Thinking about the Future

Commenter “Gasenvy” offers the following thoughts:

Getting things back to normal won’t happen, whatever that was.

Most small business are prone not reinvest in new equipment more employees or more locations.

Most owners spend it on bigger homes, a boat and fancy vacations and not plowing profits back into their business.

I guess it’s human nature at work.

Not a big fan of Walmart but Sam Walton was right, reinvesting all profits back into your business is a sure way to succeed.

Look at his offspring all multi-billionaires from one simple idea, reinvest, reinvest.

Look around, do you see improved builds with more cars in employee parking lots and more employee since the Great Recession? Nope.

The new normal will be less small business across all business classes.

The one’s that survive will employee less to do more on the their machines and the prep lines.

Restaurants and eateries won’t be able to cram 50 tables in the space where 35 should be by law, the new norm of social distancing will demand only 25 tables allowed.

The use of cash, handing money to someone with your germs on it will be a thing of the past if it’s not already.

Cash, dirty paper passing all kinds of diseases from one human to another.

Whew!

Grocery Store will change, if they don’t only the strong will survive.

No more open for 24 hours.

Have you been in store where delivery service employees are filling email orders?

You can’t get down an aisle without swerving around them.

Email order will be filled by dark store employees filling orders after hours for next day delivery.

I smell a new class of retail clerk paid less because they are warehouse worker. Who’s needs 24 hour grocery stores anyway, whens the last time you shopped for Spam at 2:30am?

Citizens in states with high taxes and poorly run governments will suffer the most.

Unable to support basic services and massive pension shortfalls because of reduced tax income from lower state residency.

Illinois, New York, California all Democratic leaning socialistic states come to mind.

Commercial real estate will be impacted by the new norm.

Video communication will take the place of lavish office space for conduct daily meetings and operations.

No more dress code, sweat pants and shirts (with non threading logos or statements), will be totally acceptable during your daily 7 hour video conference.

Human Resources (HR) at this very moment are re-writing Employee-Employer Manuals to prevent the potential of more employee power, pretty scary when privately the Amazon model of business practices is the envy of all HR departments.

Parents and teachers are looking at video classroom instruct currently being used with the side eye.

They don’t want physical classroom to disappear.

Parents lives are being turned upside down, no more taking little John and Janie to the bus stop at 8:00 am.

The kitchen table is the new classroom.

Teachers on the other hand need a physical building (Schools).

More building equal more teachers, equals more voices to push back the idea that teachers are overpaid and get out-sized pensions.

Your thoughts.


Comments

Thinking about the Future — 16 Comments

  1. The “future” of Illinois ?

    It doesn’t take a psychic to know what that is.

    Capitalist on the way up – Socialist on the way down, just like Venezuela.

  2. Union/State employees donate and vote for democrats, in exchange those elected officials make sure the gravy train keeps running for those unions and state employees.

    Little do they realize, the source of the gravy is leaving the state(tax-payers), which will only make it more expensive for those that stay.

    I just put my house on the market in Mchenry County, I’m getting out of dodge ASAP.

    Moving to a state with no state income tax, I get tot keep that extra 4.95% and invest it, rather than sending it to a bloated state government to waste on a pension for some spoiled state employee.

  3. I don’t even have a prediction of what I’ll be doing after lunch.

  4. If you’re a small business or service in IL crushed by this UnConstitutional shut down and want to join Rep Darrin Bailey in suing Pritzker for his over-reaching and unConstitutional shut down Call Atty Thomas DeVore at 618-664-9439

    If 20 McHenry County businesses can ban together it will cost a flat fee of $500 each.

  5. These compassionate conservative republikkklans work overtime to look philosophical and caring, but at the end of the day, they always prove to be nothing else other than right wing propaganda parrots. Notice how wonderfully softly the “overpaid-teachers” and öut-of-control pensions” garbage lands? We know these republikkklans too well…tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock, hug a blogger, tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock, meeeeeeoooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww…

  6. I foresee the return of the town pillory were miscreants and public nuisances like Angel are chained and people throw all their rotten vegetables aiming for his head.

  7. According to what I’ve read, Angel could be one of those overpaid teachers.

    He has a vested interest in keeping your kids in the classroom, where now the mask it coming off and the public school system’s failures are becoming more obvious to parents that are at home working with their kids through all of the makework socialist nonsense from Scholastic Readers and Pearson’s braindead common core lessons for the mentally challenged who want inclusive math.

    Who would have expected that someone who is teaching your kids also associates Republicans with the KKK (though this is historically inaccurate) and is so immature that he “meows” at the end of each post.

  8. By the way.

    We can’t assume that all is bad about the future.

    God forbid we have to spend time with our families and parents are in the kitchen with sit-down meals, dads showing their children how to fix things around the house, or they are out riding bikes or tossing the baseball.

    C19 is actually the worst nightmare for people who attack the family and love more government control.

    It’s becoming obvious that these types (like the public school daycare workers) are ultimately powerless.

    It just might not seem that way right now.

    A lot of what is in the original post details things about “the new normal” that might be improvements depending upon your perspective.

    Parents who automatically just want to hand their kids off to the government “because their lives have been turned upside down” again might need to rethink this a bit.

    My life hasn’t been turned upside down, and people will move on.

  9. Gasenvy says:

    “More building equal more teachers, equals more voices to push back the idea that teachers are overpaid and get out-sized pensions.”

