Tag Archives: #Economics

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Please, leave the government out of trying to ‘fix’ the ‘affordable housing’ problem

As people yell about the lack of “affordable housing” I see an interesting difference between my good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him in real life! — Architectolder, who posts a lot of pictures concerning houses interiors and exteriors, and Alicia, the Courtyard Urbanist, whom I have previously mentioned. Each have differing ideas about what makes a fine home, Architectolder favoring single family dwellings, while Alicia likes European-style courtyard housing. Alicia likes the idea of being able to walk downstairs and down and around the block to the local pharmacy, bodega, interesting shops and the like; who would not like to have a French boulangerie or pâtisserie just a few steps outside your door to grab a croissant for breakfast? Architectolder, on the other hand, is not afraid of people having to get into their cars to drive to a bakery. He believes that relatively small houses like the one in his tweet shown at the right ought to be affordably built: nice craftsmanship, a small but decently-sized yard appropriate to the house.

But then there was this, in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

The cost of housing in Pa. is too high. Here’s what Josh Shapiro will need to overcome to fix it.

Administration officials spent the past year taking feedback from advocates, experts, and local officials.

by Charlotte Keith, Spotlight PA | Sunday, February 1, 2026 | 5:00 AM EST

HARRISBURG — Rents are soaring, homelessness is rising, and homeownership is out of reach for many families in Pennsylvania. As the state grapples with a serious housing shortage and affordability dominates the national political conversation, Gov. Josh Shapiro is preparing to release a long-awaited plan to tackle the crisis.

The plan, first announced in late 2024, will draw on months of outreach to advocates, developers, and local officials. Supporters hope it will offer a clear path forward and build momentum around proposals that can win support in Pennsylvania’s politically divided legislature. But significant obstacles stand in the way.

“The housing crisis has risen to the level such that none of the four caucuses can ignore it,” said Deanna Dyer, director of policy at Regional Housing Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm.

The housing shortage is a nationwide problem, but Pennsylvania has been particularly slow to build new units. The shortfall leaves families squeezed by rising costs, pushes recent graduates to take jobs in other states, and makes it harder for companies to expand.

There’s more at the linked original.

It seems that everybody seems to believe that the government needs to somehow fix the problem, but I’ll point out the obvious: virtually all of the housing in our country was built by private enterprise, by builders contracted by someone, whether an individual or a developer, to build houses, and that’s how our country began and grew to where we are today. Why should the government have to get involved?

The Inquirer fully supports the illegal immigrant population. As we have previously reported, the newspaper itself has reported an illegal immigrant population of between 47,000 and 76,000 people. Just deporting the illegal immigrant population should free up a lot of housing in the City of Brotherly Love, but naturally the newspaper wants to protect the illegals rather than see the law actually enforced, primarily because it is President Donald Trump who is finally enforcing our immigration laws, and the people at our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper hate the President with a white-hot passion.

Other states are passing laws to loosen local zoning restrictions and encourage new development — despite often fierce opposition from groups representing local governments.

Well, of course: local communities want to protect their typical American single-family home neighborhoods from having people build five-story apartment buildings which permanently shadow neighboring houses and change the character of neighborhoods. Zoning laws grew up to protect the American people, and to protect their investments in housing from being trashed by other development.

However, local governments can micromanage, and over manage things. When I lived in Hockessin, Delaware, our house, which was on a small farm, was surrounded by not one, not two, but three expensive house subdivisions. New Castle County, to combat overcrowding, reduced the number of homes which could be built on a 100-acre parcel. Great! People could get larger yards, right? But it also meant that developers had to build more expensive individual homes to achieve the same profit, and so Hockessin Chase, Hockessin Green and Hockessin Something-or-other were full of McMansions, driving up the costs of housing in the whole county.

On the opposite side of that coin are newer houses off Leestown Road in Lexington, Kentucky. Yeah, they’re the fancier new builds as well, but they’re so close together that you could hear your neighbor open his refrigerator, and if the houses were nice when they were built, most are now occupied by renters, not homeowners.

