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THE GREAT RETREAT
Have you been to Home Depot lately? How about Walgreens or Target? These are all big box stores surrounding the City of Lake Geneva. The reason why their attendance is down, and it is substantially down, is that those companies will not admit that in any reports. They are private companies and aren’t required to provide such reports to the general public. Customers must go into these stores and see for themselves, and once they get inside, start paying attention to the second ‘retreat’ from attendance.
There are fewer employees than there were only a few months ago, and certainly fewer than a year or two ago. Is it the war in the Mideast? Is it the nastiness of the political polarization of the nation from coast to coast? Is it the prices? It’s actually all of those things. Prices are skyrocketing, although the current administration, fully in charge of the numbers now, is reporting inflation running at 3.9 percent. Check out power tools at Home Depot and be shocked. A 20-volt battery-powered DeWalt drill was a hundred and fifty dollars two years ago. It’s now down to a hundred dollars ‘naked,’ that work being used to describe the box, which has only the tool without a battery inside, much less the special charger it takes to charge the battery if and when you purchase one.
The battery is ninety dollars, and the charge is ninety more. The total is 280 dollars today. 3.9 percent inflation? My aunt’s and your aunt’s fanny, so to speak. Clever repackaging? Part of that extra money has gone to grates and bars to protect these now pricey tools and the stuff that goes with them. At Walgreens, a package of four five-blade Gillette razors goes for thirty-six dollars, which is almost twice what the same thing was two years ago. 3.9 percent? A tube of Cortisone cream (3.5 ounces) was 5.99 dollars but is now 9.95 per tube. 3.9 percent? Gasoline is up about 23 percent across the board, and why is that?
The war is touted as the cause and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz…except the U.S. gets no oil from ships supposed to be coming through that closed strait. Then why the 25 percent, as the U.S. is the largest supplier of oil on the planet and can get all the oil it needs from its own wells? 3.9 percent inflation? The retreat of consumers and employees across the board is not the only retreat the country is suffering. The depth of the retreat reaches social attitudinal and prevaricating levels.
The public is not only pulling back because things have gotten so successful, but also because it has slowly but surely lost trust. People still need stuff, but don’t want to enter such stores anymore because of the ‘feeling’ they get of being ripped off. The only increase in employees in these big box stores is in the area of security, certainly not in the area of having employees around to help to provide assistance, pricing, or product locations. “Inventory Security” is the broad name used to describe door checkers looking for shoplifters.
At Walmart, these employees wear vests with that title written on them. When asked about the fact that the doorkeepers should be called customer security, the only person who replied to that statement simply asked: “Why?” Capitalism without truth, without having the ability to have truth revealed, and regulations to govern truth, is not capitalism. It’s legalized or ignored.
Lake Geneva is a tiny speck of reality that those who read this newspaper are a part of. The rest of the country is out there, likely experiencing the same introduction to fraud and misrepresentation that once was a part of this culture but slowly brought under control as the nation took off economically after WWII. Information systems and technology were supposed to be used to hone the blade of truth and use it to cut through the fakery and fraud. Everyone living in Lake Geneva today, or working in its environs, or even visiting, becomes aware and then, silently, as capability will allow, retreats. Is there any wonder the birthrate is sinking so very fast?
