Target Inventory Build
(apnews.com)
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Truth. My wife and I make over $350,000 combined, and I am about to trade in my car ($80k) for something cheap ($30k), and we're talking about no longer eating out. Every time we go out to eat now it's like $150, whereas in the past we would spend 60 to 80 bucks for the same thing, we are literally going to the same places we've always gone, but it costs twice as much. Everything is so much more expensive that our bank account is always less than what I'm expecting when I checked the balance, and it's really hard to put your finger on exactly where the moneys going, because it's literally just everything. Even our fucking power bill, our electric bill was like twice as high a few months ago. We heat our pool with a heat pump, which is really efficient, and in the past our most expensive power bill if we accidentally left the heat pump on during a cold month, would be like close to $300, but we had a $500 power bill this winter.
We all spent so much effort to get to where we are in life (born and raised poor, no college degree, started working when I was 14, etc.), and now they have pulled the rug out from under us. I'm just glad we bought a house before everything skyrocketed.
I read an article that exposed how bad this is but it's even worse. Most of these mega stores double as grocery stores. The most important number is revenue. As food prices skyrocket, the revenue number doesn't tell the whole story. A paycheck to paycheck family that was spending $100 on food and $100 in the store a week might now be spending $150 on food and only $50 in the store now. The overall revenue for the company is the same yet would lead to a huge inventory buildup of products. $200 of revenue would still be reported. If that same family is now putting that extra $50 in their gas tank, they no longer can afford to spend the extra $50 in the store. They need to eat so they choose food over their Chinese made clothes or trinkets. Inventories go up. I think the next few quarters of reporting is NOT going to be good. This is where we could see a DEFLATION in prices.
I'm posting this because it's the first major confirmation I've seen of something that u/GynaNumbaZero has been saying for months; namely that deflation was coming and that the "we're running out of shit!" inflation panic was a psyop.
It’s genius on their part. Inflation, deflation, lockdowns in china where 99% of our shit comes from—-
Boom! There’s nothing in the stores, and no demand for actual non-essential items. And no way to replace inventory for things that do sell… like maybe game consoles… Then comes the unemployment, massive layoffs— this is a recipe for a depression, not a recession—
But we have a backup weapon for clothes AND non-essential items: thrift stores, yard sales, facebook marketplace, craigslist, etc. I’ve been buying my clothes for pennies on the dollar by using charity owned thrift stores—most of the stuff i buy was worn once or twice— a lot of it still has the tags on it, Polo, Old Navy, and even more upscale brands over the years.