The best thing for government to do to address the ‘affordable housing’ problem is nothing at all. Every time the government tries to micromanage part of the economy it fails.

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You will own nothing and you will like it. The Communists want you to be poor, so you will be dependent upon the government for your survival.

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain wrote about new New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointing Cea Weaver to be Director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. It seems like the lovely Miss Weaver wants people like you and me to be poor and dependent upon the government, a government she said on May 30, 2017, should have no more white male members.

This Activist Has Long Been Polarizing. Mamdani Is Standing by Her.

Cea Weaver, a tenant advocate named to a high-profile role in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, is facing criticism for past comments calling homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy.”

By Dana Rubinstein, Sally Goldenberg and Mihir Zaveri | Wednesday, January 6, 2026 | Updated: Thursday, January 7, 2026 | 8:47 AM EST

For the second time in three weeks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing intense scrutiny for the years-old social media behavior of a high-level appointee — an episode that has once again forced him to answer for his vetting processes.

Mr. Mamdani named Cea Weaver, a housing activist, to run the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants on Jan. 1, during his very first news conference on his very first day in office.

In past social media posts that have since been deleted, most of which predate 2020, she called homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy” and said that it was important to “impoverish” the white middle class. That rhetoric had played a role in raising her profile within New York housing circles, even as it seemed to hobble her 2021 bid to join the city’s powerful Planning Commission. Her calls to “elect more Communists” and “seize private property” had been well documented in The New York Post.

Heaven forfend! The New York Times actually cited the New York Post as a source? I am shocked, shocked! I say.

I suppose that Miss Weaver hates her own family, given that the New York Post reported:

The mother of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new woke renters’ rights honcho — who’s dubbed homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy” — is a professor at a prestigious college and owns a beautiful Nashville home worth $1.6 million.

Celia Applegate — whose daughter Cea Weaver is the director of Mamdani’s Office to Protect Tenants — teaches German studies at Vanderbilt University and owns a pricey classic Craftsman home just south of the main strip in Nashville, Tennessee.

Applegate bought the property with her partner, David Blackbourn, in July 2012 for $814,000 and real estate websites now list the pad’s value at more than $1.6 million, records show.

This article continues below the fold, because I have embedded a video of Comrade Kaprugina in Dr Zhivago spouting the line, “There was living space for thirteen families in this one house!” Continue reading →

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And now the news you missed

The New York Times reported, in December of 2024, when Joe Biden was still President, that the expected good will and economic resurgence of Cuba due to President Obama normalizing relations with the Communist country didn’t really materialize, noting that most Cubans are:

coping with prolonged power outages, standing in line at poorly stocked supermarkets and watching their friends, family and neighbors — sick of all the hardships — pack up and leave.

During his first term, President Trump walked back some of his predecessor’s policies, and President Biden only weakened Mr Trump’s restrictions slightly.

There were difficulties from the Cuban side as well, as the government was concerned that too much openness, especially to more information about the West, would weaken support for the Communist regime.

Now comes more news, this time from The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. Oil Blockade of Venezuela Pushes Cuba Toward Collapse

Communist-ruled island was already suffering from food shortages, blackouts and exodus of people, and now faces loss of cheap oil from Nicolás Maduro

By Juan Forero and Ryan Dubé | Sunday, December 21, 2025 | 5:30 AM EST

Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis.

And it’s about to get worse.

The U.S. is ratcheting up pressure on Havana’s key benefactor, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has kept the Communist-ruled nation afloat with cheap oil. Now Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to a partial blockade targeting sanctioned tankers — the kind that carry about 70% of the country’s crude.

One tanker that the U.S. has already seized was en route with almost two million barrels of Venezuelan oil.

The blockade adds to a U.S. pressure campaign on Maduro that also includes a major military buildup in the Caribbean, airstrikes on boats allegedly connected to Venezuelan drug trafficking and threats of bombing the country itself.

