If you grew up during the 1980s, more often than not you probably stopped by Toys R Us to buy the latest Atari video game, Transformer or G.I. Joe action figure. Toys R Us used to be one of the most successful retail chains in the U.S. Yesterday, Toys R Us was the latest store to sink into the abyss. On Friday, Toys R Us closed their last 800 stores yesterday after filing bankruptcy back in 2017. Toys R Us, along with other former retail giants like Sears, Kmart, and JC Penney were some of the first prominent victims of what many economists have called "the retail apocalypse". This apocalypse is a merely another harbinger of the economic decay that has been eating away at the fabric of American society since at least the 1970s. Many economists blame the closing of retail stores and shopping malls on the emergence of online retail powerhouses such as Amazon and E-bay. While there is a lot of truth to this notion, a lot of people fail to notice another factor that is contributing to the retail apocalypse: The commercial real estate collapse. During the manufactured economic crisis in 2008, residential real estate was the convenient scapegoat for the collapse of the stock market. What the talking heads in the MSM forgot to mention was that the commercial real estate bubble and eventual bursting would also wreak havoc on the economy for years to come. A lot of mid-tier and family owned small businesses could not handle the astronomical costs of leasing or purchasing of commercial buildings and office space. The majority of these small businesses eventually folded. The larger mainstream chains followed suit and began to rapidly close their stores in the late 2000s in order to stay solvent. Now in 2018, the economic chickens have come home to roost. The extinction of Toys R Us is just another reminder of how this so-called recovery is nothing more than a cover story to distract us from the upcoming dystopian nightmare that will soon devour America.
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November 2022
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