Empty Streets and Shops Bode Ill

The coming carnage of the base economy of the United States is not imaginable.  Today’s common estimate of about forty percent never reopening after the early 2020 shut down will be the opening gambit. Huge swaths of big business retail have already declared bankruptcy and shut down.  Retail names are owned by hedge funds which own shopping malls.  Shopping mall owners bidding for other retail names as they become available scrambles the future for brick and mortar destinations.

There are so many small businesses which are either closed or on the death bed.  Small business is a rough game to play in a good economy, it is not worth putting money into when the word depression is tossed about as often as recession.

Think of the local food store or truck or convenience store next to an office building. Security guards may have showed up for coffee or something at the start of the shutdown.  But no more as the office building is still closed and plans are to sell it.  All the souvenir stores around the baseball stadium have no business.  No more are there services that support office workers.  How many taxis have sold their tags, if they could have sold them.  I see cars with every gig driver company there are in the windows.

What will we see in the future?  Even if a vaccine becomes available and the world vaccinated by 2022, what will remain?  Consider that the U.S. and Western Europe economies were already moving towards and even away from being service economies. 

Finland has been experimenting with a population which is paid a wage and were not expected to work, they were being paid to be consumers by the government.  It is better paying than welfare, and they were not putting pressure on other jobs.  What will be next? Perhaps twenty hour weeks with pay for forty, there by sharing one full time job with two people?

Republicans go into screaming fits when anyone mentions helping people eat by using SNAP (food stamps).  They lose it all into their diapers when you bring up Finland.  But, at some point we have to consider what to do when we have machines that are hyper-productive that do not need humans to oil the joints. 

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Author: Blue Bronc

Born in Detroit when Truman was president, survived the rest of them. Early on I learned that FDR was the greatest president, which has withstood all attempts to change that image. Democratic Party, flaming liberal, Progressive, equality for all and a believer in we are all human and deserve respect and understanding. College educated, a couple of degrees, a lot of world experience and tons of fun. US Air Force (pre-MRE days). Oil and gas fields, computer rooms and stuff beyond anything I can talk about. It has been quite a life so far. The future is making my retirement boat my home. Dogs, cats and other critters fill my life with happiness. Work pays the bills.

91 thoughts on “Empty Streets and Shops Bode Ill”

  2. shades of access hollywood tape wapo reported on oct 7 2016.  will this have the same ho-hum reception by his base and impact eventually as that infamous vid did in 2016 election? 

    the guardian:

    A former model has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament more than two decades ago, in an alleged incident that left her feeling “sick” and “violated”.
    In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997.
    Dorris, who was 24 at the time, accuses Trump of forcing his tongue down her throat, assaulting her all over her body and holding her in a grip she was unable to escape from.
    “He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything.
    “I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it,” she said, adding: “I don’t know what you call that when you’re sticking your tongue just down someone’s throat. But I pushed it out with my teeth. I was pushing it. And I think I might have hurt his tongue.”
    Via his lawyers, Trump denied in the strongest possible terms having ever harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris.
    Dorris, who lives in Florida, provided the Guardian with evidence to support her account of her encounters with Trump, including her ticket to the US Open and six photos showing her with the real estate magnate over several days in New York. Trump was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.
    Her account was also corroborated by several people she confided in about the incident. They include a friend in New York and Dorris’s mother, both of whom she called immediately after the alleged incident, as well as a therapist and friends she spoke to in the years since. All said Dorris had shared with them details of the alleged incident that matched what she later told the Guardian.
    [continues]

  3. companion article to above also in today’s  in the guardian

    The list of women who have publicly made sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump outnumbers the list of officials in his cabinet. Before today, no fewer than 25 women had made such accusations against Trump, ranging from harassment to sexual assault and rape
    The allegations span four decades. Trump has denied every charge, dismissing his accusers as liars and publicity seekers, claiming never to have met some of them and, in at least two cases, suggesting they were not attractive enough for him.
    Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential race suggests a sizeable portion of the American electorate either believed his claims of innocence or were unswayed by the allegations.
    Today Amy Dorris becomes at least the 26th woman to publicly accuse Trump of sexual misconduct – with more than a dozen of that group having accused him of sexual assault. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, she has alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom of his VIP box at the US Open tennis tournament in New York in 1997.
    […]
    Dorris is the second woman to accuse Trump of assaulting her at the US Open. Karena Virginia, also a former model, alleges Trump touched her breast at the tournament in 1998. When Virginia made her allegation in 2016, a Trump representative dismissed her account as “fictional” and politically motivated.
    Virginia and Dorris are not the only former models to say Trump assaulted them. More than half of the accusations made against Trump, who bought the Miss Universe franchise in 1996 and set up his own modelling agency, Trump Model Management, in 1999, relate to models or pageant contestants.
    [continues]

