Inflation & the upcoming recession
I can agree with these most people used to go out to dinner on the weekend, they would order drinks with their food. Also when people are happy or wanting to have a good time they would go out and have drinks and a good time. People are so strapped for cash now that they can’t afford to enjoy life or even think about having a good time. Their brain goes “If I go out I won’t be able to have a good time”. Around here menus have shrunk or restaurants have closed it’s going to be a more widespread problem than you think. The restaurants and hotels are this already and try to compensate by raising their prices to make up their loss of sales. It’s lasts for awhile but eventually that fails as well.
I think a few different things going on here. Cost savings, Gen Z likes weed more than booze, weight loss drugs crushing appetites and desire for alcohol, etc.
Here's the problem I see with all of this. We used to be a country of industrious people who gave out good quality at fair prices. Now, even with cheap material before, everyone's time with worth gold, so now we have super expensive labor (still lots of corner-cutting), and now expensive material or parts that will climb even more due to tariffs. I don't think this will have the effect that they wanted everyone to think.
100% agree with you @ryanator . I had this same conversation yeasterday at work. I get it, I want things built in America, it creates job etc. the problem is we don’t have the plants or labor (people can’t find people as it is and people this day an age expects hirer wages than someone working in china for $1.00 an hour). In the meantime we are getting squeezed more and more and we can barely make it as is, this isn’t going to help and in fact cause more business to close. Take furniture for example, they are putting tariffs on furniture. Most people can’t afford it already and raising the prices to cover the tariffs will definitely make me not purchase, so the furniture companies will hurt and go out of business even more. I get what they want, but they won’t get what they want and cause an opposite effect. I have already seen it happen with the restaurants around here.
