As retail store closures continue to unfold, will have big effect on the U.S. economy

Doesn't look like this consumer spending is sustainable. The UK may be in the situation the US was in in the early 2000's.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/26/pensioners-using-homes-cash-machines-borrow-8m-day/

Just as I thought. As overcrowding draws housing prices up, older people are taking equity out of their homes to spend.

You realize there's going to be a problem with that, like there was in the US ?

 

A couple of issues. First, mortgage equity withdrawal isn't a problem from older people. It should be celebrated, as it reduces issues of intergenerational inequalities. Second, house price movements do not reflect overcrowding. Take London. That reflects a housing bubble encouraged through domestic and overseas speculators. Housing prices have fallen in many places recently, reflecting demand constraints caused by severe inequalities.

 

For the few able to get it all together enough to arrive there, for the rest, an earlier grave than anticipated. The game got changed, a person needs four ducks to line up, not three.

My Phd is on this very topic: what is the correlation and commonality regarding those who find four leaf clovers and those who have four ducks to line up?

True life facts from Trumpville.

 

I don't even know where to begin.

Blame the housing crisis all on speculators.
Say old people having to drain all the equity out of their house, so there's nothing to leave to their children, should be celebrated.
That's new age progressivism on steroids for you.

Reiver, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the situation in the U.S., but people taking out second mortgages and refinancing their heavily leveraged house was a significant part of the reason for the housing collapse.
The 2008 Housing collapse is what most people, in particular the ones who share your type of political-economic views, blame for the Recession.

 

You certainly can factor in issues such as land banking. However, it goes well beyond that. Countries with high poverty also tend to have high home ownership. Folk are forced into the game: owner occupation for self insurance and to assist their offspring. That's often too much (e.g. the pressures of maintaining the quality of housing stock is linked to higher risk of mental illness,). The end result is skewed macroeconomic reliance on the housing market, creating housing bubbles that ripple out and corrupt supply and demand conditions.

You're reliant on the theory of the elites, so I doubt you have any understanding of my political economy. The problem is not equity withdrawal. The problem is income inequalities.

 

absurd of course people are inequal and so in a fair society will their incomes be inequal. This according to Madison and common sense is a sign of freedom and Darwinian evolution.

 

You haven't understood the point as usual. It's about the links between poverty and home ownership rates. It's about how an economy becomes too reliant on its housing market because of high poverty risk.

 

I think for the UK the biggest shock is for the councils. High street businesses were their core money earners.

After the Crunch in the UK, that was ground zero for all the shop closures.
Their profits went down, but their sky high rents and rates did not.

It never really recovered.

Things had been heading that way for a long time. Retail parks and supermarkets out of town. Amazon and co, doing home deliveries.
But the councils didn't respond to the changing business environment. Presumably faced with reduced incomes, they put everyone's prices up to compensate.
Amplifying the decay.

When they should have been offering lower rents and rates and free parking, they went the other way.

Now they have charity shops and not much else. Expect Council Tax to rise, because they sure as shiut aren't going to sack anyone or take the same kind of pay cuts everyone else has.

 

That's exactly what happened to many decaying urban areas in the U.S. As their tax base moved away, they increased local tax rates to try to compensate for the budget deficits, which just drove even more of their tax base out. It was a feedback effect. Eventually the cities had to cut basic services, like maintenance and police, and anyone with money left.

 

You know what these people are like, they just won't sack themslves or their mates.
They will take everyone to hell first.

What they need is to be able to cut basic services at the first sign of trouble. Not wait until the town dies first.
Austerity now and never austerity later.


One thing that really screws taxation is that they spend it before they have it.

You save the tax from year one and then depending how much you made, that is your budget for year two.
No possibility of deficits this way.
That and the really stupid and over cushy employment rights in the state sector. Their labour market needs to be even more flexible than the one it depends on.
They need to be able to hire and fire even easier than the people they tax.

Never going to happen.

I hadn't predicted the death of any UK towns. This is a densely populated country. There isn't anywhere else to go.

 

I've noticed there have been a fair number of lower-paid UK workers moving to the US. More often women, for some reason.

It makes me suspect things in the UK may not be all that great for the lower middle class.

 

You need to get married to move to the US.
Love is the usual reason.

I don't even know what lower middle class is.
How much money is that, what education level. What parental wealth and education.

In the UK class means something more than just financial status.
That Euro lottery winner, remained lower class (a chav) even though he had 150 million.
So it's also attitudes. Upbringing. Ability to get on with people.
Lifestyle. Taste. Speech. Schooling. Social kudos. And to a very large extent, self image.

Money can't buy class.

 

I don't think so. These are all older single women.
I've seen several coming from South Africa as well (white people).

 

How are they gaining Green Cards, if they're unskilled?

 

I'm not sure. Some of them were bagging groceries, I met another one waiting at a bus stop, one was doing computer data entry.

 

Marriage, skilled job or start a business employing 8 people.

If they are check out girls, it must be marriage.

If they are telling you that they are single......maybe they are sexy for you.

 

The United States is not a democracy. Thomas Jefferson was a "Democrat" because he believed in an expansive franchise of voting rights. He was also a hardcore racist, white supremist, rapist, and slave owner.

 

1) All experts would say USA is democracy
2) Jefferson did not have much to say about extending the voting franchise
3) Jefferson was perhaps greatest human being to ever live based on his promotion of liberty, most recently freeing 1.4 billion from Chinese communism. Applying today's terminology to people from other centuries is called presentism and is considered absurd and juvenile by historians!

 

Jefferson didn't have much to say about extending the franchise?

I guess his disciples Monroe and Jackson must have gotten the ridiculous idea of universal voting rights(for free citizens) from Hamilton. Jefferson is such a prominent figure in our society because he was a wealthy, privileged landowner who advocated for abolishing burdensome voting restrictions.

If the United States was a democracy we would have a vastly different political structure, such as current Democrats are pushing for when it suits them. We currently wouldn't have the current fight over asking about citizenship in the census.

 

Correct!! he had very little to say about extending voting franchise. His main focus in life was freedom from liberal central govt. That is why he and Madison formed Republican party in 1792. If you keep that in mind about Jefferson you will have a good perspective from which to understand his entire life.

 

Wrong of course!! Jefferson was prominent because he wrote Declaration, formed Republican Party with Madison in 1793, and became president in 1800 in what he called the Second American Revolution. That Second American revolution was about freedom from big liberal central govt. Modern Republicans ares still fighting on Jefferson's behalf.

 

No idea what that has to do with democracy. Census information is used for many things but not voter registration. Do you understand?

 

sure it is in fact we have very important elections next month. Did you know that?

 

Jefferson and Madison founded Republican Party , not Democrat Party, and did not believe in expansive voting rights which is why you present no evidence that they did. Further, what could more of a disaster than allowing the unqualified to vote and do brain surgery?