America’s Changing Shopping Habits

It’s not unusual these days to hear of major retail chains filing for bankruptcy or selling off assets and closing shop. But the pace those announcements are hitting the media is staggering.

An ongoing trend, and one that directly relates to the decline of brick-and-mortar retail, is the decline of shopping malls.

Though the malls might still be crowded places during holidays and busy shopping seasons, the Wall Street Journal has an fascinating graphic that shows the various companies that have vanished from malls (or existence) over the years and how the continued loss of stores inside of malls has contributed to what are more like skeletons than malls today.

It’s not all bad news. Some mall properties have been repurposed for other uses. BizVoice® magazine in 2013 looked at new uses for empty malls.

But don’t place all the blame on online shopping. This Forbes article from September asserts that, contrary to what you might think, there will be more store openings than closings this year and more due to changing consumer habits (not just online shopping).

More people seek discount and convenience, as well as experiences (food, travel, etc.) over physical items, than before. From the Forbes article:

Consumers haven’t gone into hiding and they’re not spending less. They’re spending more and there are more new stores — but tastes have changed. One of the most important things about these changes is that they are happening faster than ever before. There’s lots of reasons for that and plenty to debate about it but there’s no way to avoid the constant adaptation that’s now required. Organizations now need to be able to process new ideas at a rate that’s faster and more efficient than ever before. If you’re a legacy retailer of any kind, it’s hard to change quickly enough and that creates an opening for more nimble competitors. It’s not enough just to have something new, it has to keep evolving. That’s a challenge both for younger companies as well as the established players and it will be for the foreseeable future.

Trial Lawyer Blames Tort Reform for Bankruptcy

We can’t make these things up. Shame on those lawmakers for protecting doctors from outrageous malpractice claims.

Thanks to our friends at the North Carolina chamber for alerting us to this story.

A former Democratic candidate for governor and state lawmaker has filed for bankruptcy protection. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing will allow Bill Faison, a personal injury attorney, to restructure debt related to his Durham law firm, Faison and Gillespie.

In an interview, Faison said he expects to pay his debts in full, which are listed at more than $7.1 million. The Jan. 3 filing lists his assets at $9.4 million, including his family farm, a lake house, other real estate holdings, six cars, two motorcycles and two boats. “I can get it all paid,” he said.

Faison represented Orange and Caswell counties in the state House for four terms before making a bid for the Democratic Party nomination for governor in 2012. He came in a distant third in the party primary. The majority of the loans came from banks to underwrite his law firm and he is the guarantor. He said the lines of credit “smoothed out the peaks and valleys of cash flow” to his law firm. But the current atmosphere is making it difficult for the firm to pay back the loan on time.

The firm is facing major setbacks, he said, related to the economic downturn and a Republican-led effort to put caps on medical malpractice claims in 2011. The new lawsuit limitations “hurt business a great deal,” he said.

 

Is the U.S. a Nation of Takers?

Some chilling statistics from a Wall Street Journal article illustrating an alarming paradigm shift in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The conclusion seems to be: As long as the manufacturing sector is dwarfed by the current size and continued growth of the public sector, American states are in for a bevy of financial problems. So anyway, this doesn’t seem too encouraging. If you have a take on this that’s borderline positive, please share in the comments section as we could all use some good news after last night’s game.

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida’s ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York’s.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.

Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world—at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That’s less than half of the state’s 1.48 million government employees.

Hat tip to Chamber staffer Glenn Harkness for the article link.

Legally Speaking, This Stinks!

There are many, many things right in our country. While freedom is one near the very top of the list, something is not right when the "whocanisue.com" web site helps proliferate lawsuit abuse. Read for yourself in an installment from the Heartland Institute’s Lawsuit Abuse Fortnightly.

A lawyer referral Web site is causing controversy in Florida over rules governing legal advertising. It’s called “whocanisue.com” and features a drop-down menu suggesting possible causes of action to wannabe litigants.

Under nursing home abuse, for instance, there are numerous subcategories, such as bed sores, dehydration, and falls and fractures. Lawyers are matched with clients by zip codes. Listed under “Hot Topics” are car accidents, bankruptcy, divorce, DUIs, foreclosure, overtime, mortgage loan modifications, and wrongful termination.

Strict rules apply to lawyer advertising, but the service isn’t, legally speaking, lawyering, so they may be exempt from those rules, though the matter hasn’t been finally resolved.

Business seems to be booming, with 250 law firms signed up and about 25,000 visits to the Web site every month. The service operates in California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states. Lawyers using the service rave about it.

“I’m getting probably twice as many phone calls,” one said. Another said his phone hasn’t stopped ringing. “The name was catchy,” he added. “I was upset I didn’t think of it.”

Others called the advertising “egregious” and a “disgrace.”