  7. on that note, here’s same observation from midland daily news back in 2016:

    In the very first episode of the “The Lone Ranger” (circa 1950), Tonto told the masked white guy he was hangin’ with, “I think paleface speak with forked tongue.” I remember it just like it was yesterday.
    Native Americans have been using the familiar forked tongue analogy for more than three centuries. It was — and still is — a simple yet effective way for indigenous people to convey their internal reservations when they believed someone (usually an immigrant from Europe) was deliberately saying something or behaving one way but secretly doing something nefarious.
    That’s probably because during the Beaver Wars in the 1690s, the French used cheap baubles, trinkets and vague promises of reconciliation to entice the leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy to attend a peace treaty signing in what is now upstate New York. Once they had the savages holed up in their fortress, the soldiers wounded, captured or killed most of the chieftains and warriors from the five nations.
    Fast forward to 2016. Do you trust the arrogant orange, forked-tongued Republican presidential candidate from New York every time he says or tweets “believe me” now?

    [continues about another subject]]

  8. The stock market is flying upward as CEO’s have figured out they don’t need to rehire the majority of the people laid off in order to function.  Of course, if this means the consumer market can no longer support them, eventually there will be a crash.  

    There is always something that needs doing.  The problem is that most of them are not profitable.  Paying people to do these things that need doing makes sense to keep the consumer function alive.  People do not react well to doing nothing for money so that means a structure that pays them at the very least a minimum wage, but probably more.  

    Some modern version of a combination of the WPA and the GI Bill of Rights is probably in order.  Quite simply, go to work or school on the public dime.  Establish day care centers, plant trees, entertain at schools, care for the elderly, help renew infrastructure … the list of needed tasks is long, long and longer.

    As too those hard sites now empty of stores, most are much more modern with better facilities than many schools.  It would make sense to turn them into classrooms and entertainment spaces.

     

  9. That’s what Andrew Yang was talking about during the primaries.  A basic income.  Actually, he’s still talking about it.    The world has more wealth than it’s ever had, but it’s not distributed in a way that makes any sense.  
    Sure, there are the Buffets, Gates, and, Bloombergs who put their big bucks to good use.   However,  there are also many who have three houses and a dozen cars, who have never even left  a decent tip at a restaurant. 
    A zoom call/webinar/whatever you want to call it that I attended said 20% of retail was expected to fold.  That’s just retail.   Some of that is because Amazon has been slowly eroding their businesses and now there’s been a mudslide.    
    Fewer jobs means fewer consumers.  That will, in turn, hurt manufacturing.  My company has closed one manufacturing plant permanently; looking at more cuts.  
    The businesses doing well, aside from Amazon (Bezos won’t stop until we are all running Amazon distribution hubs out of out basements), are grocery stores, wholesale clubs, and, big box stores.  
    So, tRUMP’s plague has now claimed 200,000 lives.    It will be a quarter of a million by Election Day.  
    Vote him out and lock him up.
     

  10. Redfield doesn’t get it. Asshat lives only for the announcement of a vaccine, which stands a good chance of being hastily rushed before the conclusion of Phase 3 trials but given emergency use authorization by FDA. Feel like you may have heard this before?  

  12. Artists, Performers and writers did very well under the WPA with a side benefit that the nation’s children were exposed to material they never would have seen in their normal schooling otherwise.  

     

  13. This time, maybe they could include artists who are POC.  
    What happened to all of that infrastructure tRUMPsky was going to repair?   No jobs, no improved roads, no safer bridges…just money for him and his cronies.  
    Vote him out and lock him up. 

