#covid-19 and retail

[alwaysbewoke]

[howlingwolf23]

So there's this post about how customer\employee relationship has gotten worse since Covid. And I do believe that but it's also like that but in other areas, it has also become more of this "me vs everyone" in areas we might not have noticed yet.

A big one for my city is driving.

I live in a small college town so the occasional bad drivers from out of town was no surprise but that was usually the number one complaint of "stupid out of towners" or "damn college kids" don't know how to drive around here.

But post Covid? Holy shit! It seems like it has gone mad!

Nobody goes when the light goes green because so many red light runners. And i don't mean that usual prick, last second, squeezing in.

No.

I mean the light has been red for several beats, it has been green the other way for a beat and half where even the slow trucks\sunday drivers\slow reaction people can be half way into the intersection and there is still a red light runners coming through.

So now everyone waits like 2 or 3 solid seconds before moving just in case that asshole is around and guess what? there usually is.

On top of that, I have seen someone do this, in front of a cop. Fucker did nothing. Not even a flash of the lights warning.

Or people in the wrong lane but they need to turn, they are one just lane over, so they will just turn anyways even if there is already cars in the turning lane, even if their is 1 line to turn on to.

Or the road merges, everyone knows this road goes from 2 to 1 lane so zipper merge but not this asshole, they have to gun it to get 1 more car length ahead in bumper to bumper traffic just to slam on their brakes and turn at the first street.

People flying through school zones, not even slowing down, just keep doing the regular speed limit.

Pedestrians too, just walking anywhere they like, crossing the road like there's no cars on 3 lane wide roads, just walking, taking their time as cars have to slow down, sometimes stop or on smaller, residential streets, just walking in the middle of the road and refusing to move left or right for traffic.

It's just madness sometimes driving through town, and that's ignoring the other major issues you'll see when driving through the town.

I think it's 2 parts, 1) people got used to the more empty streets and now feel like they, personally, own the streets, and others are now invading their space 2) something about Covid just really did a number on everyone, not sure if it was the isolation that made people forget to be kind\general rules of society or if it the Mask Wars that started the "us vs them" mentally people seem to have post-covid.

[mischief-night-ghost]

Customer at work, saying mental health issues got worse after Covid.

Me: well, on top of social isolation, it's been found that repetitive contractions that it does damage and alter brain chemistry.

Customer: *does the conspiracy theorist eye flash* wonder how they actually got covid

Me: they were exposed and contracted it??

Customer; yeah sure that's exactly how *conspiracy theorist eyebrows*

[hypelens]

Party City Announces Closure After 40 Years of Celebrations

In a significant development for the retail industry, Party City, the popular party supply chain, has announced that it will be shutting down its operations after four decades of serving customers. The news has sent shockwaves through the community and raised questions about the future of retail in a changing economic landscape.

The Closure Announcement

According to a report by CNN, Party City CEO has confirmed that the company will be closing its stores following a prolonged period of financial challenges. Despite having been a go-to destination for party supplies and decorations, the chain has struggled to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely affected foot traffic and sales. The announcement comes as part of a broader restructuring effort aimed at addressing ongoing profitability issues.

read more in google news

The closure will affect hundreds of locations nationwide, leading to the loss of jobs for many employees who have dedicated years to the company. As reported by Yahoo Finance, the decision to shut down was not taken lightly, and the company aims to assist its employees during the transition, offering severance packages and support for those impacted.

Financial Struggles and Market Challenges

Party City’s decline can be attributed to several factors, as highlighted by Fox Business. The rise of e-commerce and changing consumer preferences have significantly shifted how people purchase party supplies. Many customers have turned to online retailers for convenience, leading to decreased sales for brick-and-mortar stores. Additionally, the company faced increased competition from discount retailers and supermarkets that began offering similar products at lower prices.

The combination of these market pressures and the ongoing challenges stemming from the pandemic ultimately culminated in the decision to cease operations. Party City has been a fixture in the retail landscape, known for its wide array of party supplies, costumes, and festive decorations, making the closure a poignant moment for many loyal customers.

read more in google news

Community Impact and Reflections

The news of Party City’s closure has elicited a range of reactions from the community. For many, the store has been a staple for celebrations, from birthdays to holidays, and its absence will be felt deeply. Local residents and party planners alike have expressed their sadness over the loss of a store that has contributed to countless celebrations over the years.

As the retail sector continues to evolve, Party City’s closure serves as a reminder of the challenges that traditional retailers face in an increasingly digital world. The company’s journey reflects broader trends in consumer behavior and highlights the critical need for businesses to adapt to changing market dynamics.

Conclusion

As Party City prepares to close its doors, the retail industry watches closely, pondering what this means for the future of brick-and-mortar stores. The decision marks the end of an era for a brand that has been synonymous with celebration and joy for millions. While the company seeks to navigate this transition, the memories of countless parties and events will remain a testament to the impact Party City has had over the last 40 years.

[primelandscapers1]

Medical care demands a safe, clean environment. With the rise of COVID-19 and antibiotic-resistant diseases, now more than ever, cleaning must go beyond appearances as a matter of community health.

So, how can you ensure that your ER, recovery rooms, hallways, kitchen, washroom areas, elevators—every floor in the hospital—are clean enough to conform to the standards of high-quality healthcare? With our commecial healthcare cleaning tools combined with the i-know kit, you can monitor the cleanliness of all touchpoint areas. See the best cleaning tools for hospitals, including our i-know test kit to determine if surfaces have been adequately cleaned.

With i-know, it only takes around 60 seconds to measure dirt levels on a surface. That speed and accuracy empowers cleaning teams with useful data to get objective feedback on the quality of their commercial cleaning practises.

[quick-release-velozine]

Bike Shop Life. March, 2020.