Were Venezuela’s oil shipments to stop, or sharply decline, the Cubans know it would be devastating.

“It would be the collapse of the Cuban economy, no question about it,” said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban exile who tracks the island’s energy ties to Venezuela at the University of Texas at Austin.

Cuba could, of course, buy oil at market rates, which are rather low anyway right now, but nevertheless higher than what Venezuela was charging.

Cuba is really one of the last old-line Communist states out there, and it would be undoubtedly good if that government fell, though even if a strongly capitalist government took over, it would take many years before that nation could recover. I can’t say whether this was something that the Trump Administration considered when we put the pressure on Venezuelan drug runners, but it’s certainly a happy side effect. Of course, you had to read The Wall Street Journal to even know about it, ot, to say the least, I had not heard about it anywhere else.

If the Communist government falls, I wonder how many Cuban-Americans would head back to the island, and help bring it back from the brink.

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Ford CEO Jim Farley whines that government isn’t forcing people to buy electric vehicles

I’m starting to worry that I’m poaching too much on William Teach’s themes, with two previous articles in a week about plug in electric vehicles, but I spotted the following story this morning in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Ford CEO Jim Farley shares ‘shocking’ lesson he learned from Tesla

By Tony Owusu, TheStreet | Thursday, November 12, 2025 | 9:38 AM EST

Earlier this year, Ford CEO Jim Farley had a humbling experience in Asia.

The Detroit automaker has sunk billions into Model e, its electric vehicle division, for decades, with little to show for it.

In June, he told author Walter Isaacson during a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival that he made as many as seven trips to China over the past year.

“It’s the most humbling thing I have ever seen. Seventy percent of all EVs in the world, electric vehicles, are made in China,” Farley said. “They have far superior in-vehicle technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are in every car. You get in, you don’t have to pair your phone. Automatically, your whole digital life is mirrored in the car.”

Uhhh, maybe some of us would not see that as a great feature. A lot of people — I am not one of them — have their financial records on their phones, and pay some things with their too-smart phones. Perhaps some people wouldn’t want their cars to automatically “pair” with their phones, especially if it gives the car, and who knows how many other people, access to their lives and finances. With an estimated net worth of $72.9 million, perhaps Mr Farley is excited by every new gadget out there, and isn’t too terribly worried if someone pays for their Door Dash through Mr Farley’s accounts, but some of us poorer people do have to keep an eye on things.

The story continues to note how the CEO was impressed by superior technology and engineering, saying that Ford has to step up to compete, but then comes the money lines:

While Farley didn’t speak much about the builds of Ford’s Chinese rivals, he did praise the government for promoting the EV industry in a way the U.S. does not.

Farley said that “EVs are exploding in China” because the government there has put its “foot on the economic scale.”

In a Communist command economy, the government can put its “foot on the economic scale.” In a (mostly) free market in the United States, while there was some, thankfully expired, foot pushing in the form of government tax credits for buying electric vehicles and some states mandating that a certain percentage of new cars be EVs by 2030 to 2035, Americans exercising their free choices have not been so compliant. Toyota listened to what consumers wanted, and has focused on hybrids instead.

Perhaps it’s time that Mr Farley dumped his prejudices in favor of electric vehicles, and took a cold, hard look at what a free people taking free choices actually want.

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Amazing what can happen when manufacturers listen to what consumers want Electric cars nope; hybrids yup!

This site noted, just five days ago, that Ford Motor Company was considering doing away with its all-electric F-150 Lightning line of trucks, because the buyer demand for the vehicles just wasn’t there. Now there’s this, from The Wall Street Journal:

Toyota Doubles Down on Hybrids in the U.S. With $14-Billion Battery Push

New North Carolina plant is aimed at selling more hybrid cars and trucks to Americans

By Christopher Otts | Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | 1:28 PM EST

LIBERTY, N.C.—Toyota, a longtime hybrid car and truck promoter, is making one of the industry’s biggest bets on green transportation and opening a $14 billion battery plant here.

