Shrimpbox
Gold Member
Since I absolutely don’t know who or what to believe anymore, I put a lot of stock in day to day personal interaction with respect to commerce. I am not interested in the stock market, I am interested in what the places I am shopping at are doing.
High end house construction in my area is booming, and existing homes are selling like hot cakes. Lots of jobs connected with this industry( like house inspectors and real estate agents, mortgage people) are running at full capacity.
We had to get some new windows installed and the wait from Window World is 10-12 weeks.
We had to buy a new tv and Walmart was totally out of tvs. Best Buy only had 65 inchers Target had one left on the south side of town, but it was gone when we got there. We had to go to north side of town to finally get one from that target. There is a huge pent up demand.
Shrimp prices have almost gotten back to levels pre-Covid, and the local retail market has never stopped doing a land office business even during this crisis.
At least in Florida and on I-75 and the I-10 corridor traffic is steady if not thick and a number of the motels I have stayed at are doing well as they carefully reopen. Motels that cater to worker and truck traffic seem to be doing best as the number of semis on the interstate is mind boggling.
The local lawn equipment store has seen no drop in the sales of new equipment.
This one is recent but I think it is the most illustrative. We went to pigeon forge, tenn. today, the home of Dollywood and a definite tourist town. The women wanted to hit the Tangers outlet so we got there right before the stores opened and people were standing in line waiting. By one o’clock the huge parking lots were full, and remember this is on a Tuesday. I wanted some stuff from under armour. When I went to the checkout I asked the clerk how was business. He said they were actually grossing MORE than this time last year. He thought maybe the limiting in the number of people in the store at one time actually made people buy more, but he said today was nothing, you would not believe the weekends. I asked him if they needed more help and he said they were desperate to hire more workers, a theme repeated throughout the outlet mall. So apparently there are many jobs to be had.
it just does not seem like people are out of money to spend. Not only that but there seems to be a huge demand to get out and eat, shop, and recreate. I cannot detect anything but a robust recovery in the making. Yes I am sure there are regional factors and I am not exposed to population sub groups like those who live in the inner cities, but I am not seeing anything that would cause me to be pessimistic about the economy.
High end house construction in my area is booming, and existing homes are selling like hot cakes. Lots of jobs connected with this industry( like house inspectors and real estate agents, mortgage people) are running at full capacity.
We had to get some new windows installed and the wait from Window World is 10-12 weeks.
We had to buy a new tv and Walmart was totally out of tvs. Best Buy only had 65 inchers Target had one left on the south side of town, but it was gone when we got there. We had to go to north side of town to finally get one from that target. There is a huge pent up demand.
Shrimp prices have almost gotten back to levels pre-Covid, and the local retail market has never stopped doing a land office business even during this crisis.
At least in Florida and on I-75 and the I-10 corridor traffic is steady if not thick and a number of the motels I have stayed at are doing well as they carefully reopen. Motels that cater to worker and truck traffic seem to be doing best as the number of semis on the interstate is mind boggling.
The local lawn equipment store has seen no drop in the sales of new equipment.
This one is recent but I think it is the most illustrative. We went to pigeon forge, tenn. today, the home of Dollywood and a definite tourist town. The women wanted to hit the Tangers outlet so we got there right before the stores opened and people were standing in line waiting. By one o’clock the huge parking lots were full, and remember this is on a Tuesday. I wanted some stuff from under armour. When I went to the checkout I asked the clerk how was business. He said they were actually grossing MORE than this time last year. He thought maybe the limiting in the number of people in the store at one time actually made people buy more, but he said today was nothing, you would not believe the weekends. I asked him if they needed more help and he said they were desperate to hire more workers, a theme repeated throughout the outlet mall. So apparently there are many jobs to be had.
it just does not seem like people are out of money to spend. Not only that but there seems to be a huge demand to get out and eat, shop, and recreate. I cannot detect anything but a robust recovery in the making. Yes I am sure there are regional factors and I am not exposed to population sub groups like those who live in the inner cities, but I am not seeing anything that would cause me to be pessimistic about the economy.