[willinglyghoulified]

I worked at Walmart during the "lockdown." I watched as people spent their COVID relief money on flat screen TVs and new phones. I watched people get so unnecessarily angry because we shut down our fitting rooms, so they took the merchandise to the restrooms, which they wound up stealing instead of just trying on. People panicked when our shelves weren't restocked fast enough. I'd never seen a shortage on toilet paper like this but it was so bad, we had to limit how much each customer bought. Our workers were quitting or taking paid quarantine while the rest of us who kept our heads stayed at work and dealt with the bullshit for a paycheck. Watching society collapse on itself was both fascinating and nerve-wracking. Because I was an "essential worker," most of the customers took out their frustrations on us, not knowing or even caring that we were working whole departments by ourselves because we were grossly understaffed and underpaid.

Here's the shitty thing: my husband and I finally caught COVID after 3 years of working through the pandemic. When we told our bosses at work, we weren't given a paid quarantine. In fact, we weren't given an unpaid quarantine. IN FACT, they said that taking a home test wasn't good enough proof, that it could have been a false positive. So we went to Walgreens and had a test done for free, and it was positive. I sent a screenshot of the emails we received to our bosses. THEN, when we had to get in touch with Sedgwick for LOA, THEY gave us a hard time too, stating that we needed to give them a doctor's name and the health facility where we got our tests taken. I explained we had it done at a Walgreen's and not s clinic, and the lady said it was invalid, that we had to go somewhere else to get a test taken. Keep in mind, I HAVE NEVER FELT SICKER, and we had already dealt with enough bullshit and been sick for 3 whole days at this point. Management told us they expected us to be back to work 5 days after we showed our first symptoms, that should have been enough quarantine time. So I went back to work, still sick with COVID, and the whole time, I felt on the verge of collapse. They finally sent me home and I explained I wouldn't be coming back until we were better. (My husband ran a fever of 106!) To which management replied that our days would be unexcused if we didn't finish our Sedgwick paperwork and would be pointed for all of the days we missed.

Needless to say, we quit. He worked there for 8 years and I worked there for 4, and we quit just like that. We worked our asses off during the pandemic while so many of our coworkers took a paid optional quarantine which we opted out of, and once WE got sick, we were treated like we were liars or like we just didn't want to be at work. The pandemic did more than the above stated meme, it also showed you who was worth working for and who wasn't. Which employers would actually take care of their employees, and who didn't give a shit.

[thoughtportal]

Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

[writing-write-now]

thinking about when I was an essential worker during COVID at CVS. I was like 18, and maybe a couple months into working there.

This old guy would come in like once a week to buy our big thing of cheap Italian table wine; he always wore a Veteran hat and came in the afternoon around the same time. I worked closing shifts so i rung him out like five subsequent times before this interaction.

One night he just seemed more comfortable with me, i don’t know. But I remember we had just put the plastic dividers up for COVID and his wine was too big to fit through the hole at the bottom— but this time we were laughing about it and passing the thing around where my scanner could reach. And laughing he says something like or to the effect of, “Yeah COVID’s fucked everything up. I guess i’m still here, but that wasn’t the plan.” I just laugh and vaguely agree how COVID has been fucking with school. And then he says, “Yeeup I was trying to go skydiving but we got grounded.” I ask if he’d ever done it before. He said something about the air force and piloting, I thanked him for his service and handed over his long ass receipt.

This is the thing I always think about, in the strangest calmest way he told me, “This time I was flying without a backpack though— one final ride. ” Then grabbed his wine off the counter and left.

I saw him many, many shifts after that, and he never mentioned anything vaguely suicidal or coded like that again. The entirety of COVID happened, I became a shift manager and moved to be more regularly stocking shelves than helping at the register. But I still saw the guy, I swear I would see him come in— literally until he didn’t. My mind blanked when i realized i hadn’t seen him in two weeks or so.

I asked my pharmacy tech work buds if they recognized the customer and if he ever picked up medication here. They didn’t know him, so I never found out what happened.

Believe this story or not, he’s one of the few customers I actually still think about all the time. I don’t really even remember his face, I can picture the veteran’s hat more clearly. I always wanted to know what happened, i tried remembering his phone number to look up his rewards account but that never turned anything up.

Where ever you are dude, hope you’re healthy or flying high man.

[xtruss]

A police officer and a security guard stand outside of a boutique in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, on April 11, 2022. Along with other parts of the city, SoHo witnessed a surge of shoplifting incidents compared to the prior year. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

United States 🇺🇸: How Organized Shoplifting Became a Billion-Dollar Industry

— By Aleks Phillips | Newsweek | Sunday August 20, 2023

Organized retail crime is on the rise, turbocharged by the pandemic and now costing the retail industry billions of dollars a year.

"Professional" gangs that are able to take large quantities of items are responsible for the biggest losses, experts say.

Consumers not only face higher prices but also localized shortages of certain products and potential store closures.

One industry insider explained the increased volume of theft as driven by higher margins available for stolen goods online.

In a May earnings report, Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, said that a loss of inventory is expected to reduce the company's profits by more than $500 million compared to the previous year. While he said there were "many potential sources," theft and organized retail crime were becoming "increasingly important drivers."

The corporate disclosure was a rare public recognition of the already large and increasing issue that theft is posing for retailers since the coronavirus pandemic. Industry insiders say that Target's figure is just the tip of the iceberg, and that shrink—a word for inventory loss—any chain stores were experiencing was largely attributable to retail crime.

"[Target is] saying it's $500 million worse than it was the year before, in 2022, and it seems like it was already bad in 2022," Jeremy Bowman, a contributing analyst at investment and consumer advice firm The Motley Fool, told Newsweek.

"It does seem like an issue that's come up in other earnings calls and commentary, certainly with drug stores," he said, citing Walgreens.

While one might think that the issue had arisen due to inflationary pressures pushing more people to shoplift, experts say that petty theft usually accounted for a small proportion of inventory loss. Large sums were being lost through organized retail crime (ORC)—something every consumer has likely experienced the effects of.

They portrayed a vicious cycle in which the pandemic had turbocharged a move towards online shopping, which itself incentivized a greater amount of retail crime, but that retail crime was now also incentivizing more consumers to shop online.