For years, Toyota held out against electric vehicles while rivals retrofitted factories and launched models in preparation for an all-electric future. Now that the EV market in the U.S. is vanishing as tax credits expire and sales disappoint, Toyota is doubling down on its hybrid strategy.

The Japanese automaker’s gamble: that American consumers—many of whom won’t touch an EV—will buy increasing numbers of hybrids, which often get up to 50% better mileage than a standard gas-powered car.

Toyota also said it would invest up to $10 billion in U.S. manufacturing over the next five years in addition to the North Carolina site, where it made the largest investment in a U.S. battery-production site.

The batteries that Toyota has begun making at the sprawling plant, located between the cities of Greensboro and Raleigh, are going into hybrids assembled in Kentucky and Alabama. The complex is designed to make batteries for EVs and hybrids, including those that plug in and travel short distances on just electricity before switching to gas.

Our family are familiar with hybrids, as our older daughter had a 2017 Toyota Prius Hybrid, and now drives a 2024 Prius Hybrid. It’s a good, solid vehicle, and she put a ton of miles on her first hybrid, as her civilian job took her on frequent trips throughout the eastern half of the country. She put nearly 200,000 miles on it, before trading it in.

The reason she traded it in was, of course, the battery. It was beginning to fail, and Toyota wanted $8000 to change it. That has always been the problem with the hybrids, and it’s something Toyota, and other hybrid manufacturers, need to address. I’d bet 25€ that all Toyota did was spend less than $2000 to swap out the battery to sell it used.

“For the longest time, folks were criticizing Toyota that they were so slow to the game in the battery-electric business,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive. But the strategy worked, he said. “They really did focus on the traditional hybrids, and they are dominating that whole product segment.”

In other words, Toyota’s leadership were smart enough not to listen to Joe Biden and the Democrats, who were pushing a technology and infrastructure that was simply not ready.

Toyota did listen, however, to consumers, to new automobile buyers, and the company’s actions reflect the free market, and the choices people take in a free country.

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Ford might trash the entire F-150 Lightning electric vehicle model line

It seems that the electric vehicle mandates of the Biden Administration were not greeted with approval by the public, and the public are not choosing to buy the silly things without Federal government bribery. From The Wall Street Journal:

Ford Considers Scrapping Electric Version of F-150 Truck

Once hyped as a ‘smartphone that can tow,’ production of the money-losing EV pickup may be shut down for good

2022 F-150 charging in a lot nicer garage than I have. It shows you just how much money you have to have to buy one of the fool things. Photo from a Ford sales site. Click to enlarge.


By Sharon Terlep | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 4:06 PM EST

Ford Motor executives are in active discussions about scrapping the electric version of its F-150 pickup, according to people familiar with the matter, which would make the money-losing truck America’s first major EV casualty.

The Lightning, once described by Ford as a modern Model T for its importance to the company, fell far short of expectations as American truck buyers skipped the electric version of the top-selling truck. Ford has racked up $13 billion in EV losses since 2023.

Overall EV sales, already falling short of expectations, are expected to plummet in the absence of government support. And big, electric pickups and SUVs are the most vulnerable.

If you are blocked by the Journal’s paywall, you can read more about it in The Detroit News.

“The demand is just not there” for F-150 Lightning and other full-size trucks, said Adam Kraushaar, owner of Lester Glenn Auto Group in New Jersey. He sells Ford, GMC, Chevy and other brands. “We don’t order a lot of them because we don’t sell them.”

No final decision has yet been made, according to people familiar with the discussions, but such a move by Ford could be the beginning of the end for big EV trucks.

Using the back of my truck as a workbench. Would I ever do this with a $70,000+ truck?

The decision has been taken, taken already, but not by Ford executives; the decision was taken by the men who buy trucks!