  14. He wanted Norwegians to come here, well, why would they when we don’t have universal healthcare, education, etc.?  Let’s be a Scandinavian country. 

  18. Once with an eternal “again”  a tribe of pure fools, saps, lackeys, stooges, sycophants, and  ogres will fuck up the whole town.

  21. Calling slavery an “intrusion on civil liberties” is one hell of a euphemism, eh?
     
    i see wut barr did there😉

  22. Dying of coronavirus seems like a rather considerable infringement on civil liberties, no?
     
    Aren’t you glad someone the size of a house is influencing public health policy?

  24. -Behind the scenes at trumpco:
     
    ”What’s your area of expertise?”

    -“Law”

    ”Great, you’re in charge of distribution… and you, there!  What’s your area of expertise?”

    -“Distribution.”
     
    “Great, you’re in charge of Public Health.  You, over there!  What’s your area of expertise?”
     
    -“Public Health.”
     
    ”You’re fired.”

  25. I thought the draft was a sizeable intrusion into civil rights. The Trail of Tears was a pretty biggish intrusion into civil rights. The Plessy v Ferguson decision was an awfully bulky intrusion into civil rights.

    No shoes, no shirt, no service just doesn’t compare.

  26. Had a great conversation with my doc about science-denying asshats.  There’s a new door in the clinic to keep out the unmasked.  Someone actually got arrested for refusing to wear a mask & then spitting in another patient’s face…so now there’s a door. 

  30. craig, what about FEC reporting with regard to those kind of expenses for secret service (and use of other gov’t emps) during purely campaign trips?

  31. When barr goes campaigning/fund-raising for trump, he should pay for everything. Having the government pay is illegal, and having the campaign pay is accepting a gift.

  32. The Biden Admin should bill back all of those gov employees who used gov funds to campaign for trump, besides charging them with embezzlement.

  40. Good news, no chemo, just quarterly blood tests and annual CT scans. We are in monitoring mode. 
    as to my other problem, they found a bacteria in my stool sample that was causing the loose stool. Im on antibiotics, I haven’t filled my diaper in 2 days. fingers crossed.
    Although I will say back on my worst days I just accepted that I wasn’t going to make it to the bathroom before I filled my diaper and walked instead of run,  dropping the diaper and cleaning myself off. 
    I think such fatalism maybe good training in case Biden doesn’t pull this off and we get 4 more years of Trump

  42. Москва (I took two years of Russian in college.  What is the purpose of the added “T”?  Я не понимаю.)
    China wants the moon, Russia has interest in Venus, and, we are focused on Mars.  Is this an inter-planetary version of “good fences, make good neighbors”?   (And before you go there, I know the moon is not a planet.) 
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGgajx1pGPU
     

  44.  
    Bob
    My great niece is helping me. For the most part I can do for myself but I need someone just in case. My other choice would have been a rehab facility so I’m grateful. She is  an easy housemate, I gave her access to my Scifi book collection so for the duration, unless she doing something I ask, she is on the couch or up in her room reading . No loud music or TV
    Jack

  45. Well, at least you know i’m not a Russian agent.
    Or is that exactly what a Russian agent would say??
     
    $10000 per pound to launch something into orbit. 

    Do we really deserve another planet considering we already trashed the nicest one on the block?

  47. jack, great news about no chemo.  

    be sure to stock up on plenty of  your favorite yogurt to indulge in after the anti-biotics regimen is over.  you’ll need those good bacteria beasties to get things back to normal.

  49. SFB voters are the clearest sign of a failed education system
    Billious Barr reminds me of Pizza Hut from Space Balls

  50. The McCains still carry weight in AZ; they have had it with tRUMPsky…and McSally is big no, too.  

  53. Bink – one of the things that can never turn out correctly is to ask a woman, or man, if she is a spy.  If she is a spy and says she is not a spy you will not know if she is or not.  If she states she is a spy, you cannot know if that is true either.  And if she is not a spy and says she is, that makes her a target of both sides because they want to know what agency she works for, even though she is not a spy.