Newsweek reached out to several large retailers about the issue, including Target, Costco, Best Buy and T.J. Maxx, the latter of which declined to comment. Those that responded—Walgreens and Home Depot—confirmed it was a key issue for their companies but declined to offer figures on the scale of the losses they were experiencing.

'Professional' Gangs Stealing in Bulk

In May, a Lululemon store in Georgia made headlines after footage of staff confronting a group of three young men attempting to rob the store of bundles of clothing emerged. Two of the workers were later fired by the company over the incident; many retailers discourage staff from becoming physically involved with shoplifters.

As recently as last Sunday, a video of a "mob" raiding what was purported to be a Nordstrom in Los Angeles, grabbing clothes, handbags and suitcases went viral, earning millions of views.

These may be obvious incidents of ORC in its simplest sense, but not the costliest to retailers, according to Tony Sheppard, a Houston-based loss prevention consultant who spent 25 years working in security and organized retail crime units for several large retailers.

Instead, the incidents that hurt shops the most are the more complex crimes carried out by professional criminal gangs who "steal in bulk," he told Newsweek.

Sheppard said the proportions of the sources of shrink had changed drastically over the last 10 years, going from "internal theft"—employees taking items—being the most predominant cause of inventory loss to external theft by organized criminal gangs.

"External theft...was a small chunk; it was always there, but it was a smaller piece of the pie," Sheppard said. "What's happened is, is that with the increase in organized retail crime, the sheer volume of product that an individual or group can take in any given day has just gone crazy."

He added: "But then you see on the news, you have all these groups that are come in and they're haphazard. They're very unorganized. A lot of younger folks just coming in grabbing stuff running out and all that stuff.

"That's certainly an impact and no doubt about it—and those are the ones that potentially, unfortunately, can become violent, which is obviously the biggest concern. But they're a sliver of that [pie]," he said.

Shoplifting Drug Store NY! A man is escorted out of a drugstore by a police officer on October 26, 2021, in New York City. The National Retail Federation estimated the total cost of shrink in the United States to be $94.5 billion in 2021. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The senior director of loss prevention at ThinkLP estimated that established criminals can steal up to $10,000 in products from a store in some cases, and can often do so without customers noticing.

The established gangs are even able to get stolen products back into the supply chain, he said, and those operating at the highest levels usually knew in advance the quantity of a specific product that needed stealing and the price they would receive for it.

"There're fences that have cleaners, and they clean the product, or they remove stickers or stamps—anything that identifies it as being from a specific retailer—and then they repackage it," Sheppard said. "Then it gets mixed in with legitimate product and sometimes ends up back in the supply chain."

In September, the National Retail Federation estimated the total cost of shrink in the United States to be $94.5 billion in 2021, with the organization's Vice President Mark Mathews noting the "burgeoning threat" of ORC. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the Centre for Retail Research put the total shrink at $43.3 billion, of which it said just over $4.8 billion was due to organized crime.

In its first-quarter earnings call on May 16, Richard McPhail, chief financial officer of Home Depot, revealed that the company's gross margin had decreased by eight basis points compared to the same time last year, which he said was "primarily driven by increased pressure from shrink."

Evelyn Fornes, a spokesperson for the company, told Newsweek she could not divulge financial details, but said that ORC was "an ongoing issue, and it has been on the rise over the last several years for many retailers."

She added that among the "most targeted items" by criminal gangs that the home improvement chain stocked were power tools, home automation products and wiring devices.

"Retail crime is one of the top challenges facing our industry today," Marty Maloney, a Walgreens spokesperson, told Newsweek. "We are focused on the safety of our patients, customers and team members. We continue to take preventative measures to safely deter theft and aim to deliver the best patient and customer experience."

Consumers Paying the Price

With margins being eaten away by theft, among other factors, it is only natural that some businesses may increase their prices. Bowman said rising costs were certainly an impact on consumers who were "already in an inflationary environment" following the pandemic.

But there are other, obvious signs of the effects of ORC on consumers. Both Bowman and Sheppard noted the various anti-theft devices shops employed to make stealing harder, such as security cases and "pushers," which allow only one product to be removed at a time, making stealing large quantities of items more difficult.

"A lot of these stores, you walk into them and buy something like razors or a popular item," Bowman said. "You see it behind plexiglass and it's locked up, and you've got to go find an employee to unlock it."

Sheppard said retailers aim to "make it difficult for the thief, but still convenient for the legitimate consumer" as using anti-theft devices made shopping harder and therefore "obviously has a detrimental impact to sales," especially when stores are short-staffed.

Target Ehelves Pushers! Empty shelves with "pushers," devices that allow only one product to be dispensed at a time, at a Target in San Ramon, California, on March 12, 2020. The security devices make it more difficult for people to shoplift. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

As well as some customers being witness to or potentially caught up in instances of shoplifting, Sheppard explained that ORC gangs would usually hit several shops of the same type in the same area to increase the number of items they could steal in a single day, causing localized shortages of specific products.

In areas where ORC activity was high, he said, companies may choose to close stores, posing a "significant impact" on the convenience of going shopping, citing Walgreens' 2021 decision to shut five shops in San Francisco, California, due to shoplifting.

All three of these factors pushed more consumers to shop online.

In response to the mention of chain stores that had recently gone into administration, such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Sheppard said ORC was not the sole reason such companies were folding but "it's certainly a factor" in their collapse.

Generally, though, "it definitely does impact the retailer's bottom line...and they wouldn't be talking about it on the stock calls if it wasn't a significant problem," he added.

The Vicious Cycle

As is borne out by the apparent more-than-doubling of shrink between 2019 and 2022, ORC has surged during and in the aftermath of the pandemic. While Sheppard expected there to be more petty theft as a consequence of a rising cost of living, he said the predominant effect of the global crisis on the crime that retailers are subject to was pushing more sales online.

"Covid caused a significant spike in ORC in the U.S., and not necessarily for the reasons you may think as far as people being out of work," he explained. "A lot of customers that would normally never shop online, were forced to shop online, because they wouldn't leave their house...or they wanted something that wasn't non-essential."