I actually could do OK with an F-150 Lightning. I’m retired, and live and work on a small farm. My average mileage has greatly decreased since retirement, and I have a full shop, with 200 amp separate electric service, in which I could easily mount a vehicle charger. I ought to be the ideal customer, but I would never, ever buy that overpriced piece of [insert vulgar slang for feces here].

I already own an F-150, a 2010, which does just fine. It’s kind of beat up looking, because it’s actually a work truck, and it has some obvious rust thanks to Pennsylvania winters and road salt. Why would I throw away my money on a shiny, new truck at which I would be appalled to throw wood or brush or lumber in the back? The Lightning would be fine for people who haul nothing but groceries and beer, but for men who buy trucks because they use trucks for work, nope, sorry, wrong answer.

Ram truck-maker Stellantis earlier this year called off plans to make an electric version of its full-size pickup. General Motors executives have discussed discontinuing some electric trucks, according to people familiar with the matter. Sales of Tesla’s angular, stainless steel Cybertruck pickup tanked this year. And EV truck-maker Rivian has been cutting jobs to conserve cash.

Here’s the real kicker:

Ford already paused production of its F-150 Lightning—the bestselling electric pickup in the U.S.—last month amid an aluminum shortage. The company is weighing whether to keep that plant idle as it shifts to smaller, more affordable EVs, the people say. The company said it would restart production “at the right time.”

In October, the first month since the end of the federal EV tax credit, Ford’s overall EV sales in the U.S. fell 24% from a year earlier. Ford dealers sold 66,000 gas-powered F-Series pickups, up a tick from a year earlier, and just 1,500 Lightnings, the fewest of any model.

Translation: even the people who did buy them were influenced by the bribes offered by the federal government. Every American taxpayer was being charged a little bit to provide some welfare for the well-to-do, the only people who could afford to buy brand new F-150s.

We’ve seen this before. In April of 2010, when I bought my current vehicle, the Feds were offering the so-called “cash for clunkers” program. The 2000 F-150 I traded in, at, if I remember correctly, 189,000 miles, qualified for the first part, but the new F-150 didn’t for the second. Yeah, I was able to afford to buy a new vehicle, but the new vehicle I needed got less than necessary miles per gallon rating. Cash for clunkers was yet another bit of welfare for the well-to-do, a program which was supposed to aid in recession recovery, but in 2010, the only people who could afford to buy new vehicles didn’t need the government assistance.

So, without a government program bribing people to buy electric vehicles, and without the federal government mandate requiring a certain percentage of new vehicles sold to be EVs, the public are simply not buying EVs at a rate which can sustain production of them.

Remember one thing: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!

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I check Bluesky so you don’t have to! Teen Voguer bemoans losing his job writing hard left politics for an online magazine supposedly focused on teen fashion and beauty.

Lex McMenamin (they/them) describes himself[1]As our Stylebook specifies, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in … Continue reading in his Bluesky biography as:

permanent Philadelphian in NYC, opinions mine
WAS politics @teenvogue.com
member @transjournalists.org
@leximcmenamin elsewhere
linktr.ee/leximcmenamin

As you can see, Mr McMenamin, who puts plural pronouns in his signature line on Bluesky, is going to be a flaming liberal, as the list of his online articles shows. Alas! she skeeted today:

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

I admit to being almost totally unfamiliar with Teen Vogue. What little I do know comes from Robert Stacy McCain, who has mentioned the magazine’s normally silly political articles several times. See this and this — noting how Teen Vogue was ceasing print publication — and this. But it has to be asked: why did an online magazine supposedly concerned with fashion and beauty for teenaged girls need “political staffers”?

I dislike the fact that anyone, other than illegal immigrants in our country, has lost his job, and certainly do not celebrate a “permanent Philadelphian” losing his, but Condé Nast ceased print publication of Teen Vogue because it wasn’t making money, despite, somehow, the magazine’s turn to the political left.

