Closing Days
John Ink2Quill Opinion
www.ink2quill.com

Times are a changing. You have only to look around or turn on the screen to see how our tech innovations and the changing times are changing our cities, businesses, cultural norms, consumption habits and even healths. Yes, our health in the Western world, more particularly the US, is not continuously on the rise everywhere with every segment of the population. New York City is the largest city by population in the US but even that may change in the coming decades. So changes in the big city are a good indicator of changing trends.

Up until this decade the city of New York boasted thriving small businesses and shops. Small businesses of all kinds in New York City have always come and gone. Competition and the cost of running a business has always been expensive but small businesses have mostly, for the most part, managed to wring a profit out of the economy. But that might be changing. The hurdle for small and medium businesses might have just become too high for businesses to leap, so to speak.

Walking around the city more and more empty windows from closed stores are visible. Whether it’s on Broadway, in the boroughs of Queens or Brooklyn many more small shops are going the way of the dinosaur today. Now the usual suspects are blamed like inflation, store rents, traffic even but the problem may be a little bigger than what we are willing to acknowledge. For example, take the average wage for the average person. The minimum wage has risen from 10 or even 20 years ago but it is still too low for those people that wish to live in the city and that fact has become worse today than pre-Covid. Not to mention that so many wages have not risen in the past decade while the cost of everything has. That has the effect of burdening someone with an additional tax. $60,000/yr. salary has far less buying power than it did 10 years ago. That is just the cold hard truth of the matter.

The people who bought houses, property a decade ago got a better deal from the point of view today. They are paying less and less on their mortgages as the years go by because of the falling buying power of the dollar. And the people who are struggling to buy houses now with a mortgage are finding it harder today.

Let’s talk about transportation too. That is public and commuters transportation. For those that cannot afford the city prices and move away for a better living deal have to contend with transportation. The cost of transportation and the time lost on the road or on the train or bus. Often, long commutes mean the commuter arrives home exhausted with far less family or hobby time. That is an enormous cost for a job. And in New York the cost of driving in the city is about to get worse too. What about parking, gas, insurance, crime and all the other problems car owners face?

So, the effect of all of this is that New York and cities like it, with similar problems, are losing population and wealth. One of the effects of this are the store closures we see in many places. It can be argued that online shopping plays at least a partial role but it is not the main reason, as of today.

So, what will a New York City with more stores empty than open look like for tourists, travelers of all types? Some parts of the city feel like a city closing down, like a town closing down for a hurricane or tornado. This is not good.

John Ink2Quill

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