"So you had a massive uptick in people making online purchases, which is where a lot of the stolen product ends up," Sheppard added. "So, therefore, the activity skyrocketed to meet the demand from the consumer."

He said ORC had been "steadily increasing prior to that," but that a "perfect storm" of online demand and concerns over liability for injuries sustained during shoplifting encounters had made it go "off the rails."

Walgreens Closing San Francisco! A man walks by a Walgreens store on October 13, 2021, in San Francisco, California. Walgreens closed five of its San Francisco stores due to organized retail shoplifting. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Whereas in the past someone stealing items for resale would have to do so in person and likely for a significant markdown on the label price, criminals can sell their stolen wares online much closer to the original price—and will often be taken up on the offer by consumers looking for a bargain.

"Your return on investment for being a shoplifter—especially a professional shoplifter who does it all the time—is way more lucrative than it used to be," Sheppard said. "It's much easier to resell the product, and the profit margin you're getting per item has just skyrocketed because of online platforms."

To make matters worse, ORC drives more consumers to shop online through the impacts on in-store shoppers it causes—localized stock issues, in particular—in turn giving resellers of stolen goods even more customers.

"It kind of feeds itself," Sheppard said.

"In the longer term, broader sense I think this will just push more businesses to the online channel," Bowman said. "If you think of a company like Amazon, they don't really have stores. I imagine there are some instances of employee theft, but you're not going to have an organized crime ring with exposure to the public in the way brick-and-mortar stores do."

He added, though, that stolen goods being sold online was "a hard thing for individual consumers to fight [with] their own hands" as "even a company the size of Amazon has problems with counterfeit goods on their site" that prompted it in April to set up a program to combat instances on its platform.

Fornes called on Congress and individual states to properly enforce the INFORM Consumers Act, which came into effect in late June and gives online transactions greater transparency, and create "capacity for law enforcement to investigate and prosecute cases through funding federal, state and local task forces."

[reportwire]

Chinese planners promise 12 million jobs, economic rebound

BEIJING — Chinese economic officials expressed confidence Monday they can meet this year’s growth target of “around 5%” by generating 12 million new jobs and encouraging consumer spending following the end of anti-virus controls that kept millions of people at home. The Cabinet planning officials announced no details of spending or other initiatives to revive growth that slumped to 3% last year,…

[robfinancialtip]

🗽🌍Raja Iqdeimat, a successful pastry firm owner, describes her story. Born in Abu Dhabi, she grew up in several places, including Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, and Kuwait before moving to Turkey, California, and finally New York. Despite her parents' lack of education, she was the first member of her family to pursue higher education and succeed. She credits her parents for instilling entrepreneurial skills and determination in her despite their lack of formal schooling.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🌱Growing up as the youngest member of a large family of nine, Raja felt unusual, but she believed that each family had a unique person who contributed in different ways. Despite lacking a formal education, she describes how her father was a successful businessman who inspired her to pursue her aspirations. Raja's mother, though uneducated, was hardworking and concerned about her family's well-being, imparting in Raja a strong work ethic and tenacity.

😔💼Growing up in different places and seeking a profession in finance was filled with personal losses and difficulties. Despite working as a brokerage manager in Jordan for seven years, dealing derivatives, equities, and bonds, she felt great loneliness following the deaths of her parents when she moved to the United States as a single mother without a broker's license. When the mass layoff in 2008, she was unemployed for six to seven months in California, struggling to support herself and her kid. Realizing that California's emphasis on the film industry did not fit with her career goals, she boldly moved to New York, where she swiftly obtained a job at an insurance firm and began rebuilding her life.

🏙️🎉While working at a New York bank in 2018, her manager questioned her capacity to buy a Manhattan apartment, which proved critical. This distrust motivated Raja to pursue entrepreneurship and independence. Despite difficulties and misgivings, she bravely launched her own business, motivated by her passion for entrepreneurship and need for autonomy. This marked the beginning of Délice Macarons, her venture into the world of cooking pastry, and her journey toward self-reliance and success.

🚀🧁Raja, a dessert shop owner in New Jersey, faced challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite lacking retail expertise, she managed everything from decoration to recruitment, relying on her entrepreneurial flair. She and her chef friend opened their first physical store in Cranford, New Jersey, in January 2020. Despite financial constraints, they shifted their business strategy to focus on fundamental products like bread. Raja's resilience and ability to transform adversity into opportunity remained evident.

🌟🗣️Raja's message encourages listeners, emphasizing the value of endurance, adaptation, and believing in oneself. Despite various barriers, including financial difficulties and the enormous task of beginning a business in a new nation, she stayed determined to succeed, demonstrating that anything is possible with devotion and hard work. Raja's path demonstrates the importance of taking risks, pursuing passion, and never giving up on one's goals. Her tale resonates with individuals who want to overcome obstacles and succeed on their terms. Raja highlights the importance of perseverance, hard work, and financial acumen. She promotes confidence in oneself and pursuing one's goals, emphasizing that hard work combined with passion may lead to success in any activity.

[covid-safer-hotties]

9 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID as Summer Wave Surges - Published Aug 19, 2024

The answer "damn near everywhere people go" may shock you.

COVID’s surge shows no sign of slowing down as the biggest summer wave in two years continues. In fact, COVID levels are “very high” in 27 states, according to the CDC’s wastewater data. “Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region,” Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, said to CNN. “This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September.” Fortunately, death rates and hospitalization rates are nothing like they were during previous waves due to greater immunity and vaccines. But catching COVID still comes with risks, including LONG COVID, which can result in chronic, debilitating illness. So how do you stay safe? Use caution before entering these nine places you’re most likely to catch COVID now, as the summer wave surges.

Crowded indoor events COVID spreads primarily through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes, talks, or breathes, especially in close-contact settings or poorly ventilated areas. “People who are higher risk for getting very sick from COVID-19 should consider taking extra precautions for the next few weeks, like limiting time in crowded indoor settings or wearing a mask in crowded indoor settings. People rarely get COVID-19 outdoors, so outdoor events remain quite safe,” say the experts at the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.