However, it isn’t only Mr McMenamin who has lost his job:

Teen Vogue Will Fold Into Vogue.com

By Danya Issawi | Monday, November 3, 2025 | 2:23 PM EST

One of the last remaining publications dedicated to teens and young adults is undergoing a transformation. Today, Condé Nast announced that Teen Vogue will now live at Vogue.com and that the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Versha Sharma, will be stepping down. Chloe Malle, Vogue’s new head of editorial content, will oversee the publication in Sharma’s place. The move follows last week’s news that Vogue Business will officially move under the Vogue.com umbrella as well.

According to the announcement, Teen Vogue will remain “a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission.” The magazine had already ceased printing, releasing a final print issue with Hillary Clinton on the cover in December 2017 before becoming a digital-only publication. During that time, and continuing under Sharma’s direction, the outlet had shifted its focus toward discussing politics and human rights head on, laying a strong stake in the media landscape as a reliable place for young people to seek out sociopolitical coverage. From interviewing Zohran Mamdani on the campaign trail to catching up with Greta Thunberg fresh out of her detention in an Israeli prison to breaking down the lessons that Black Lives Matter taught protestors, Teen Vogue has been considered a platform for young progressives inside the glossy confines of Condé Nast. The company’s announcement makes no explicit mention of the future of the outlet’s political coverage.

It doesn’t take much to see that that last paragraph was written with a leftist bias! But no leftist bias can cover for the fact that Teen Vogue is being subsumed into Vogue, and this move is very similar to others in the credentialed media: they have to cut costs because profits are increasingly scarce.

As for Mr McMenamin and Miss Sharma? It’s not great that they have lost their jobs, and new jobs in the media are tough to find. Some of my friends would retort, “Learn to code,” after the “advice” given to blue-collar workers being laid off — though The New Republic says it’s an evil reich wing meme — but I would say something different: learn to drive a truck! There will be a lot of jobs opening up soon!

References

References
↑1 As our Stylebook specifies, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in cases in which the sex of the person to whom a pronoun refers is unknown, the masculine is properly used, and does not indicate that that person is male, nor is it biased in favor of such an assumption. We are uncertain as to Mr McMenamin’s actual sex, his biological sex, and thus use the masculine pronouns throughout.
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Are you tired of winning yet?

The White House had threatened mass layoffs of federal government employees if Senate Democrats didn’t end their filibuster of the continuing resolution to fund the government, and many of us were wondering when, or if, it was going to happen. From The Wall Street Journal:

White House Starts Mass Layoffs of Government Workers

Many department receive notices, and an official says cuts will affect ‘thousands of federal workers’

By Natalie Andrews and Ken Thomas | Friday, October 10, 2025 | 2:24 PM EDT

WASHINGTON—The White House said Friday that it is conducting mass layoffs of federal employees in response to the government shutdown, an unprecedented step that follows through on weeks of threats meant to increase pressure on Democrats.

“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted on X, using an abbreviation for reductions in force. An OMB official characterized the retrenchment as “substantial,” and a White House official said it would affect “thousands of federal workers.”

Vought briefed President Trump on the layoffs by phone Friday morning, according to a White House aide.

Department of Health and Human Services employees across several divisions received reduction-in-force notices on Friday, said Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for HHS. Some of the people who lost their jobs were deemed “at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” he said.

An Education Department spokeswoman said some agency employees would be among those receiving the layoff notices Friday, and a government official said there were layoffs at the Commerce Department.

Other Departments, including Commerce, Fatherland Homeland Security, and the Environmental Protection Agency, saw layoff notices.

Democrats were obviously aghast:

Reductions in force “are not a new power these bozos get in a shutdown,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, on social media. “We can’t be intimidated by these crooks.”

Having lived and worked in once-reliably Republican Virginia, I have been appalled that Virginia is now a “blue” state where presidential elections are concerned, and that’s entirely due to the huge number of federal government workers living in the Washington outskirts of the Old Dominion. Reducing the federal workforce eventually leads to better government, as it strengthens Republicans and weakens Democrats.

Republican leaders have been lukewarm on firing federal workers. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and other senior GOP lawmakers had quietly advised the White House not to move forward with mass layoffs and sharp cuts to government assistance programs, citing people familiar with the matter.

