Posted on 11/10/2015 7:57:33 AM PST by Wilderness Conservative
If anyone owns or manages a business please chime in to say how your business has been lately. I own a retail business in an upper middle class town in the north east. Every retail business owner I talk to in town tells me the last month or two have been frighteningly slow. Even the 7/11 manager says sales have been way down and they are usually pretty steady.
I advertise in a monthly advertising mailer and the guy who owns it tells me that everyone is telling him the same thing. Everything from restaurants, to dry cleaners, to contractors and auto repair shops etc are reporting that sales and new business has fallen off to a trickle.
I see peaks and troughs seasonally but nothing this bad or for this long.
My neighbor has a large upscale landscaping company and he says he’s never been busier.
A landscaper customer of mine says he’s busy but has gotten fewer calls for Fall clean ups than he usually gets this time of year. I’m happy he’s doing well but none of his employees are American.
Who works for him?
Mostly recent immigrants...they often can't speak English well.
I knew one (guy’s wife worked where I did).
I got the impression they hired only illegals. No proof, but her comments seemed to point that way.
Mexicans and or others from south of the border.
In a word, Terrible.
Over regulated and over taxed.
Too small to deal with all the regulations.
An I’ll bet he is all for amnesty.
Sportswear wholesaler. Usually busy. But really swamped now, and the size of the average order has gone up a bit.
Been trying to hire some experienced help for months. Found two, neither showed up for their first day.
I get economics, but I am tired of Americans killing America for a buck.
Is this normal for this time due to retailers stocking up for Christmas? My main vendor says the orders are up because of the coming season but they arent as large as they were this time last year.
I worked for a house framer during the summer back in the 80’s and got $19 an hour. Now they pay mostly Mexicans $10.
We’re busy, but it sometimes feels like we’re constantly trying to squeeze blood from rocks. We’ve also seen a lot of clients go through painful changes and everyone’s pinching pennies and trying to do more with less.
The boom from stocks and commodities is over.
Sales will go from boom levels to somewhat below normal levels.
The reason for the dip below normal is because people flush with boom level cash will buy somewhat in advance of need.
The economy fluctuates because of human psychology.
If the business is real estate related, the drop will be more substantial. This is because houses have become very expensive again and because most mortgage worthy people have already been frightened into buying. People with lower incomes (say $10 to $20/hour) simply can’t buy ~$400,000 houses. Zoning and planning restrictions need to be loosened to drop the price of housing. We crave a free republic insomuch as possible for good reason - it’s for the good of the vast majority.
I have a friend who works a free food line. She says they’ve never been busier. Another friend works at the local welfare office handing out EBT cards. Same thing.
Housing is booming here, mainly from companies moving in from California and the North. They can double what they had there, and still have some cash left over. High end apartments and condos are also booming.
A billion dollar primarily office complex is wrapping up in an inner suburb, and they broke ground yesterday on a billion dollar mainly retail development in a far outer suburb. Probably a billion dollars worth of mixed use (mainly office and retail) going up in between those two developments.
The pace has been pretty consistent since last Feb. Our retailers don’t really stock more for Christmas, they opt for the reorder route and hope we can rush replacement stock if need be. The big increase is with local customers and while their orders are seasonal they don’t have much to do with the holiday season.
From time to time some church friends and I meet a local pizza joint and sit at the bar. A few months ago I was a bit early and the only one from our group so I started chatting with a guy sitting at the bar. He works at the local golf course which is a university course, has a golf team, and is open to the public, and he does course maintenance.
I asked him how business was at the course. He said that over the last five years or so they have such few people playing that they don’t know how to handle the lost revenue; there is a certain maintenance level that is required and they are having trouble financing it. He says people blame it on the economy.
He also said that he is a liberal and he believes that people have stopped playing golf just make Obama look bad. At this statement I almost lost it and I really had to maintain my laughter.
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