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Ophidia Mini
How's the US consumer?
Well, as ever, that depends on who you mean by "the US consumer." If you mea
I think the problem is more existential and has to do with tax policy. We need to make it easier for regular folks to afford to rent OR buy housing. Make it more equitable. There are many great reasons to buy, but it should be a reasonable choice for consumers. This is an especially acute problem for folks under 40 starting out.
My suggestion is to adopt a VAT and reduce social security taxes for both employer and employee, eliminate Medicaid taxes, and make a more generous tax credit (not deduction- credit) so that many more folks at the lower end of income would not pay federal income taxes. Allow states to piggyback on the VAT rather than collect sales taxes if they wish.
This would shift the burden of supporting social security/Medicaid to a broader tax base and reduce the burden of social security/Medicaid on younger folks.
It would also make the tax penalty for renting lower vs. buying. By all means, it will allow folks to buy if they want to-but by choice.
But they won’t be on such a short end of the tax stick if they do not buy from a tax perspective.
A VAT here would make it harder to cheat on taxes and would allow us to eliminate it for exports as most of the rest of the world does. If income taxes were reduced at the lower end, it would still allow for a somewhat progressive tax system as well. And you could have a lower VAT for essentials like food and lower priced clothing (inferior goods) to help lower income consumers.
Assuming that’s AI, did you have to wrestle with the LLM to get it to make a Gucci bag image, or did it do it uncomplainingly?
Or did you just task Clippy with the assignment?
Maybe this instead?
https://liffner.co/products/sprout-tote-mini-rhum-suede#&gid=1&pid=5
As a practical matter, almost no consumer discretionary name that I know of is so concentrated in that top 10% than it doesn’t get hit when the bottom 90% pull back on spending.
Look at RH, the “canary in coal mine” name in the furnishings space – it always blows up going into recessions. Big miss, guide down. No, most of RH’s customers are not “rich” – but the average household income is as affluent as you’re going to find in publicly traded retailers/brands – other than a handful of European luxury brands like RACE.