Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The Lockdown Freaks Have Destroyed Major American City Shopping Districts

(via Bloomberg)
Rents, for what used to be prime retail spaces in New York City, are crashing.

Fifth Avenue running from 42nd to 49th streets, a prime shopping area, had the biggest drop in retail asking rents in the second quarter, sliding 30% from a year earlier, according to a report by brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, reports Bloomberg.

Madison Avenue saw a 14% drop and the drop was 18% in Soho.  Hearld Square, where the flagship Macy's store is located, is seeing declines of 21% in retail rents.

The same is occurring across the country from Michigan Ave. in Chicago to the San Francisco shopping district. Many spaces stand empty.

With the erratic unscientific lockdowns continuing across the country and fearmongering by government officials and mainstream media at a fever pace, it is unclear when the shopping districts will return to normal, especially with the potential for more riots lurking in the background.


This is what blunt instrument central planning does. It is only a teaser of what will happen if the "social democrats," that is central planning power freaks, gain more control at city, state and federal levels. Destruction is their game. I repeat, this is only a teaser.

-RW


4 comments:

  1. No person, group or aggregation of the population can manage or "run" the economy; It is a spontaneous, dynamic process occurring between billions of independently-acting individuals engaged in specialized production and trade.
    But the worst of the worst of all would-be managers and planners are the Progressive Left and Social Democrats. They have no concept of limited government, Rule of Law, decentralization at any level...and most crucially, of what produces economic growth and a rising standard of living.

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  2. Great comment. At first I thought it was a Hayek quote before reading the second half.

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  3. The commercial decline in urban centers has been going on for decades. Its had its ups and downs but the overall trend has been down. For the more international cities like NYC, San Francisco, LA, even Seattle, new waves of immigrants have occasionally breathed new life into select neighborhoods resulting in small islands of prosperity. But these areas are often enveloped by the crushing weight of statist thieves and the producers move on. This trend isn't new and its cause isn't a mystery. Sui Juris' "...spontaneous, dynamic process occurring between billions of independently-acting individuals..." (I love that idea) includes the ebb and flow of producers and destroyers, earners and thieves, voluntary exchangers and political thugs. Life goes on. Ying and Yang. But even now, the producers are more powerful than the destroyers. Its just hard to see because the destroyers are so noisy.

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    1. Brian is correct I have followed the so called Retail-apocalypse for nearly a decade and a major shift to supply decentralization will address the trend

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