Airports, airplanes and public transportation Given the COVID rates right now, the CDC urges travelers to “get up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines before you travel and take steps to protect yourself and others. Consider wearing a mask in crowded or poorly ventilated indoor areas, including on public transportation and in transportation hubs. Take additional precautions if you were recently exposed to a person with COVID-19. Don’t travel while sick.” They go even further for certain folks: “If you have a weakened immune system or are at increased risk for severe disease, talk to a healthcare professional before you decide to travel. If you travel, take multiple prevention steps to provide additional layers of protection from COVID-19, even if you are up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines. These include improving ventilation and spending more time outdoors, avoiding sick people, getting tested for COVID-19 if you develop symptoms, staying home if you have or think you have COVID-19, and seeking treatment if you have COVID-19.”

Shopping malls Studies are just now coming out with an analysis of what happened during the height of the pandemic. Although times are different now, these results can be instructive. For example, one study published in April 2024 “examines the transmission of COVID-19 through casual contact in retail stores using data from Denmark. By matching card payment data with COVID-19 test results, researchers tracked over 100,000 instances where infected individuals made purchases in stores. They found that customers exposed to an infected person in the same store within a 5-minute window had a significantly higher infection rate in the following week. The study concludes that retail store transmissions contributed notably to the spread of COVID-19, particularly during the period when the Omicron variant was dominant.”

Religious gatherings The transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus during religious events has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with a communal gathering in which people, well, commune. “The smallest SARS-CoV-2 droplets can remain airborne and travel farther than six feet. The scientific community does not agree upon what is a ‘safe distance,’ but standing near an infectious person is riskier than standing farther away,” says the AMA. Additionally, “the amount of virus a person is exposed to can influence the chance of infection and the severity; consequently, staying in one place for a longer time creates a higher risk of infection.”

Movie theaters The box office is back, as hits like Deadpool & Wolverine, It Ends With Us, and Alien: Romulus pack them in after a few dark pandemic years of low attendance, the rare Barbenheimer proving the exception to the rule. For movie buffs, it’s a thrill. But check your theater’s ventilation before lining up around the block. One study published this year “investigates the risk factors for COVID-19 transmission during an outbreak in a movie theater in Incheon, South Korea, in November 2021. It involved 48 confirmed cases, primarily among theater attendees, with a high attack rate of 84.8% during one screening. The study found that inadequate ventilation and close proximity among audience members were key contributors to the spread of the virus despite most attendees being fully vaccinated. The study emphasizes the importance of proper ventilation in enclosed spaces like theaters to prevent airborne transmission of COVID-19.”

Healthcare facilities “Some hospitals across the United States are reinstating indoor masking rules amid rising cases and hospitalizations of respiratory illnesses including COVID-19 and influenza,” reported ABC News earlier this year. "Ultimately, health systems, hospitals, places that deliver care are going to see some of the most vulnerable and at-risk individuals -- many, with underlying conditions," Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital and an ABC News contributor, told the network. "Those are especially the places where we want to protect individuals, and so when we have this rapid rise in respiratory illness, those are going to be the first places to try to use measures to reduce chances of transmission, both to protect patients, those receiving care, as well as workforce."

Gyms and fitness studios Common sense will tell you transmission of an airborne disease may increase the more frequently people breathe in and out—as you might do at the gym. One “study looked at the number of aerosol particles 16 people exhaled at rest and during workouts. These tiny bits of airborne matter — measuring barely a few hundred micrometers in diameter, or about the width of a strand of hair, and suspended in mist from our lungs — can transmit coronavirus if someone is infected, ferrying the virus lightly through the air from one pair of lungs to another,” reported the New York Times during the pandemic. “The study found that, at rest, the men and women breathed out about 500 particles per minute. But when they exercised, that total soared 132-fold, topping out above 76,000 particles per minute, on average, during the most strenuous exertion.”

Bars and Nightclubs Just when some of us wanted to drink the most, bars were verboten during the height of the pandemic. There was a good reason to use caution. One study published last year “analyzed over 44,000 COVID-19 cases in Tokyo in 2020, focusing on transmission in various settings, including healthcare and nightlife venues like bars and nightclubs. It found that nightlife settings were more likely to involve clusters of five or more infections and were more likely to lead to further spread compared to other settings. The highest case-fatality rate was observed in healthcare settings. The findings suggest that targeting interventions in nightlife venues could be crucial for controlling COVID-19 transmission, especially during the early stages of an outbreak.”

Restaurants and cafés Last year, the Washington Post asked virus experts if they’d eat in restaurants. Joanna Dolgoff, a pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, offered an answer that may be a decent North Star for you today. “At this time, I will continue to eat in restaurants as long as they are well-ventilated and not overly crowded. If somebody near me shows signs of illness, I will be prepared to leave immediately. If covid cases continue to spike and if illness becomes more severe, I will stop eating inside restaurants until cases subside,” she said.

[follow-up-news]

Walgreens is planning to close around 1,200 locations, as the drugstore chain and its rivals struggle to define their role for U.S. shoppers who no longer look to them first for convenience. Drugstores that once snapped up prime retail space in towns and cities across the country are in retreat. They’ve been battered by shrinking prescription reimbursement, persistent theft, rising costs and consumers who have strayed to online retailers or competitors with better prices. The boost they received from taking the lead on vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic has long since faded. Walgreens’ announcement Tuesday morning comes as rival CVS Health wraps up a three-year plan to close 900 stores and Rite Aid emerges from bankruptcy, whittled down to about 1,300 locations. As the companies retract, they raise concerns in many communities about access to health care and prescriptions.

[phoenixyfriend]

Raising the Minimum Wage and Its Effects

Ko-fi prompt from [name redacted]:

So, what does raising the minimum wage really do to the rest of the economy?

Hecking Complicated! I think I might need a doc of just. References for this one. But here are a few elements!

(Also, the Congressional Budget Office has an interactive model of how different changes to the minimum wage could affect various parts of the economy, like poverty rates and overall employment. Try it out!)

