Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing?
Economic Collapse
Feb 18, 2013
If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores? When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses. But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013. Even Wal-Mart is running into problems. A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloombergdescribed February sales as a “total disaster”. So why is this happening? Why are major retail chains all over America collapsing? Is the “retail apocalypse” upon us? Well, the truth is that this is just another sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes. Incomes are declining, taxes are going up, government dependence is at an all-time high, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has been steadily falling since 2006. The top 10% of all income earners in the U.S. are still doing very well, but most U.S. consumers are either flat broke or are drowning in debt. The large disposable incomes that the big retail chains have depended upon in the past simply are not there anymore. So retail chains all over the United States are now closing up unprofitable stores. This is especially true in low income areas.
When you step back and take a look at the bigger picture, the rapid decline of some of our largest retail chains really is stunning.
It is happening already in some areas, but soon half empty malls and boarded up storefronts will litter the landscapes of cities all over America.
Just check out some of these store closing numbers for 2013.
These numbers are from a recent Yahoo Finance article…
Best Buy
Forecast store closings: 200 to 250
Sears Holding Corp.
Forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125
J.C. Penney
Forecast store closings: 300 to 350
Office Depot
Forecast store closings: 125 to 150
Barnes & Noble
Forecast store closings: 190 to 240, per company comments
Gamestop
Forecast store closings: 500 to 600
OfficeMax
Forecast store closings: 150 to 175
RadioShack
Forecast store closings: 450 to 550
The RadioShack in a nearby town just closed up where I live. This is all happening so fast that it is hard to believe.
But the truth is that those store closings are not the entire story. When you dig deeper you find a lot more retailers that are in trouble.
For example, Blockbuster recently announced that this year they will be closing about 300 stores and eliminating about 3,000 jobs.
Toy manufacturer Hasbro recently announced that they will be reducing the size of their workforce by about 10 percent.
Even Wal-Mart is going through a tough stretch right now. According to documents that were leaked to Bloomberg, Wal-Mart is having an absolutely disastrous February…
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had the worst sales start to a month in seven years as payroll-tax increases hit shoppers already battling a slow economy, according to internal e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News.So what in the world is going on here? Read MORE
“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal- Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.”
Subir el salario mínimo no cura la pobreza
Durante el discurso sobre el Estado de la Unión de la pasada noche, el presidente Obama propuso luchar contra la pobreza subiendo el salario mínimo. Suena interesante pero no funcionará.
Los economistas laborales han estudiado repetidamente los efectos de las subidas del salario mínimo. Y no hallan correlación alguna entre unos salarios mínimos más altos y un descenso de la pobreza. Subir el salario mínimo a $9 dólares la hora, como sugiere el presidente, sencillamente no reduciría la pobreza.
Aunque eso parezca contrario al sentido común, por decirlo de manera suave. Sin duda, las familias con bajos ingresos se beneficiarían de unos sueldos mayores. Entonces, ¿por qué no ayudaría? Pues por varias razones.
En primer lugar, relativamente pocos trabajadores que reciben el salario mínimo son pobres. El trabajador promedio con el salario mínimo vive en una familia que gana $50,000 anuales, pues muchos trabajadores que reciben ese salario mínimo son adolescentes o estudiantes universitarios que trabajan a tiempo parcial, es decir, que no están tratando de sustentarse a ellos mismos (o a sus familias) con sus ingresos. Sólo una novena parte de los trabajadores que podrían beneficiarse de esa subida vive en la pobreza. Por lo tanto, subir el salario mínimo no afectaría a muchas de las familias pobres.
La segunda razón es que un salario mínimo más alto les costaría el empleo a algunos de esos trabajadores. El verdadero salario mínimo sigue siendo de $0 la hora. Ninguna empresa paga a sus empleados más de lo que producen. Un salario mínimo más alto provocaría el que las empresas despidiesen a todo trabajador que no añadiera al menos $9 a la hora al valor de su empresa. La subida del 25% en el salario mínimo propuesta por el presidente llevaría al desempleo a alrededor del 5% de los trabajadores con sueldo bajos (algunos economistas progresistas no están de acuerdo, pero las investigaciones más recientes debilitan sus argumentos).
En estos tiempos, esto puede parecer un acuerdo aceptable, sin embargo, la mayoría de los empleos con salario mínimo corresponde a puestos de principiantes. A medida que los trabajadores con el sueldo mínimo ganan en experiencia, se vuelven más productivos y pueden hacerse merecedores a un sueldo mayor. Dos tercios de los trabajadores que reciben el salario mínimo obtienen un aumento de sueldo en el plazo de un año. El valor principal de un trabajo con el salario mínimo reside en la preparación laboral que proporciona, no en el bajo sueldo momentáneo.
