J.C. Penney said Friday that it will be closing anywhere from 130 to 140 stores as well as two distribution centers over the next several months as it aims to improve profitability in the era of online shopping.
The closures represent about 13 percent to 14 percent of the department store operator’s current store count, and less than 5 percent of total annual sales. The company said that it would also initiate a voluntary early retirement program for about 6,000 eligible employees.
Fast-food restaurant chain Wendy’s will install self-order kiosks at 1,000 stores across the country by the end of 2017 to trim extra labor costs imposed by minimum wage hikes, NJ Advance Media reported. Wendy’s said it already offered to install kiosks in several locations last year and has received positive feedback from customers and franchisees who say they want more of the service.
This is all part of what is fueling the fears about robotics taking jobs from people, and why it is emerging right now, even though robotics has been around for quite some time.
Notice how these companies are struggling to find a way to cut every last bit of fat just to stay alive. As they do that, they constrict resources further by laying off employees, who will now have less money to spend at such companies, further constricting resources on the companies, necessitating more fat-cutting, more layoffs, and furthering the cycle.
I see this everywhere now. Boxes of Kleenex have thinner tissues, smaller sizes, and there are fewer per box. It is the same for paper towel rolls, boxes of cereal, “half gallons” of ice cream – everything is costing more, and delivering less. Even fashion uses less material now so the bottoms of jackets are moving up, waistlines are trimmed in tight, and arms only fit if you are rail thin.
What is permeating society is a perception that resources are not free, and that is molding brains. Everywhere, employees begin looking at budgets, prioritizing costs, feeling the irritation at the shortage and anger at what they must do without, and as a result their brains are developing a pattern of cognition that will begin to infect their thinking elsewhere. As employees experience the threat of layoff, they are revaluating their spending, and that is creating thought patterns that will intrude on their perceptions of government spending and free resources for others. It will also affect their perceptions of hedonistic pursuits, when they contemplate them alongside the raw fears associated with simple survival. All of these reflexive thought patterns will suddenly be triggered by subtle similarities among similar issues, and before long people are cautious with their own budgets, and they want to be cautious with a national budget.
Everybody is being reprogrammed to be K.
[…] JC Penny cuts the fat: J.C. Penney said Friday that it will be closing anywhere from 130 to 140 stores as well as two distribution centers over the next several months continue […]
How can one be “reprogrammed” to be a “/K” when the /r /k division is genetic and biological?
r/K happens on three levels – genetic foundation, epigenetic programming, and finally environmental training. Human populations can shift a lot just off a stressful environment developing amygdalae through the neurological version of exercise. And indeed, a lot of people go from more r to more K as they age, based on adversity they encounter in life.
It is biological, in that it relates to brain structure. but that structure is rooted in a genetic foundation, an epigenetic programming that factors the level of “adversity genes” the parents and grandparents burned off, and finally the actual exercise and physical development of the brain’s “adversity structures.”
It’s long been an open secret that HR depts are mostly staffed by women. These women are very r and when they hire men often hire the “lotharios”. As you can imagine not much gets done in the office- until downsizing. H1Bs are another limp leg. These “Vibrant”- 3rd worlders (ie. Indians) often are lazy/incompetent and sometimes total frauds. Their software is usually full of bugs- more so than US trained coders. The cost of slow code, cyber gaps and the long term damage to society is not worth their importation. US companies would be much better off ditching most of their HR departments, H1b’s and ending diversity hiring. Sadly, with so many corporations being run by leftists they aren’t able to do this. So they automate. Automation is likely better than turning the USA into Asia, but the vulnerability that machines have doesn’t go away. When the robots start getting hacked by laid off H1bs, China and then out of work US coders- hold on to your butts. And anyone reading this who came to the US in the last 20 years, sorry there won’t be a seat at the table for you in the collapse- you aren’t American, please leave.
Oh I don’t know. Went shopping a few weeks back looking for a hoody. Accidentally stumbled into the oversized department, there’s a size called X4L for XXXXL…. observed in Germany.
But if you tried it on, 4XL will be like an XL ten years ago. I have to buy two or three sizes up lately to get the comfortable loose fit I used to get. Otherwise I look like some hipster in too-tight clothing.