Reduction of Benefits

A common claim that is used to argue against the minimum wage is that it will result in companies cutting hours for their employees in order to recoup losses by having to provide benefits to fewer employees. This isn't 'the minimum wage is bad' so much as 'corporations are assholes,' but it is unfortunately still a thing that happens. (Harvard Business Review)

This is not a problem with the minimum wage itself, in my opinion, but these issues are emblematic of the weight that self-serving elements of capitalism carry. The low minimum wage is just one part of many that contribute to the current wealth disparity; if things like health insurance were universal, then bosses wouldn't be as able to cut them to employees in order to save money. Current regulations incentivize companies to hire more part-time workers than full-time, in order to avoid paying out benefits. Some cities have enacted Fair Workweek Laws in order to combat these approaches, though the impact is as of yet uncertain (Economic Policy Institute, 2018). Early reports, like the Year Two Worker Impact Report on Seattle’s Secure Scheduling Ordinance, do seem to indicate positive results, though:

In addition, the SSO led to increases in job satisfaction and workers’ overall well-being and financial security. In particular, the Secure Scheduling Ordinance had the following impacts for Seattle workers: - increased work schedule stability and predictability - increased job satisfaction and satisfaction with work schedules - increased overall happiness and sleep quality, and reduced material hardship. (direct quote from the Year Two Eval)

Unfortunately, these were approved at the earliest in 2015 (San Francisco's Formula Retail Employee Rights Ordinances, which went into effect in March 2016), which means that none of them were in play for longer than five years before COVID-19 ground the planet's economy to a near halt. I tried to find results for the San Francisco laws, but I couldn't find any studies for it; I did find an article from March 2023 that summarized which cities in California have brought in fair workweek laws, though, so maybe someone could use that as a jumping off point (What Retailers Should Know About California Scheduling Ordinances).

Companies prevented from cutting benefits by cutting hours would probably find another way to do the same thing, but let's be real: keeping the minimum wage low won't stop them from cutting every corner possible. EPI has some articles, like "The role of local government in protecting workers’ rights," that talk about how these measures can be, and have been, implemented to protect workers from cost-cutting employers.

Cutting the hours and benefits of part-time employees is a real, genuine concern to have about raising the minimum wage, and those need to be anticipated and combated in concert with raising the minimum wage. However, it is not a reason to keep the minimum wage depressed. It's just a consequence to be aware of and plan for.

Passing Costs On To Customers

A common argument against raising the minimum wage is that companies will raise costs in order to cover the raise in expenses, to a degree that nullifies the wage hike. This is, um. Uh.

Really easily debunked?

Like, really easily.

Over a ten-plus year period, research found that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage resulted in just a 0.36 percent increase in prices passed on to the consumer at grocery stores. A similar Seattle-based study showed that supermarket food prices were not impacted by their minimum wage increase. - (Minimum Wage is Not Enough, Drexel U.)

I've talked about it before, but in some cases it's just a matter of how US-based labor is such a comparatively small portion of costs for medium-to-large businesses that raising wages doesn't raise corporate expenditures that much.

That said, some companies rely on drastically underpaying their employees, like Walmart. Walmart's revenue in 2020 was approximately $520 billion (Walmart Annual Report, page 29). Now, this report doesn't actually tell us what amount is spent on labor, but it does give us the "Operating, selling, general and administrative expenses, as a percentage of net sales." This is, to quote BDC, "[including] rent and utilities, marketing and advertising, sales and accounting, management and administrative salaries."

So, wages are just part of the (checks) 20.9% of revenue that is operating SG&A expenses. But maybe I'm being mean to Walmart! After all, the gross profit margin is only 24.1%, so only 3.2% is left for those poor shareholders!

Oh, oh, that means the profit is still over 16billion USD? And Walmart cites having 2.2 million associates in that same report? And that's about $7,500 per employee per year that's being withheld? And that's before we take costs up by like three cents per product?

Which, circling back: A study from Berkeley by the name of "The Pass-Through of Minimum Wages into US Retail Prices: Evidence from Supermarket Scanner Data" found that

a 10% minimum wage hike translates into a 0.36% increase in the prices of grocery products. This magnitude is consistent with a full pass-through of cost increases into consumer prices.

Of course, Walmart does sell more than just groceries, but isn't it interesting that raising a minimum wage resulted in such a small cost increase? If we assume this is linear (it's probably not, but I have so many numbers going on already), then doubling wages from 7.25 to 14.50 would still mean only a 3.6% increase costs! Your $5 gallon of milk would go up to [checks] $5.18.

Hm. Those 18 cents might be meaningful to our poorest citizens, but if those poorest citizens are more likely to be raised out of poverty by raising the minimum wage, then it might just be the case that they too can afford the new price of milk, and have more money left over for things like... rent. Or education. Or healthcare.

Maybe even a cost cutting loss leader like Walmart can reasonably increase its wages. After all, they still have 13 stores on Long Island, where the minimum wage is $15, and has been since 2021.

(I could have just cited the Berkeley study and moved on, but after a certain point I was too deep in parsing the Walmart report to not include it.)

But also... minimum wage increases are often staggered. They start out on the bigger companies, which have the resources to accommodate those changes (unless they've been doing stock buybacks), and then later on the smaller businesses, now that a portion of the economy (those working for the big companies) has the spare change to spend money at those smaller businesses that are raising their prices by a little more than the corporations.

And at that point, all I can really say is, well.

If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you're not an oppressed company. You're just a failing company. Sorry, Walmart&Co, your business model is predicated on fucking over poor people, and so it's a bad business model.

Being a dickhead, while successful, is not actually 'smart' business practice.

(This doesn't even get into the international impacts, like what an "American companies should pay higher wages abroad, especially if they charge higher-than-American pricing for their products, but also at factories where we know they're committing human rights abuses" approach could be but this is already long as fuck so that'll have to wait for another post.)

Anyway.

Inflation

This one is tied into the cost argument above, but like...

Inflation is already a thing? Inflation is happening whether we raise the minimum wage or not. Costs go up whether we raise the minimum wage or not. Who is this argument serving? Not the people who can't afford rent, surely.

