1 78 million Americans are participating in the “gig economy” because full-time jobs just don’t pay enough to make ends meet these days.

> In 2011, the average home price was 3.56 times the average yearly salary in the United States.  But by the time 2017 was finished, the average home price was 4.73 times the average yearly salary in the United States.

>In 1980, the average American worker’s debt was 1.96 times larger than his or her monthly salary.  Today, that number has ballooned to 5.00.

> In the United States today, 66 percent of all jobs pay less than 20 dollars an hour.

Pundits still point out that many Americans at the bottom of the financial ladders still find they are better off NOT working as they are likely [depending on which state they live in] to take in more in health care benefits, food stamps, cash, housing assistance, etc. from the welfare system as opposed to finding a job and its related commuting expenses…[in Michigan, for example, the cost of auto insurance in Detroit is so expensive that 20% of its residents go without it as their low-wage jobs do not generate enough income to pay for food, shelter AND insurance].
 
 

>102 million working age Americans do not have a job right now.  That number is higher than it was at any point during the last recession.

>>Earnings for low-skill jobs have stayed very flat for the last 40 years.

> >Americans have been spending more money than they make for 28 months in a row.

>>At this point, the average American household is nearly $140,000 in debt.

>> Almost 51 million U.S. households “can’t afford basics like rent and food”.

>22 percent of all Americans cannot pay all of their bills in a typical month.

Today, U.S. households are collectively 13.15 trillion dollars in debt.  That is a new all-time record.

This is why so many U.S. retailers are failing.

The once mighty U.S. consumer base is being hollowed out because the middle class in America is being eviscerated…Costs of supporting the government, especially at state levels, continue to erode the incomes of Americans.

Inflation number crunchers rarely take into account the never-ending rise in the cost of government at local levels to average Americans.  These “hidden” costs take place in jumps in government mandated utility fees, automobile registration fees, various user fees, park entrance fees, water and sewer price hikes, etc.

Yes, the wealthy are doing quite well for the moment, but an increasing number of signs indicate that things are about to take a negative turn for them as well.

The middle class will continue to die, retailers all over the country will continue to go out of business, and shopping malls will continue to turn into ghost towns.



Bruce the Poor Man & Contrarian

 

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3 comments:

Larry said...

Historically, most Americans always repeat the mistakes of the past.

Ron said...

Love the photo! How many parents have thought of this at one time or another?! In any event...many state governments gouge their citizens heavily. CA, NY, and MI come to mind most often and CA in particular has seen thousands of its people flee the state in recent decades to escape anti-freedom laws, high taxes and ridiculous real estate prices-it just isn't worth it!

Ron said...

Ironically, in the US worker productivity rose by 65% from 1979 to 2013 but 80% of workers had hourly wage increases of just 8.2% and wages actually fell for Blacks during the Obama presidency while the numbers of food stamp and welfare recipients rose to nearly 48 million...yet the leftist media continued its praise of this would-be monarch.