It also strikes me that, if you take thousands of bright young people and make them into junior managers at various companies, and then they rise up the ranks at their various companies over the years as they gain knowledge and experience and eventually become senior managers, then you could have quite a healthy economy.

But if you take all those thousands of bright young people and put them into private equity houses, where they'll be trying to come into a completely new industry every few years and work out how it works as they go, your economy probably won't look so good.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brain-drain-college-grads-wall-street_n_1069424?ri18n=true

Maybe they got worried that someone would sell the communists the rope to hang the capitalists and decided to ruin the stores?

So basically it's the capitalist equivalent of the Soviets burning every farm and dynamiting every dam as they frantically retreat in the face of the advancing Army Group Centre. "The socialists can't seize the means of production if we destroy them first!"

(Much Soviet manufacturing capacity, of course, was not destroyed but was moved thousands of miles away beyond the Urals to keep it out of German hands. A lot of US manufacturing capacity has also gone somewhere.)

Payless never did manufacture in the U.S. This isn't the means of production. This is being unable to do the marketing shit that normal capitalism can not fuck up. Usually.

Honestly, it wasn't a very good store. The point is that we're blowing past "We can't have nice things" into "We can't have adequate things."

When you are taking your wife to a job interview and her nice shoes fall apart at the last minute because they've spent four years sitting unused in tropical heat, Payless was a great place to stop and pick up something that looks presentable for not a lot of money.

replace "often run" but "almost always run", in my experience. Finance sector is a pretty nasty place anywhere near the top. There are exceptions, but in my experience they really obviously stand out.

wow, 7 sounds overly experienced

Not much mystery here.

The money is in cheap shoes?

We could pick ourselves up by our bootstraps if we had some bootstraps.

so, y'all should start wanking to Rush Limb. if you want to finish up by the deadline

Gosh, who would have thought a lifetime of maintaining a "cigar guy" persona could have negative health consequences?

In case you're wondering how the demise of Payless affected its generally downscale customers, the answer is that they are better off. The inflation rate in "US Footwear Urban Areas" is lower than that overall inflation rate since private equity got involved in 2012. Obviously -- private equity put a few billion more into Payless than it took out, and some of that got passed along. Also, 16,000 fewer employees are being supported by U.S. consumers of crappy shoes.**

I'm all in favor of wealth from the top 1% (private equity investors) to the bottom quintiles (crappy shoe purchasers). Sadly, the private equity "success stories" like Dunkin Donuts tend to cause more money to flow in the other direction.

*https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEAE
(footwear prices went up 5.5% from year end 2011 to 2019)
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-price-index-and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008/
(overall inflation 13.7% in the same period)***

**Not really -- Amazon and Walmart have been hiring while Payless is closing.

***We all know that healthcare, college education, and San Francisco real estate go up faster than the inflation rate every friggin year. Something had to go in the other direction.

13: It apparently never occurred to the man himself.

14: I wouldn't assume just from the numbers that flattening is "thanks" to PE. Prices were also flat in the 90's, stagnated then rose in the 2000's, and more recently have flattened again.

I'd assume there are all sorts of factors going into this of which corporate ownership is just one - like international production costs. And how much of the retail market does Payless account for, anyway?

I assume it's the-long term Soviet shoe glut working is way out of the system.

Clothes and shoes got cheap during the recession and have mostly stayed there. I don't know why but figure part of it is that what I buy is out of fashion.

But was the height of fashion in 2007.

18: Oddly, if you look at the FRED graph, the footwear CPI did not grow slower during the official recession Dec. 2007-Jun. 2009. It might be a lagging indicator more responsive to employment than to GDP, as prices did stop growing in 2010, briefly dropped Nov. 2010-Apr. 2011, then had a spurt 2012-2014, then hovering around 0% nominal growth since.

I prefer a process of pure reason.

This company was presumably intended to be pronounced "pay LESS" as in you pay less. But I keep reading it as "PAYless" as in, lacking pay. By pure reason, the fundies made the same mistake and purchased the company on the assumption the staff worked for free.

Actually, the name was pronounced "Chumbly."

I think a lot of footwear production has been moving to Veit Nam because it cheaper than China. Low consumer prices may well be a product of southeast Asian urbanization.

The truly retro say Nam Viet.

That's my UN training shining through. Always the two word version they use because that's the official name provided. Its not nearly as having to call a country "Bolivia (Plurinational State of)," but I think that moniker is going away anyway.

I call it The Bolivia.

That was interesting.
1. IIRC, current US productivity growth is much the same as in other rich countries with less financialized management (comparing 2000s US with 1950s US as the article does is ridiculous).
2. It's an epiphenomenon of r>g. There's too much capital slopping around, it gets invested in things inadequately understood, like MBS and shoes.
3. The Soviet comparison is interesting. The Money, like the Party, issues arbitrary directives from on high, concerned not with the workings of the enterprise but with external incentives. But the Money's directives are less arbitrary (since the enterprise does actually need to make money) and less detailed (being concerned with money and not for instance shoes quotas) and so less likely to destroy the enterprise. But the Party of course sets an extremely low bar.

16: No disagreement. I was amused that an article on the economic effects of something didn't even think to look at the economic effects on consumers.

18: The 2007-09 recession, like most recessions, featured massive deflation in construction and generally in stuff. you don't spend money on when you lost your job, like tourism. "Normal stuff" like crappy shoes are less affected by recession. That said, I don't know what percentage of the footwear index is Payless and what percentage is luxury items.

Now I'm wondering what the "footwear index urban areas" includes. I assume boots are included, but fishing boots extend well above the foot, even above the knee, so maybe not? What about Socks? What about stockings? Panty hose? And why is it just urban areas?

Rural Americans go barefoot so they can get hookworm and qualify for Medicaid.

It's really too cold for that.

Frostbite. Same principle.

I once froze the skin off my ears. Not very much of the skin, but thicker than what peels away from a sunburn.

I once got frostnip (or maybe even mild frostbite? I don't know) on my big toe, because I had a hole in my boot, in January, in an Ottawa winter. The skin turned numb, and then went all blackish-grey or something, and I thought I was going to lose a toe. There was a burning, itching sensation when I felt my toe again, and realized I had been spared.

That does sound like frostbite - and not particularly mild either.

For anyone who isn't aware: If you've had cold injuries of any kind - frostbite, frostnip, immersion foot - then you are much more susceptible to getting them again in the same place. (Unless it's been amputated.) So be extra careful.

Or cut your losses.

Do not attempt to amputate your own digits in order to prevent recurring frostbite. I shouldn't have to say this but some of you lot still think that pouring corrosive rocket fuel into open wounds is good medical practice.

Of course. Have a professional amputate them for you.

"Learn to amputate" could become the new "learn to code"

I am the amputator with my pocket calculator

37 Well if the doctor refuses then who else is to do it?

Applause for 41.

41: Amateur.

43: No, no, not Rogozov!

35 It's not something I've ever told anyone, but my left nipple must have incurred a frost injury of some kind decades ago. You'd think it would be a pretty unlikely spot for that.

The nipple ring would conduct the heat away very quickly if exposed.

43: DILETTANTE!

Anywhere that's particularly non-convex seems at risk, given the increased surface area-to-volume ratio. Including nipples, if you're unfortunate. If you're going to preventatively self-amputate, it's best to do so until you're approximately spherical.

45: Just put a bandaid over it.

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