Quoting the earlier-mentioned Drexel report (red highlights mine):

While the minimum wage has been adjusted numerous times since its implementation in 1938, it has failed to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living. The purchasing power of minimum wage reached its peak in 1968 and steadily declined since. If it had kept up with inflation from that point it would have reached at least $10.45 in 2019. Instead, its real value continues to go down, meaning minimum wage employees are essentially being paid less each year. Additionally, some economists argue if minimum wage increased with U.S. productivity over the years, it would be set currently at $26 per hour today and poverty rates would be close to non-existent with little negative impact on the economy. However, because gradual change was avoided, the extra funds were instead shifted to CEO compensation. A sudden change in wages now could possibly make a more noticeable impact on the economy, which is often cited as reasoning for a slower increase over time moving forward. Gradual increases with inflation and productivity could have avoided any potential economic ripple effects from wage increases and should be considered in ongoing plans.

Increasing Unemployment

A common argument is that the unemployment rate would jump as employers were forced to let employees go. Assuming they didn't just hire more employees so they could give them less hours in order to cut benefits... not really!

A 2021 article from Berkeley News summarizes the issue, along with several others, covering some thirty years of research that started with "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," published in 1993. They also touch on the issue of subminimum wages for tipped workers, though they do not address the subminimum wages set for underage and disabled workers.

“A minimum wage increase doesn’t kill jobs,” said Reich, chair of UC Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics (CWED) . “It kills job vacancies, not jobs. The higher wage makes it easier to recruit workers and retain them. Turnover rates go down. Other research shows that those workers are likely to be a little more productive, as well.” - Berkeley News article, "Even in small businesses, minimum wage hikes don’t cause job losses, study finds"

Lower turnover rates also save money for employers, as it causes them to have much lower HR expenses. How much money do you think large employers spend on using sites like Indeed or Glassdoor to find new employees?

This article from Richmond Fed does, admittedly, encourage a slightly grayer analysis:

In a 2021 review of some of the literature, [researchers] reported that 55.4 percent of the papers that they examined found employment effects that were negative and significant. They argued that the literature provides particularly compelling evidence for negative employment effects of an increased minimum wage for teens, young adults, the less educated, and the directly affected workers. On the other hand, in a 2021 Journal of Economic Perspectives article that analyzed the effect of the minimum wage on teens ages 16-19, Alan Manning of the London School of Economics and Political Science wrote that although the wage effect was sizable and robust, the employment effect was neither as easy to find nor consistent across estimations. Thus, although the literature supports an effect on employment among the most affected workers, it does not appear to be as sizable as theory might suggest.

The International Labor Organization has a similarly mixed result when taking a variety of studies into account. (I left in their own reference links.)

In high-income countries, a comprehensive reviews of about 70 studies, shows that estimates range between large negative employment effects to small positive effects. But the most frequent finding is that employment effects are close to zero and too small to be observable in aggregate employment or unemployment statistics (1). Similar conclusions emerge from meta-studies (quantitative studies of studies) in the United States (2), the United Kingdom (3), and in developed economies in general (4). Other reviews conclude that employment effects are less benign and that minimum wages reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers (5).

And there's the 60-page "Impacts of minimum wages: review of the international evidence" from University of Massachusetts Amherst, which looks at data from both the US and UK. I'll admit I didn't read this one beyond the introduction, because this is very long already.

Not all US studies suggest small employment effects, and there are notable counter examples. However, the weight of the evidence suggests the employment effects are modest. Moreover, recent research has helped reconcile some of the divergent findings. Much of this divergence concerns how different methods handle economic shocks that affected states differently in the 1980s and early 1990s, a period with relatively little state-level variation in minimum wages.

I'd encourage you to think of it this way:

Employer A pays $7.25/hr. Employer B also pays $7.25/hr. An employee works 25hrs/week for Employer A, and 20hr/wk for Employer B. The minimum wage goes up to $15/hr. Employer B cuts the employee. Employer A cuts employees as well, but not this one, and instead increases their hours to 30/wk for greater coverage.

The employee has gone from just under $400/wk to $450/wk. They lost a job, sure, but the end result... They have an extra fifteen hours of free time per week! Or more! With time to level out, you have less jobs, but more employment, because people aren't taking up multiple jobs (that someone else could have) just to survive.

This is a very, very simplified example, which doesn't take into account graduated wage increases (see the NYS labor table) or the benefits issue from before, but it does show the reality that "less jobs" doesn't necessarily mean "less pay" or "fewer employed" people, when so many of those employed at this pay are working multiple jobs.

Even the Washington Post agrees that the wage hike wouldn't cost as many jobs as conventional wisdom claims, and they're owned by Bezos. (Though I recognize the name of the article's author as the same person behind that 60-page Amherst report, so there's that to consider.)

The Kellogg Institute also points out that individual workers were, on average, more productive after receiving the pay increase, so the drop in the bottom line was softened. This is a bit debatable; the results varied based on the level of monitoring, but it's worth noting that most minimum wage jobs are pretty high-intensity, high-monitoring. Goodness knows you don't get a whole lot of time to yourself outside of the critical eye of your shift lead or customers if you're working fast food. They also note a decrease in profits, but I'd point out that they speak specifically of profits, not share of revenue.

To explain the difference: imagine you sell $100 of product in a day. The product cost you $50. Overhead (rent, utilities, taxes) cost you $10. Labor cost you $15. Profit, then, was $25, or $25.

A 16% reduction in the profit does not mean you now retain $11. It means that you retain 16% less of the $25. You now retain $21.

(This is, as with many of my examples, INCREDIBLY simplified, but I need to illustrate what the article's talking about, and I don't have infographics.)

Some other articles on the topic are from The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Business for a Fair Wage, The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (more critical), the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, UCLA Anderson, Vox, and The Intelligencer, which cites another Berkeley article. I do not claim to have read all of these, especially the really long ones, but the links are there if you want to look into them.

