Black Friday 2013: Another Sign that Unregulated Capitalism is NOT Working

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

a secondary option that I might go for is a law that no retail employee must work thanksgiving, and can not be punished for not working. this is somewhat unenforceable but it would help the unionless employees display a backbone.

What about the people that want to work? Why would you deny anyone a living wage that wants to earn one?

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Hawkeye: I relied on Thurs-Fri sales estimates from ShopperTrak which showed sales UP 2.3%.
The National Retail Federation shows sales for Thurs-Fri-Sat-Sun were DOWN 2.9% vs 2012. All figures exclude any adjustment for inflation.
What must be alarming to retailers (of which I am one) is that the traffic count ("butts in the doors") was unchanged to slightly higher.

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I used to make good money working religious holidays for the god squad who wanted to be home. It didn't make a difference to me, except, of course, for the double-time on my paycheck.

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@McGentrix,

McGentrix wrote:

hawkeye10 wrote:

a secondary option that I might go for is a law that no retail employee must work thanksgiving, and can not be punished for not working. this is somewhat unenforceable but it would help the unionless employees display a backbone.

What about the people that want to work? Why would you deny anyone a living wage that wants to earn one?

this back up plan takes care of this objection. if enough employees want to work and the employer wants to open fine.

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@realjohnboy,

re the lookers: I think consumers smell the fear of retailers, they know that they are in control, all they need to do to get a better deal is wait. I am beginning to think that opening thanksgiving is going to hurt retailers badly, they displayed fear, they pissed away any power they had to negotiate a profitable deal.

margins are going to be in the toliet. this should finish off JPC, and Sears is not far behind.

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@realjohnboy,

so the average shopper spent less eh?
I wonder how the Big Box stores faired.
WITH THE increasing sales of
'gift cards" does the merchant get the sales credit of the gift card when it is sold or when ot is redeemed?
Do gift cards make a diff in the overall sales forecasts?

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Isn't time for government to help everyone out and do what retailers on their own can not/will not do, and pass a law that stores must be closed on Thanksgiving?

You can find that out for yourself. Germany used to have a federal law that limited store hours. The original limit was 7am to 6:30 pm on workdays, 7 am to 1 pm on Saturdays, and no opening on holidays and Sundays. (There were, of course, exceptions for critical infrastructure such as pharmacies. And these exceptions grew more numerous over time, eroding the law somewhat.)

Eventually, the federal law died when a constitutional reform in the early 2000s turned matters like this over to the states. Some German states have left the more or less like it was. Others have liberalized it almost to American levels. My impression: the discrepancies between state law haven't made much of a difference to the condition of the German retail worker.

But as I said, you can figure it out for yourself if you want to.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

i lived in germany before the laws were liberalized (the first wave of reform, early 1990's).

I did not know that. I agree the old state of things wasn't the end of the world. But the new state of things isn't the end of the world for workers, either.

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@hawkeye10,

I don't guess McG had anything to say about minimum wage, safety rules, etc. He said the government should have no say over the hours and days of operation.

It's easy to come out ahead when you can change what people have said, so you can reply to what you wish they had said. Strawmen are easy to knock down.

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@farmerman,

Gift Cards are recorded as sales when they are redeemed/used. Many retail analysts do take them into account when assessing overall holiday season sales, however.

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@roger,

roger wrote:

I don't guess McG had anything to say about minimum wage, safety rules, etc. He said the government should have no say over the hours and days of operation.

It's easy to come out ahead when you can change what people have said, so you can reply to what you wish they had said. Strawmen are easy to knock down.

he said that he could not fathom telling business how to decide when to open, and I responded that we tell them what to do all of the time so this should not be that hard to imagine.

I am sorry that you had trouble following the conversation.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

I did not know that. I agree the old state of things wasn't the end of the world. But the new state of things isn't the end of the world for workers, either.]

did not know what?

germany would be a good test case, how much more crap do retailers sell because they are open longer? we should be able to compare before and after to some extent, taking into consideration that the novelty might skew the first couple of months of the new hours.

when I first got to germany the local store hours pissed me off, and I also had trouble with the short hours at the commissary where we bought almost all of our food because it was much cheaper most of the time (Aldi was sometimes decent depending upon exchange rates), but after a year or so planning shopping was second nature.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

did not know what?

That you used to live in Germany.

hawkeye10 wrote:

germany would be a good test case, how much more crap do retailers sell because they are open longer?

I presume it makes no difference. Consumers have a budget to spend, and if they can't spend it at one hour, they'll spend it at another. As long as shop hours don't change consumers' budgets --- and I don't see how they would --- the overall effect on the economy is zilch. (Unless you impose absurd limits, like 11:00:00 am to 11:00:01 am.)

The main benefit of constrained shop hours is the workers' convenience. The main cost is consumers' inconvenience. But moneywise, I don't see how it makes a difference to the overall economy.

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@hawkeye10,

Yet, you persist in replying to what has not been said. Try to keep up.

hawkeye10 wrote:

McGentrix wrote:

The government should have no say what so ever on when a privately held business can be open or closed. That's crazy talk.

the government has long mandated minimum standards for treating employees, for instance min wage, overtime, and workplace safety rules, there is nothing crazy about government protecting the citizens from abusive employers.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I am sorry that you had trouble following the conversation.

Well, I for one had no trouble at all in seeing the relevance of your remark.

I first read your remark at 1:05 AM last night and wanted to drink a toast to how relevant it was, but all the bars were closed -- probably due to some damn ordinance, put in place by conservatives to interfere with bar-owners' freedom to serve beer when they like and my freedom to stumble around the streets inebriated when I like.

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@Kolyo,

Huh, you should live here. Bars were still open.

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Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island all were closed on T'giving, by law. Black Friday in MA didn't start til 12:30AM Friday (Staples). No problem.

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@Kolyo,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I am sorry that you had trouble following the conversation.

Kolyo wrote:

Well, I for one had no trouble at all in seeing the relevance of your remark.

I first read your remark at 1:05 AM last night and wanted to drink a toast to how relevant it was, but all the bars were closed -- probably due to some damn ordinance, put in place by conservatives to interfere with bar-owners' freedom to serve beer when they like and my freedom to stumble around the streets inebriated when I like.

HAY!
That 's not a conservative thing to do. That 's liberal.
Conservatives (LIKE ME) support laissez faire free enterprize.
Conservatives support Individual rights.
"Every man for himself and let the devil take the hindmost."

Its the liberals who r the damned authoritarians.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island all were closed on T'giving, by law. Black Friday in MA didn't start til 12:30AM Friday (Staples). No problem.

you must be imagining things....thats crazy talk.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Its the liberals who r the damned authoritarians.

it is the Left that believes that effective markets require government regulation. I have long said that I am very much like a libertarian except I am on the Left, a self described Zen Socialist.

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Black Friday 2013: Another Sign that Unregulated Capitalism is NOT Working

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