Subir el salario mínimo hace que los trabajos para principiantes sean más difíciles de encontrar. Y eso hace que para los trabajadores menos calificados sea más complicado obtener las habilidades necesarias para salir adelante. En efecto, corta el peldaño inferior la escalera de su carrera profesional. Esto ya es suficientemente negativo en un momento económico normal, ni que decir tiene durante una recuperación anémica tras una profunda recesión.
Y por último, el Estado del Bienestar recuperaría los aumentos que recibieran las familias con bajos ingresos. Los trabajadores con salarios bajos tienen derecho a una gran cantidad de beneficios federales según sus ingresos. Estos incluyen cupones para alimentos, bonos de alojamiento, Medicaid y el Crédito Fiscal por Ingresos Obtenidos. A medida que aumentan los ingresos de los trabajadores, estos cada vez tienen derecho a menos ayudas, lo que en la práctica supone un impuesto adicional sobre sus ingresos. La Oficina de Presupuesto del Congreso (CBO) encuentra que estas reducciones elevan los tipos impositivos marginales de muchos trabajadores con bajos ingresos hasta casi el 100%.
Un padre soltero que trabaja a jornada completa con el salario mínimo gana $15,000 anuales. Un aumento a $9 la hora incrementaría su sueldo en casi $4,000, aunque casi todos ellos se perderían luego a causa de la reducción de sus beneficios sociales. La estructura del Estado del Bienestar hace que sea virtualmente imposible luchar contra la pobreza con un salario mínimo más alto.
H. L. Mencken observó una vez que “para cada problema complejo hay una respuesta que es clara, simple y errónea”. Podría haber estado hablando perfectamente de las subidas del salario mínimo.
21 Signs That U.S. Public Schools Have Become Training Centers For Sexual Deviancy
American Dream
Feb 18, 2013
Why do men and women have a such a hard time relating to each other in a meaningful way in America today? Could our oversexed culture have anything to do with it? In the United States today, we are constantly being bombarded with sexual messages. Just think about it. Did you watch the Super Bowl a few weeks ago? Most of the commercials were about sex on some level, and the “halftime show” featuring Beyonce might as well have been a strip club act. It was utterly shameful. But in America today, all of this is considered to be “normal”. We literally worship sex, and we can never get enough of it. And of course the results of such a society are predictable.
There are 20 million new sexually-transmitted infections in the U.S. each year, we have the highest teen pregnancy rate on the planet, and it is estimated that one out of every four girls in the U.S. is sexually abused before they become adults. This culture of sex is pushed on our children from a very early age, and at this point it would be quite accurate to say that U.S. public schools have become training centers for sexual deviancy. A lot of people focus on “sex education” as the problem, but the truth is that it goes much deeper than that. Sex education only lasts for a few weeks at most. The much bigger problem is the fact that an obsession with sex literally permeates our schools. If parents could only eavesdrop on the conversations that our teens are having, they would be absolutely horrified.
Thanks to endless brainwashing by the mainstream media, our teens are absolutely addicted to a sexual atmosphere. Every form of entertainment that they enjoy is soaked with sexual imagery, and lust and sex are never far from their minds when they relate to members of the opposite sex (or sometimes the same sex). So should we really be surprised that students are having sex with each other in the hallways of our schools? Should we be surprised that young teachers are taking advantage of our students sexually behind closed doors? We have created a society that is sexually supercharged, and what we are witnessing now are the predictable results of the very foolish decisions that we have made.
The following are 21 signs that U.S. public schools have become training centers for sexual deviancy…
#1 There is a raging epidemic of sexually-transmitted diseases among our young people. According to the latest figures released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, there are 20 million new sexually-transmitted infections in the United States every single year, and Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 account for approximately 50 percent of those new sexually-transmitted infections.
#2 Many of our teens our catching diseases that they can’t even pronounce correctly. There were more than 1.4 million cases of chlamydia reported in the United States in 2011. An astounding 33 percent of those cases involved Americans that were younger than 20 years of age.
#3 At this point, one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease. How high does that number have to go before we admit that there is a problem?
#4 Apparently, all of the propaganda about “safe sex” is not really working very well. According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have an STD say that they still have unprotected sex.
#5 When you take morality out of public life, the results are predictable. In the United States today, approximately 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.
