The struggling Macy's company has announced the imminent closure of 150 of its stores, roughly one third of its remining 500 locations. This was in response to a fourth quarterly earning report that showed a continued severe loss to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. This isn't the first time Macy's has closed the same number of stores, around the same quantity were shuttered in 2018, along with the termination of several thousand employees, around 3% of their workforce. The 150 stores on the chopping block collectively account for less than 10% of the company's revenue. They plan to reinvest the money in, among other things, "more mannequins" (I'm not kidding). As well as boosting staff in more personalized departments like shoes and cosmetics. Also opening some new locations for Bloomingdale's one of their most solvent surviving brands. In short, Macy's is responding to the death of the entire concept of the department store in the American imagination, by doubling down on the key elements of the department store model. It will spell their doom. Expect a notice of either sale, bankruptcy, or both within five years. Indeed, the vultures of acquisition are already quite openly circling.
This is of course being widely reported as "Macy's closes Union Square location in San Francisco!!!" with the implication that it is just another victim of the doom loop and the failure of progressive policies to control drugs and homelessness. So I thought I'd get ahead of the curve and point out the real reason for the closure. It is certainly, in one sense, the breakdown of a certain specific sense of civil order, one that was predicated on the idea of a vast middle class whose female half both had vast amounts of time to spend hanging out at the Macy's or Ward's or Penney's (not being on the workforce themselves) and who would preferentially choose to do so over shopping online for the same products. That version of the civil order no longer exists, and the extinction of Ward's and ongoing slow collapse of Penney's and Macy's are evidence of the massive shift that cities around the world face as they are forced to decide how to reallocate space in their changing downtown areas and/or increasingly defunct and infrastructurally expensive suburban malls. It is not evidence that failing to arrest homeless people without charge and steal their possessions causes business failures. There is nothing the SFPD or the governor of California could have done to balance Macy's books for them, and frankly deciding social policy solely to recover the revenue stream of a failing company would be as anti-capitalistic as it would be antisocial. Americans are spending more on consumer goods than they ever have, they just aren't spending those dollars at big city block department stores anymore, and neither Macy's nor the national guard could possibly change that fiscal reality.
He proceeded to give her a lecture about how its not his fault, California is super awesome, blah, blah, blah. He had no idea that stores were not pursuing the
