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Date Posted: 14:25:03 2/15/23 Wed
Author: Jasper
Subject: Gads! Rick Ackerman on the loose.

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Signs of Decline

But no matter how many jobs are added, and however inflated the stock market and real estate become, the things that determine our standard of living will continue to erode or disappear, just as they’ve been doing since the 1970s. Who doubts, for one, that the day is coming when the last department store closes its doors, leaving us to do most of our shopping either at discount warehouses or on Amazon? While the price may be right, the decline in services and amenities in the retail sector parallels the appalling transformation of air travel from a pleasurable experience into an ordeal. And we all know the sad story of customer support, whether in stores or on the phone: it barely exists any longer. How many years must ‘unusually high call volume’ persist before a company augments its support staff? Answer: You already know the answer.

There are unfortunately some far more significant instances of decline in the standard of living, chief among them the necessity of two-income households. This was sold as a victory for feminism, but the very steep price we have paid is two generations of children who got short-changed on parenting, Even with the tragic sacrifice this implies, millions of Americans still have to hock their homes just to put their kids through college. Digital wizardry, consumer gizmos, exotic vacation packages, luxury-car leases and computer-designed golf clubs that can add 30 yards to a duffer’s drive may have distracted us from the good life’s disappearance, but there is no hiding it.

Fare Thee Well, Zappos

Amazon rubbed our faces in it last week with layoffs at its Zappos subsidiary. The online shoe discounter was among the most customer-friendly retailers online or off, and its founder, the late Tony Hsieh, was obsessed with providing a high level of customer service that has all but vanished. Amazon laid off more than 300 Zappos employees — about 20% of the Las Vegas-based company’s workforce — charting a path for Zappos that will likely end conversations between customers and human support.

Are we in a recession? Call it whatever you want, but the economy is in a bad way, powered by consumer borrowing that is unsustainable and shakily backstopped by Baby Boomer ‘wealth’ dwarfed by Social Security, Medicare and public pension liabilities that continue to pile up beyond measurement.

https://www.howestreet.com/2023/02/is-the-u-s-in-a-recession-or-not/

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