A number of possibilities
We talk about "Black Friday" as the day retailers begin to make their annual profit. Will the Biden economy change that equation?
As of the point this goes live, we will have ten short shopping days until Christmas, for those of you who think in that secular fashion. Those who make a habit of actually shopping for the perfect gift in brick-and-mortar stores were out in full force over this past weekend - well, at least they were where I was. And they had a great excuse to be.
You’re looking at the town of St. Michaels, Maryland. (“The town that fooled the British,” according to local lore.) While a lot of small communities conduct their Christmas parades in the week or two after Thanksgiving, traditionally St. Michaels holds out for a little longer and this year they were rewarded by a pleasant, seasonably brisk morning for a parade. This town is not within my normal stomping grounds, but friends of ours were down from Pennsylvania staying in the area and wanted to attend - my wife, who comes from that part of the world, was quick to say yes to us being their company for the parade and lunch afterward, which eventually turned out to be at the charming little restaurant you see on the left-hand side of the photo. (It’s called Corah’s Corner, and as we found out we helped send them off for the season - after selling out Saturday they’ll take a long winter’s nap and reopen next spring.)
St. Michaels is a local town which has something of an “it” factor many small towns covet, where their downtown area acts as a hub for commerce and window shopping. (Another local to us example is Berlin, Maryland.) If you drive through a town like this on most weekends, you will see people up and down the sidewalks checking out the shops, eateries, and other attractions as they have built up a critical mass of these attributes over time. It may slow down a bit in the dead of winter, but these towns are pretty creative in extending their shopping and tourist seasons. In many ways, it’s a reflection of a place I mentioned a month ago, Page County, Virginia - just swap out the lure of the sea (or Chesapeake Bay) for the scenery of the mountain vistas.
They even draw a lot of the same crowd: former VP Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were D.C. insiders who once called St. Michaels a second home. Certainly if I was in the mood to look I may have found a few District plates among the cars jam-packed into town.
My point in bringing this up, however, was not to conduct a travelogue. I’m beginning to wonder if this recession we’re going through isn’t once again pretty much reserved for the common people, as opposed to the elites. Remember during the Great Recession when the only boom town seemed to be Washington, D.C.? We’re fortunate enough in this part of the world to have a little shelter from the storm, but I wonder what it’s like out in flyover country.
On Friday we learned that consumer sentiment, while increasing month-over-month since November, is still near its all-time low. Yes, inflation is beginning to ease a little bit as the pedal-to-the-metal increase in gas prices we endured during the first half of 2022 has slowly reversed itself, but prices are still going up just as quickly (if not slightly faster) than wages are. When prices go up at a faster rate than income, those of us who cannot print our own money eventually have to make budget cuts somewhere, often carving away the extras and frills.
Back to my narrative: I was watching the parade across from a small, unique-looking shop called Olivins, which specializes in “fine olive oil and vinegars.”
I’m going to confess to you now: I am not a cook. (Said with my best Nixon impersonation.) So I couldn’t tell you the difference between “fine” and “mass produced” olive oil unless perhaps you let me try a bit of bread dipped in each, and even that may not be enough. It’s not a store I would tend to frequent, yet I still root for their success - and here’s why.
When there’s a rising tide that lifts all boats, people everywhere can, if it’s their desire, take the time to shop for and cook with something a little more specialized and unique than the stuff you pick up at the local Walmart. It also gives their next door neighbors, a realtor on one side and a specialty apparel shop called Brackish Life on the other, the increased potential to be successful in their own right: catering to people who want to invest in the St. Michaels community and wear the brag rags that go along with the lifestyle. It doesn’t mean that these entrepreneurs don’t have to put in hard work nor does it absolve them from failure if they misread the market, but it enhances their likelihood for making a go of their business and being able to frequent their neighbors, like Corah’s.
For generations our economic system has provided the impetus for people to begin a small business and grow it to the point where they may consider it a success. Entrepreneurs saw a market they believed they could fill, secured the capital to open their doors, and worked hard to make it something with which they could feed their families. In the last twenty years or so, we’ve even lowered the entrepreneurial barriers to entry to a point where people can never open a brick-and-mortar store and be a smash hit thanks to improvements in shipping and merchandising. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a package coming from Ohio in the coming days, sent by erstwhile members of our small group from church who relocated there and decided to dabble in the barbeque/dry rub business as a home-based enterprise they could try while mom stays at home with the new baby.
We also know that, oftentimes in order to succeed, there are community needs which are taken care of by an entity which takes a small but fair amount of the monetary success enjoyed by the business owner. A property owner is assessed, or business income is taxed, and those dollars fix the roads, educate the children in public schools, provide for a police force and court system, and so on and so forth.
We have run into trouble over the past few years, though, because that entity has become a behemoth that wants a larger and not necessarily fairer amount of the monetary success, not to mention veto power over certain corporate decisions. For example, my contribution to The Patriot Post this week talks about how the state of California wants to enact a “price gouging penalty” on oil companies they believe made excess profits over the summer when gas prices were sky-high. Something tells me they had no pity for these corporate interests when oil was just a few bucks a barrel in the spring of 2020, and they certainly didn’t do much to protect the little guys whose businesses were deemed “non-essential.” Those business owners lost a lot of essential income thanks to government dictates.
Even though the sidewalks of St. Michaels were busy last weekend, it’s hard for me to get a read on just how the Christmas season is progressing for retailers. I know I’m trying to follow the Limbaugh idea of not participating in the recession - in part by setting up this Substack as a potential future income source - but not everyone is that blessed.
So here’s a suggestion we can try in time for the 2023 holiday season: how about if we back off the little guys a bit and let them do what they do best? If an entrepreneur is willing to put in the hard work, size up his marketplace, and follow through with a quality product or service, we should maximize his chances for success by getting government out of the way. A modest but fair piece of something for government is a heckuva lot better than “one for you, nineteen for me” when the split comes from thin air because that’s all the business has left thanks to regulation and taxation.
And who knows: maybe these crowds can come to a town near and dear to your heart.