#6 Many of our young people seem to not understand the value of waiting until marriage to become a mother. Amazingly, one out of every five teen girls in the U.S. actually wants to be a teenage mother.
#7 When I was growing up, I don’t remember a single girl being pregnant at my high school. But today all of that has changed. A couple of years ago it was being reported that 86 teen girls at one high school in Memphis, Tennessee were either pregnant or had recently given birth.
#8 If you can believe it, the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire planet. In fact, the United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is more than twice as high as Canada, more than three times as high as France and more than seven times as high as Japan.
#9 Increasingly, oral sex is being promoted to our young people as a “safer” form of sex. According to shocking research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately two-thirds of all Americans in the 15 to 24 year old age bracket have engaged in oral sex.
#10 Sex “education” has become much more about “indoctrination” in recent years. One recent example of this trend was detailed in the New York Times…
IMAGINE you have a 10- or 11-year-old child, just entering a public middle school. How would you feel if, as part of a class ostensibly about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, he and his classmates were given “risk cards” that graphically named a variety of solitary and mutual sex acts? Or if, in another lesson, he was encouraged to disregard what you told him about sex, and to rely instead on teachers and health clinic staff members?#11 Sexual “experimentation” among our teens is reaching heights never seen before. According to one recent study, sexual contact between teen girls in the United States is now at the highest level ever recorded.
That prospect would horrify most parents. But such lessons are part of a middle-school curriculum that Dennis M. Walcott, the New York City schools chancellor, has recommended for his system’s newly mandated sex-education classes. There is a parental “opt out,” but it is very limited, covering classes on contraception and birth control.
#12 In America today, sex in public school hallways has become a common occurrence. In a recent article about Detroit, I shared a quote from one of my readers that actually attended one of the “best” public schools in Detroit…
The school was a new seven story building just a couple of years old. The bathrooms would often lack toilet paper & soap beyond the second floor (the main floor), the bathroom sinks would often not work. The water fountains on north side of the building on from the third floor & up did not work. The elevators would constantly break down. I even got stuck on the elevator before. I almost tripped down a half a flight of stairs because the elastic seal (it was the metal bar at the front of a treader of I don’t know the name of it.) the stairs was not properly installed.#13 Would you feel okay about your teenage girl sharing a bathroom with boys? In the state of Massachusetts, boys will now be able to freely use girls restrooms and girls locker rooms if it makes them feel more “comfortable”.
Students would often have sex on the stairs & throughout the school. Parents actually called the school many times & reported kids having sex on the stairs because all of them had glass windows 270 degrees.
#14 One of the results of our “culture of sex” has been an explosion in the number of babies being born outside of marriage. For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
#15 Being a single parent is incredibly hard, but more U.S. children are being raised by just one parent than ever before. At this point, more than one out of every four children in the United States is being raised by a single parent.
#16 Thanks to our “sexual revolution”, men and women are having a harder time than ever relating to each other in a meaningful way. Our young people are being taught that marriage is a “burden” and that they should delay it for as long as possible. Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of all Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 are married.
#17 There is an epidemic of sex between teachers and students in the United States. In fact, for some teachers one student is just simply not enough. For example, a 33-year-old art teacher down in Arizona was charged with having sexwith four of her male students.
#18 A former high school English teacher down in Texas has that teacher beat. She has been accused of having sex with five different male students. The most disturbing part of her story is that she is a mother of three children and her husband is serving this country in the U.S. Army.
#19 But a high school teacher down in Georgia has both of them beat. She was recently charged with having sex with seven of her students.
#20 Sometimes even teachers that have been convicted of having sex with a student cannot stop themselves. For example, there was one case where a probation officer found a student that a teacher had been convicted of having sex with previously hiding in her closet…
Lisa Lavoie, the former Holyoke teacher who plead guilty after having a relationship with a student, has been charged with violating her probation after the student she had a relationship with was found hiding in her closet.#21 Sadly, there are more stories of teachers having sex with their students in the news almost every single day. The following are just a few of the teacher sex news stories from just this past week…
Back in February 2009, Lavoie ran off with one of her students, who was 15-year-old at the time. Lavoie was a teacher at the Donahue School on Whiting Farms Road in Holyoke.
The pair was found several days later in a motel room in West Virginia. Lavoie pleaded guilty to three counts of statutory rape and one count of enticement of a child in January 2011. She was sentenced to five years probation.
“N.J. teacher, baseball instructor, admits to sex with 14-year-old girl, authorities say”
Continue reading
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario