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Here’s the capper: San Francisco won’t allow grocery stores to close.
San Francisco Is Going To Make It Illegal For Stores to Close (msn.com)
My father operated a grocery store from 1979 until the 1990s in Santa Cruz. It is a brutally difficult, margin-challenged business. Unless it’s Whole
PaycheckFoods, it doesn’t make much, if any money. When you add up the pilferage and shoplifting, spoilage, shifting customer base (people aging out, moving out of the area, etc.), it becomes very difficult to close the doors.Food for thought: what if stores like CVS, Target and even fast foods are classified as “providing groceries?” They all do, to some extent. Are they subject to that law?
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Both Biden and Trump hurt the country as President. Biden for immigration, job creation and inflation; Trump for voting rights, abortion and climate change:
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And while I’m piling on the Hypocrite-In-Chief, Gavin Newsom has pressed for $20/hour for fast food workers while at the same time (a) making an exception for his billionaire buddy and campaign donor who owns Panera:
and (b) only pays his own restaurant workers $16/hour:
Gavin Newsom’s Restaurant Offers $16 Hourly Wage to Employee (msn.com)
Why does he do that? Well…why does a dog lick himself? Because he can.
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What’s interesting to me is that the
illegalundocumented immigrant population of America has been stable (supposedly) over the last five years, estimated to be in the 11.4 million range. And yet…there have been 7.2 million apprehensions of illegal undocumented immigrants during Biden’s term (Snopes admits that it is 6x what it was during Trump’s term), along with another 2.8 million who have never been apprehended. About 40% overall have been repatriated to their home countries.My math is 7.2 + 2.8 – 4.0 = Net increase of six million undocumented immigrants. So why is the undocumented immigrant population still considered to be stable at 11.5 million or so? What happened to the net increase of six million undocumented immigrants?
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Government expenditures are now about 25% of GDP, a non-WW high. Without debt financed growth in G (government expenditures for non-economists), the economy would not be growing. But we’re more politicized than ever. Why? Because when the government becomes the most important part of the economy, each fight over who controls the government becomes that much more important. And when the politicians see citizens as revenue streams rather than customers, there’s no end to what the state is owed.
Zeihan’s take is that our demographic shift means we’ve gone from consumer consumption by the Boomers, GenX and Millenials to a saving economy as the large part of the population retires. Here’s his take on American demographics and its effect on the economy:
His comment towards the end of this video is instructive…as America’s manufacturing base reshores, companies will need to attract workers younger than in college…and younger than in high school, that middle school will become the source of choice, somewhat like the German model:
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Wealth tax is coming…
California Considers Controversial Wealth Tax to Address Insane Budget Deficit | Watch
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Bud Light anti-woke reaction costs Budweiser 15% of shelf space. In retail terms, that’s a massive, massive fail, particularly given the fact that the brand has been declining for years.
Personally, I’ve never understood the appeal of Bud Light. My son’s crowd used to enjoy it, but if I’m drinking a beer, I usually go with a craft brew. I’d rather drink water than Bud Light.
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At the same time, American life expectancy has increased in an almost linear fashion (year, average American life expectancy):
1950 68.14
1960 69.84
1970 70.78
1980 73.70
1990 75.19
2000 76.75
2010 78.49
2020 78.93
2024 79.25
So if we live longer, we’ll pay more and get less. C’est la vie. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says a 65 year old retirement age is asinine, given the aforementioned statistics:
America’s retirement age of 65 is “crazy,” BlackRock CEO says (msn.com)
My father retired at age 52. My father in law (Stanford grad) took early retirement from NASA when the Challenger blew up just after his 50th birthday. He had a great pension. I won’t have any such thing, at least nothing that I don’t fund myself.
U.S. Life Expectancy 1950-2024 | MacroTrends
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I think the turning point for me came about two decades back. I had my house appraised by a British woman. We started conversing, I asked her how she enjoyed America, and she loved it, of course. Who wouldn’t?
One of the things she liked about America was that her two sons were not citizens and were therefore protected from any kind of conscription. They grew up under the blanket of liberty that our armed forces provide, yet there was no way she would expose them to that kind of danger.
GR, who has an immigrant daughter in law if memory services, once claimed that immigrants will protect us in the military. Sure, a very small percentage do. Immigrants today account for 13.7% of the population, about triple that (4.8%) in 1970. About 5% of the armed forces (68,711) are foreign born.
I think immigrants are great, they add a great deal to our country, and our forbears all came from somewhere else originally. Much, much less so in the military than in other walks of American life.
I had already been souring on the development of this country. When succeeding presidents, of both political stripes, created policies that sent American jobs overseas, and the American middle class started to vanish…let’s just say I understand why Trump succeeded. I sure don’t agree with everything the man says or does…but I understand his appeal.
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Well, he’s a liar’s liar, for sure. Trump lies, everyone knows that…but neither Obama nor Biden are stellar beacons of truth telling, either…
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The Law of Unintended Consequences is a bitch, for sure. Ramp up environmental protections, lose hundreds of thousands of jobs.
How American environmentalism failed.
How American Environmentalism Failed | The MIT Press Reader
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Prop. 1 is huge, expensive and destructive. It costs more than $10 billion, but isn’t a “solution” to homelessness. Now’s a BAD TIME for new bonds and debt. Prop. 1 CUTS funds for mental health programs that are working. Mental health advocates and taxpayer groups oppose it.
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Biden is a wee bit stressed over the upcoming election and his failing poll numbers. Democrats are alarmed (as well they should be). Biden’s 38% approval rating at this stage in the calendar is lower than that of the last three presidents who went on to lose re-election: Trump (48%), George H.W. Bush (39%) and Jimmy Carter (43%), according to Gallup survey data.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna143729
What kills me is that Biden thinks he should get credit for adding jobs, when it was the idiot Dem policy to shut down the economy and lose 30 million jobs in the first place.
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Interesting article:
A year after imploding, Silicon Valley Bank tries to make a comeback
Five most interesting comments:
- SVB spent 40 years building up its business in Silicon Valley. It fell apart in a day.
- “It was like the banking equivalent of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Hébert said. “It was absolute sheer terror.”
- “I pulled every dollar out in the first week of their comeback,” said Biju Ashokan, the CEO of Radius, a tech platform for real estate investors. He now banks elsewhere and doesn’t plan to return to SVB.
- Before the bank run, SVB had about $119 billion in customer deposits, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. At the end of 2023 that amount was just $38.5 billion.
- About 81 percent of customers from before the bank failure still have accounts at SVB.
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