“Here in NJ many of those businesses saw business start to drop off with the financial meltdown in 2007/2008, and they haven’t recovered (many have closed). There are not enough people with discretionary dollars to keep restaurants, bars, etc. open; the only people better off than 5 years ago are the public employees that survived the layoffs we’ve had, and there simply aren’t enough of them.”
Here in wino country, we have still have blocks of small mom and pop stores that were closed due to the meltdown, now serving as free art galleries with no one wanting to open up a downtown store nor wanting to fight the liberals re what businesses they want to see versus a business that can stand on its feet due to real customers and their demand.
The melt down has had a paradox impact here. People will come up here to taste good wine and eat in 4 and 5 star restaurants and stay in plush hotels for a couple of nights, because they can’t afford the 1-3 week vacations/cruises they used to go on.
People with money from Texas, NY, Asia and Canada are buying homes or bidding on them paying cash for them. As a result many if not most of the property values here are higher than they were before the meltdown. Some of the new comers will be year round residents and many will be here during the good climate months.
These new cash home buyers are creating an economic boom re contractors, bath room/kitchen remodelers, new carpet/tile sellers and other redoing providers. Most good contractors and re doers are booked up for months. This has created a boom in refinancing for the banks, savings and loans and even the money lenders associated with Indian Casinos.
Re malls, many out here have become a place where dropouts and not the nicest teens hang out. Many cruise the parking lots looking for cars to break into. They wait until someone puts stuff in the trunks or vehicles and go back into the mall. Then, the undesirables break into the vehicles and loot them. You use a smart phone in the malls, their parking lots and other bay areas and act like an atm.
We haven’t been in a mall since the meldown. We are not alone, and that has created a market of new stores/chains moving into upgraded or new shopping centers. These shopping centers have parking lots patrolled by local cops and rent a cops.
As a result of the above, our city has a surplus of tax money versus expenses for the first year since the meltdown.
However, what we are recently seeing since the Obozo Care mess, is a definite lack of locals in the medium to good restaurants for lunch and shorter dinner hours due to fewer customers. Then, the zillion little so called beauty spas seem to really be hurting. Their business again depends on locals having disposable income..
So apparently even in an area where the melt down impact is basically gone, we may be seeing the beginning of a new meltdown from the negative financial impact of ObozoCare.
In 1964 we moved to the upper Napa Valley and that summer fires broke out all over the valley and surrounding hills. The following winter it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the Napa River flooded so badly we kept watching for Noah's Ark!!!
My Brother In Law kept bugging me about having moved to "God's Country!" I finally told him it looked and acted more like the land of "Hell & High Water!!!"
We aren’t seeing that kind of recovery here in NJ; in fact, we have the famous Xanadu mall right next to Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands that was finished years ago (complete with an indoor ski slope) that never opened (you’ll see it at next year’s Super Bowl - it is a mutli-colored monstrosity). People and jobs are still leaving the area (which is why we have a de facto amnesty here - without illegals and their anchor babies, we’d have a lot of unoccupied housing and empty schools). A few years ago my town got its first pawn shop; the family businesses that closed are replaced by tattoo parlors, hair & nail salons, Latino fast food dives, and laundromats (for the increasingly transient population living in illegal apartments). Our train service to NYC has been discontinued, and anyone with money looking to settle down has too many nicer options within a half hour’s drive (with lower taxes and more Americans).
I couldn’t imagine how the remaining working people are going to pony up the thousands of additional dollars ObamaCare will cost them; we have nothing left.