    Do we have too many teachers? Can we homeowners get our real estate tax bills cut by a substantial amount by adjusting student to teacher ratios and STILL get good student outcomes? Illinois schools have an average of 15 students per teacher. In Utah the ratio is 34 students per teacher and with better outcomes on achievement tests in grammar schools.

    Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s and 1950’s, the K-12 student to teacher ratio was 30, 29, 28, 27 to 1. (https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf) These students then went on to colleges and universities, studied stem and then numerous became engineers and scientists who worked on our Nation’s space program including landing men on the Moon. The student to teacher ratio did not matter to them.

    Maybe this is the time, according to Democrat Rahm Emanual, to not let a crisis go to waste. The virus crisis. Rahm no doubt used crises to push things through when he worked in the Obama regime.

    Illinois could use this crisis to adjust the students per teacher ratio. Teachers are smart and flexible and could find jobs elsewhere such as in the private sector where they would be on 401 type plans and off of taxpayers’ backs. This would be a win for homeowners being crushed by exorbitantly high real estate tax bills that pay for schools and teachers. The private sector would win by gaining smart teachers, all of which have a bachelor degree and many with masters. Excess math and science teachers could readily find jobs in the tech industry. History and art teachers could go into communications, or marketing or sales. Amazon is ramping up. Maybe good positions there for teachers.

    Then, with less teachers, the headcount for administrators could also be reduced and thus help lower our tax bills.

  10. Some Guy is kind of a right wing nut. Who listens to these whiners.

  11. Small business owners may not always invest in new equipment because they may not have to!

    If you are a salon what would you need to reinvest in?

    If you are a restaurant what do you need to reinvest in?

    Yes maybe every 10-20 years you may have to reinvest in things but Walton reinvested because he wanted to expand!

    Most small businesses are not that way.

    Bars?

    Not unless you own multiple!

    Most small business owners like one business and don’t have the desire to have more or multiple locations!

    You can’t throw out a blanket statement of how people want to reinvest their profits.

    Maybe they take there profits and put it in a 401k or IRA?

    If that is the case then you can’t touch it because of penalties.

    I am not saying they shouldn’t save up to buy new equipment as needed or have a small rainy day fund but being shut down for months at a time is not something they plan for!

    Most small businesses don’t make $100,000.

    They do it because they love what they do, and can make a decent living not extravagant.

    If you have never been a small business owner go do it because most fail and everything is on you!

    Income, healthcare, and most don’t even pay themselves a fair wage for working 60-80 hours a week or more.

  12. What’s the next shortage and the next and the next and the next.

    This week it beef, chicken and pork.

    A major concern for grocery operators.

    Meat is one of the main driver to higher profits in stores selling groceries.

    Think deli, bakery departments, in-store butcher shops, meat counters and frozen foods.

    Combined meat sales are the second highest profit center in a grocery store behind produce.

    It goes like this grocery (+-) depending on store focus Grocery 60% sales/20% profit, Meat 30% sales 30% Profit.

    Produce 10% sales 35% profit.

    Butcher were replace by central processing factories, no need to cut meat anymore.

    A major percentage of your meat is cut and packaged by an overworked underpaid illegal immigrant, then thrown in a gas filled container, in a plant somewhere in rural Iowa or shipped in from Southeast Asia to your local market.

    Why is this happening?

    Japan in the 80’s developed a logistic model that took all the slack out of the supply chain.

    No excess inventory in warehouse or the backrooms or basement in retail establishments.

    “Just In Time” and “On Demand” became the buzz word for corporate America.

    No stock piling of raw material or finished goods for a rainy day or sudden surge.

    Forecasting expected business needs became a science driven by computer data derived from consumer purchasing habits.

    Then came Category Management and Efficient Assortment in the early 1990’s.

    Stores wanting to be everything to everybody became overstock and over stored.

    Reviewing their SKU count they found thousands of SKU’s sold less than one unit a week.

    Category Management and Efficient Assortment was the way out of this conundrum.

    Analyzing data by store category purchases and by need, small, large, premium, mid price, price etc.

    Once again aided by laptop computers and an army major grocery supplier employees trained in Category Management went to work eliminating non-productive SKU’S.

    So now if you had 9 SKU’s of beans 3 will do or five types of mayo 2 will get the job done and so on and so on, in all departments of a grocery retail outlet.

    The Aldi model but not quite the same.

    The space on the shelf made room for new items (20% of a store annual)business.

    Running a grocery store became very expensive Category Management help but wasn’t the total solution to cutting overhead especially payroll.

    Expansion and inclusion of additional in-store profit centers like cheese shops and wine bars were trendy additions to the offerings.

    Finally Direct Store Delivery, think soda and chip expanded exponentially.

    Ethnic aisle and more snacks than anyone can eye or eat in a year and have more linear feet that stand by departments like dog food, laundry and diapers.

    Why, profit 35%+ on most non soda DSD.

    Why all this B.S. well, No slack in the supply chain, less linear feet of shelving for grocery dry goods and the expansion of excessive DSD assisted in the shortages.

    Not enough shelf space or basic goods like toilet paper, detergents and cleaners.

    Now what are they going to do with the hot food center, olive station and candy and nuts in a bushel basket?

    Bueler, Bueler, Ferris Bueler, Anyone?

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