In the interest of showing research from groups that do not serve my own political views, I'm going to link an article from the Cato Institute; I do encourage you to read that one with a grain of salt, given that it's written by a libertarian thinktank, and they are just as dedicated to hunting for research that serves their political views as I am. There were a few other libertarian articles I came across, but the way they presented information kept feeling really duplicitous so I just... am not linking those, or the leftist ones I am also uncomfortable with due to the whole "I'm totally not tricking you" vibes. Also eventually I just got tired, there are so many articles on this and I am just one blogger who is not actually working for a magazine or thinktank, I am working for my own personal tumblr.

Negatively Impacting Slightly-Higher Paid Employees

Did you know that raising the minimum wage affects more than just those making minimum? It affects those just above as well. It's referred to as the ripple effect of minimum wage hikes by this Brookings article. They estimate that a wage hike would affect nearly 30% of the country's workforce.

"Price adjustments provide the principal adjustment mechanism for minimum wage increases: higher labor costs are passed through to consumers, mainly for food consumed away from home. Such an increase does not deter restaurant customers. Price increases are also detectable for grocery stores (Leung 2018; Renkin, Montialoux and Siegenthaler 2019), but not more generally. The effect on inflation is therefore extremely small." - "Likely Effects of a $15 Federal Minimum Wage by 2024," Testimony prepared for presentation at the hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee, Washington, DC (2019)

This overlaps with general criticisms of widening income equality, citing an AEA article I cannot access since it's behind a paywall. I wonder if it touches on companies like Amazon being headquartered in the city and manipulating the job market by sheer size? I can only speculate.

Plus, there are the health benefits! Which are mostly connected to lessening poverty, and through that lessening stress and increasing healthcare access, but still! Some of these results are debated, but I'd need to know more about the details to know how they're related (University of Washington).

------

I've spent most of the day on this, so if you guys have made it this far and are interested in supporting me, please donate to my ko-fi or commission an article. (Preferably for more than the base price; I'm effectively working at a fraction of minimum wage myself, which is ironic considering the theme of this post.)

(I realistically shouldn't have spent more than two or three hours on this, but I have so many strong opinions on the subject that I couldn't stop.)

(Also: There were so many more sources I didn't even get to read the basic premise of because it was so repetitive after a while.)

[mightyflamethrower]

California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly.

How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?

The symptoms of the state’s suicide are indisputable.

Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus—gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, the highest income and gas taxes in the nation, and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes.

Yet in a year, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit.

At a time of an over-regulated, overtaxed, and sputtering economy, Newsom spent lavishly on new entitlements, illegal immigrants, and untried and inefficient green projects.

Newsom was endowed with two of the wettest years in recent California history. Yet he and radical environmentalists squandered the water bounty—as snowmelts and runoff long designated for agricultural irrigation were drained from aqueducts and reservoirs to flow out to sea.

Newsom transferred millions of dollars designated by a voter referendum to build dams and aqueducts for water storage and instead blew up four historic dams on the Klamath River. For decades, these now-destroyed scenic lakes provided clean, green hydroelectric power, irrigation storage, flood control, and recreation.

California hosts one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients. Over a fifth of the population lives below the property line. Nearly half the nation’s homeless sleep on the streets of its major cities.

The state’s downtowns are dirty, dangerous, and increasingly abandoned by businesses—most recently Google—that cannot rely on a defunded and shackled police.

Newsom’s California has spent billions on homeless relief and subsidizing millions of new illegal migrant arrivals across the state’s porous southern border.

The result was predictably even more homeless and more illegal immigrants, all front-loaded onto the state’s already overtaxed and broken healthcare, housing, and welfare entitlements.

Newsome raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $22 an hour. The result was wage inflation rippling out to all service areas, unaffordable food for the poor, and massive shut-downs and bankruptcies of fast food outlets.

Twenty-seven percent of Californians were born outside of the United States. It is a minority-majority state. Yet California has long dropped unifying civic education, while the bankrupt state funds exploratory commissions to consider divisive racial reparations.

California’s universities are hotbeds of ethnic, religious, and racial chauvinism and infighting. State officials, however, did little as its campuses were plagued for months by rampant and violent anti-Semitism.

Almost nightly, the nation watches mass smash-and-grab attacks on California retail stores. Carjackers and thieves own the night. They are rarely caught, even more rarely arrested—and almost never convicted.

Currently, Newsom is fighting in the courts to stop the people’s constitutional right to place on the ballot initiatives to restore penalties for violent crime and theft.

Gas prices are the highest in the continental United States, given green mandate formulas and the nation’s highest, and still raising, gasoline taxes—and are scheduled to go well over $6 a gallon.

Yet its ossified roads and highways are among the nation’s most dangerous, as vast sums of transportation funding were siphoned off to the multibillion-dollar high-speed rail boondoggle.

The state imports almost all the costly vitals of modern life, mostly because it prohibits using California’s own vast petroleum, natural gas, timber, and mineral resources.

As California implodes, its embarrassed government turns to the irrelevant, if not ludicrous.

It now outlaws natural gas stoves in new homes. It is adding new income-based surcharges for those who dutifully pay their power bills—to help subsidize the 2.5 million Californians who simply default on their energy bill with impunity.

What happened to the once-beautiful California paradise?

Millions of productive but frustrated, overtaxed, and underserved middle-class residents have fled to low-crime, low-tax, and well-served red states in disgust

In turn, millions of illegal migrants have swarmed the state, given its sanctuary-city policies, refusal to enforce the law, and generous entitlements.

Meanwhile, a tiny coastal elite, empowered by $9 trillion in Silicon Valley market capitalization, fiddled while their state burned.

California became a medieval society of plutocratic barons, subsidized peasants, and a shrinking and fleeing middle class. It is now home to a few rich estates, subsidized apartments, and unaffordable middle-class houses.

California suffers from poorly ranked public schools—but brags about its prestigious private academies. Its highways are lethal—but it hosts the most private jets in the nation.

The fantasies of a protected enclave of Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and the masters of the Silicon Valley universe have become the abject nightmares of everyone else.

In sum, a privileged Bay Area elite inherited a California paradise and turned it into purgatory.