Since "the financial crisis of 2008," we've been told that our economy is "recovering."
In reality, it seems like the economy has been in a coma, on life support. In my opinion, that life support has been in the form of printing money, ultra-low crisis-level interest rates, false statistics and propping up of the stock market via company stock buybacks and lots of lies by politicians and financial "experts."
What is really happening is that more and more people have less and less money to spend. The dollar has also lost a lot of buying power and prices keep rising. In food products, some of this extra cost is "hidden," by smaller sizes or cheaper ingredients.
Its even more complex than that. Everything from farming, to packaging to delivery takes a lot of energy - mainly the burning of oil, diesel and gasoline. Without going into much detail, it involves EROEI ... the Energy Return on Energy Invested. Simply put, the cheap abundant oil days are over. That's why the energy companies are involved in more-expensive, faster-depleting, less-environment-friendly oil extracting methods, such as fracking and digging up Canada's oil sands or tar sands.
While the complexities of the energy and oil markets are a bit off the subject of this article, it plays a significant role in the prices of everything, and will likely be attributed to much higher prices in the years ahead.
To add even more complexity, prices of real estate, stocks, rent, college tuition and much more are overinflated, and there are major problems brewing in the global financial markets.
And the problems can be compounded by demographics (less spending by an aging population / baby boomers) and the loss of our manufacturing base over the past several decades.
And now - here are some reported NUMBERS of stores closing....
TOYS R US - Closing 735 Stores
RITE AID - Closing 600 Stores
BEST BUY - Closing 257 Stores
The GAP - Closing 200 Stores
FOOT LOCKER - Closing 100 Stores
K-MART - Closing 64 Stores
Malls across America are also closing. And some being demolished.
While the large name-brand and mall stores are closing, it seems Dollar General stores are popping up all over the place to take up the slack. Seems logical. Smaller, cheaper stores, with a much cheaper operating expense, built where land is cheaper and providing fewer luxury and more of the "necessity" items.
By the end of 2018, there may be over 900 new Dollar General stores in the United States.