But leaders have also expressed exasperation with the lack of progress as the shutdown heads into its second weekend.

Republican ‘leaders’ may have been lukewarm on firing federal workers, but do you know who aren’t lukewarm about it? Republican voters are not lukewarm about reducing the overpaid federal workforce, Republican voters want to see fewer people being supported by their tax dollars and more people working in real jobs in the private sector. We want tax payers, not tax consumers!

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The poor economics of Starbucks

While I would expend the effort to drive for a Wawa coffee, it’s pretty foolish to spend $4.50 or more for a Starbucks coffee that I can make at home for 50¢!

Sadly, the days of the wife sending her husband off to work in the morning with a lunchbox in his hand and breakfast already in his stomach are gone. Many, many businesses have grown up around that societal and economic change, with all sorts of chain and local stores selling coffee and a bagel — sesame bagel, dark toasted, with butter for me, thank you very much! — but I have to ask: has the market become oversaturated with some of these businesses?

Starbucks kind of broke the mold, with its waitresses now becoming ‘baristas,’ and its fancy shops and eight million different flavors and brews. The average prices that can be found on the internet vary wildly, but $4.50 seems to be about a midpoint.

Now, the company is having problems:

Why Starbucks is closing these six Philly locations

Starbucks has seen sales decline over six consecutive quarters.

by Erica Palan | Monday, September 29, 2025 | 12:44 PM EDT

Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee powerhouse, announced last week that it would immediately shut down hundreds of underperforming stores and eliminate 900 corporate positions.

The cuts come as Starbucks has seen sales decline at stores open for at least a year for six consecutive quarters. The company’s shares have fallen about 12% in the past year.

The chain is grappling with rising labor costs, in addition to rising coffee prices.

We have twice previously reported on Starbucks and other coffeehouse workers efforts at unionization, and how OCF coffeehouse owner Ori Feibush simply closed his three Philadelphia coffee shops when the workers decided to unionize. The coffee shops were not profitable anyway, and were only a small part of the owner’s businesses, so he could afford to do it.

Checking Amazon, the Keurig which looks closest to ours, as pictured above, lists for $109. If a person is spending $4.50 every working morning, for coffee that costs me roughly 50¢ at home, he will have paid for that Keurig, and the coffee pods it uses, over the course of 27 workdays. That ignores having to physically stop at the local Starbucks, and whatever fuel he spent if it was out of the way on his way to work.

We also have a toaster, so I could toast a bagel at the same time! 🙂

Starbucks workers have been whining that the closures are the result of management fighting unionization:

Employees impacted by the store closures were notified Friday.

On Sunday, about 35 Starbucks union members gathered in front of the location at 16th and Walnut Streets in protest. They say they’re prepared to strike if the company doesn’t return to the bargaining table to negotiate higher wages, staffing levels, and healthcare benefits.

Over the last few years, Starbucks baristas in Philadelphia and beyond have taken efforts to improve worker protections. Some have been successful in establishing unions, while others have not. According to Starbucks Workers United, there are more than 12,000 unionized Starbucks baristas at more than 650 stores.

So, out of 18,734 Starbucks stores, only about 3.47% have been unionized. Management doubtlessly considers that a serious problem, but does it account for sales dropping for six consecutive quarters? Probably not, but it does point out the rather obvious problem of workers trying to unionize a shrinking company. It’s less expensive to shutter an economically underperforming store.

Three of the closed stores in Philadelphia — 1801 Spruce St., 1709 Chestnut St., and 1500 Market St. — are not unionized. Three others — 1900 Market St., 1128 Walnut St., and 490 N. Broad St — are unionized.

This is a matter of economic competition. If people are spending $4.50 every workday morning just for a cup of coffee they could Keurig themselves, that’s $1,080 in a 240-workday year. After four years of Bidenflation, there just might be a few families that decide that Starbucks every morning just isn’t that good an idea.