Even Retailers Suffering As Americans Too Poor to Shop: “Everyone Is Broke Except the 1%”
Mac Slavo
November 4th, 2015
SHTFplan.com
Most Americans are so strapped for cash at this point, that they can little afford to splurge on anything but the basics. As a result, stores are shifting their appeal to wealthier, upper class niches where they hope to turn a profit.
Welcome to the “changing income landscape” in the United States and beyond… according to those in the know, it is a “seismic shift” of epic proportions.
By all accounts, this isn’t going away anytime soon.
As Boing Boing puts it bluntly:
From Walmart to Hershey to Campbell’s Soup, America’s biggest retailers and manufacturers are warning their shareholders that flat growth is a fact of life because of “consumer bifurcation,” which is plutocrat-speak for “everyone is broke except the one percent.” The companies’ plan for rescuing themselves is to turn themselves into luxury brands targeted at the wealthy.
The Business Insider goes into more detail:
The disappearing middle class is challenging many major American brands.
Company executives blamed the disappointing results in part on the changing income landscape in the US.
“We think that consumer bifurcation has been an important driver,” Hershey CEO John Bilbrey said on an earnings call, referring to the growing gap between upper-income and lower-income consumers.
[…]
“While overall consumer confidence is trending up, lower income consumers continue to be fragile as income and wage growth has been minimal,” he said. “Higher income and more confident consumers are driving premium growth, while cost-conscious consumers are driving the value segment.”
The Rest…HERE