  56. Even Trump thinks his supporters are deplorable.

    Olivia Troye, Pence’s former lead staffer on COVID task force (resigned two months ago), reports Trump’s biggest concern about COVID was re-election and he said it’s good COVID happened because he won’t “have to shake hands with these disgusting people.” https://t.co/ALtT7xgaNW

  58. Poobah, does Biden have a jumbotron set up for the town hall?  If so, he’s doing what Mrs.P said he needs to do.

  59. It’s hard enough to get to one of the uninhabitable planets in our immediate neighborhood, let alone providing habitable dwellings etc. to overcome the inhospitable (to us) conditions that our fragile bodies don’t allow us to survive without layers of insulation from the cold, hot and atmospheric chemicals that we can’t tolerate and live.  (OK, Matt Damon grew potatoes in his shit until the agro pod blew a gasket, but that’s fiction anyway).  Speculating about life on other planets is fun enough, but to the extent it suggests we might want to go there to get away from the mess we’ve created is pretty much useless noodling.  Maybe we could just work on reducing CO2, cleaning the place up and distribute food better from where it’s grown to people where it’s not. Prolly be a lot easier.

  61. With whom would you rather have a beer/coffee?  If you pick tRUMPsky, you should have a taster to check for poison.   Also, you should have your head/heart examined.  
    Now, SFB, who doesn’t like to read and paid others to take his tests, is trying to create an indoctrination curriculum to whitewash American history.  
    A) That’s pretty much how it’s always been; one-sided/white, but a fuller picture is surfacing.  
     B) We don’t want any of his neo-Nazi BS destroying the next generation of Americans.  

  62. Jamie –  Hugh Jackman will star in “The Music Man” on Broadway…next May.    Jeez, I hope things are normal by then, but…just not feeling it today. 

    Sutton Foster, too! I saw her in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” way back when.

  63. We are home air quality good and there might be some rain.
    Trump and his enablers should all go straight to jail.   It’s going to take a long time To repair all the damage he and his ilk have caused.

  64. Trump campaign plots winning maps without Florida (but insists they won’t be needed)

    President Donald Trump’s campaign a year ago envisioned an election scenario where the incumbent president expanded the boundaries of modern electoral politics by winning every state he won four years ago and adding half a dozen others.
    Their ideal election now a distant dream, Trump’s advisers in the final weeks of the campaign, mapped out more dire possibilities showing ways their candidate could lose key states like Florida and still win reelection by conquering a series of Upper Midwest states.
    One scenario has Trump losing Florida and Arizona but still receiving 270 electoral votes, the minimum needed to win. The other shows Trump losing North Carolina and Florida and receiving 272 electoral vote

  69. Guys like Cotton, Carlson… Meadows apparently has no soul🤷‍♂️
     
    There will always be replacement snakes.

  71. We’re going to need more prison space. One for just the ripuplican media and another for all the crooked policy advisors. Maybe they could be put to use building lead and ceramic housing for nuke waste. Or, they could become water samplers for Flint. At worst we could just lock all their cells and turn off the power, water and defense lawyers. 

  74. Congrats jack!!!  Try Florastor an OTC probiotic recommended by a GI doc to straighten out your GI tract with a good probiotic.

  76. Biden, like others, says cancer is a disease.  I think of it more as an autoimmune condition that your body does to itself.

  77. Yea – if Biden performs like this during the debate he’s going to kill Trump.  He just hs to keep is stuff wired tight.  He sounds so good tonight – It’s kind of like watching a super hit Oscar winning movie after spending a few years watching nothing but b movie trash.
    The problem I have is that I don’t know if I can respect any of my friends or colleagues who vote for Trump.  They say that you need to put politics in it’ place, but this is now beyond politics and more towards common decency and civility.
     

  81. be a hoot if someone’s little toto terrier runs up on stage and pulls at joe’s pant leg

    🙂

    talk about grabbing headlines and going bigly viral. joe liking dogs as he does prolly would whisk the little critter up in his arms thus gaining a million extra votes.

  83. trumpity won’t be able to answer questions in detail. He doesn’t know about government or the constitution much less chickens and farming.
     
    trumpity will repeat what Biden says.

  87. trumpity’s people go bat-shit crazy.  Caputo went more  Scaramucci  than Scaramucci  did. He’s out. Another one bites the dust. this one said his mental health isn’t so good. Oh, really?

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