Thursday, September 17, 2020

Closed for business?

Here's a staggering headline: "Yelp reveals 60% of business closures are now permanent."
According to the article: "Yelp pointed out an increase of permanent business closures over the past six months, now reaching 97,966, or about 60% of closed businesses will never reopen their doors again.... Yelp notes restaurants, shopping and retail, and beauty and spas have been damaged the most with temporary and permanent closures since March 1. About 32,109 restaurants closed on Yelp, with 19,590 of those permanent, or about 61%. Shopping and retail saw 30,374 business closures, with 58% of those permanent. Beauty and spas saw 16,585 closures, with 42% of which are permanent. ... Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco were three metro areas that saw the most closures and permanent closures."

The article goes into all kinds of details about the fiscal impact, but one thing it doesn't cover is the emotional trauma of hard-working people whose dreams and aspirations have been wiped out.

Has your business closed? Has someone you know been forced out of business? What has been the reaction?

14 comments:

  1. Having been in business myself, I knew it was coming. Business is tricky enough without strangling it or shutting it down for months at a time.

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  2. Funny how a lot of these places that are on lockdown give reopening dates within days following the election. I'm not one that thinks the WuFlu was political in origin, but political it has become...

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  3. While I trust in Jesus knowing He is in control; I also am frightened for the future of America and even the world. A reckoning is coming. I believe it will be more devastating than anything we have seen since the beginning of America.

    - Ouida Gabriel

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  4. Note that it's the small businesses suffering the most. Big business is fine for the most part. And many of those businesses have come out in support for BLM and similar. McDonalds, Coke, the NBA, etc. Makes you wonder why the 'revolution' is sponsored by big business...

    I hate all of it. If you haven't looked at the lockdown and the protests with a serious dose of criticism, give it a try. Look up the covid IFR and tell me just how dangerous it really is. IFR = infection fatality rate

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  5. Yes, it sucks.

    And, sadly, most of the economic damage is for what really amounts to nothing....and overblown "crisis" that, while serious, did not (and still does not) require the extreme measures that our government (state, federal and local) put in place....and that were mostly ineffective.

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  6. The president of the privately owned contract manufacturing firm I work for announced last week that the firm had a record year of revenues and that raises would be forthcoming. We were blessed to be “essential”. Among the products we make are devices for the medical field and gadgets that the military wants. That paired with some careful maneuvering to comply with local tyrannical “health” regulations and we kept operating.

    Every Saturday the entire building is sprayed with a bleach solution. Much more regular handwashing/sanitizing and a doubling of the custodial staff. Oh, and those damnable (and worthless) face masks - required.

    I am soooo looking forward to the day when we can rejoin humanity as mentioned in the poem “The New Collosus” on the Statue of Liberty.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus
    “Yearning to breath free”....

    ..loose the darned masks already!

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  7. I fear the "stigma" of being deemed non-essential by the government will dog certain industries for years to come, at least as long as this continues on - who wants to run the risk of opening a business just to know that at any point, you can be deemed "non-essential" and shut down.

    The wreckage of this will dog us for years, long after the virus itself has receded into a seasonal event.

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  8. My husband is a musician who tours the country playing for library programs during the summer and plays for beer gardens, Oktoberfests, dances, weddings and schools during the rest of the year. Within a couple of week in March we lost almost our entire year's income, as all his summer gigs cancelled and the rest of the year became incredibly uncertain. We aren't closed and he's working crazy hard to be able to offer all his things virtually. He's finished his Christmas CD and we are hoping for decent sales of that. But as a musician who typically plays 150 gigs between June-August, with an average of 3/weekend in Sept and October it is wild to think he has played 6 live gigs since March 14th.

    We've got an emergency fund, raise our own meat birds, planted a good sized garden and have been doing a ton of canning and freezing. We'll be fine, but we are both thinking it will be a long time before we have our normal income back. We, like you, are very frugal and don't live above our means, and we are more thankful than ever for that. Our kids won't see a lot of changes, as we already homeschool and many of our friends are able to socialize as normal. We did cancel our trip to see Yellowstone and are being much more cautious about spending, but again, we have a lot of faith that we'll get through this. The tiny, self employed families are really hit hard and most people have no idea. We pray for all of them every night, as we know how challenging this time is for so many of us.

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    Replies
    1. Your story warms my heart. Stay the course. God willing your children will grow up free.
      Montana Guy

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    2. File under: "You can ignore reality but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." - -Ayn Rand

      Tyranny requires total control. Independent small businesses must be destroyed. The economy is being kept artificially and temporarily on life support by printing fiat dollars and loans that borrowers will never be able to pay back. The day of reckoning nears.
      Montana Guy

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  9. Yes, I'm afraid we're only just beginning to see the fallout from the government overreach. I've been encouraged to see how people have been resourceful and creative in replacing income but you can't remove large sectors of the economy without serious repercussions.

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  10. Hi Patrice. My husband and I owned a successful and thriving wood-fired pizza restaurant located on our homestead for the past 13 years. As a retired high school economics teacher, it really didn’t take much to see how these government-mandated closures were going to affect small businesses. But since we have planned for days such as these, we felt it was a good time to shut down, and focus what really counts. Really heartbreaking though for those whose whole lives and livelihoods have been taken away. I am afraid we as a society will never be able to recover what we lost. Prayers to my fellow business owners.

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  11. It is so strange to me. I am in a service business and I'm having one of my best years ever. Construction around here is also booming. Recreational businesses like golf, camping, boating etc are having really good years. I have to say I am very proud of our Governor Kemp who had the guts to open up our state for business.
    My prayers are with those who are struggling.

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  12. My wife puts me out on the front porch when Im "Dehydrating" a plate of beans,,

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