XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Wednesday 4 March 2015

For The First Time Ever, US Consumers Spent More On Food In Restaurants Than In Grocery Stores -

For The First Time Ever, US Consumers Spent More On Food In Restaurants Than In Grocery Stores - 



Over the weekend, we mocked the WSJ for glorifying the US "wage recovery" by focusing on the "scarcity" of waiter and bartender jobs ("there is fierce competition" for restaurant workers the WSJ said), a concept well-explored on these pages: we have shown repeatedly that soaring number of waiters and bartenders have been the "backbone", so to say, of the US job recovery in recent years (alongside energy workers but that ship has now sailed). As it turns out the joke's on us.

As Mark Perry of the AEI shows, for the first time ever, the spending patterns of US consumers are so skewed, that Americans, or at least a small fraction of them, spent more on restaurants and bars, than what Americans, the much larger fraction, spent on grocery stores to prepare food for themselves.

In other words, when it comes to food, either the bulk of Americans have forgotten how to cook and are hemmorghaning money to overpay for restaurant prepared dinners, or a small fraction of society - i.e., the 1% leisure class - now outspends the majority of the nation, those who can't afford to eat out no matter the amount of subsidies or handouts by the government, on food.



What is casuing this historic inversion is unclear, but what is clear is that it is full steam ahead fo the "waiter and bartender recovery" until all those Ivy League grads who can no longer finds a job on Wall Street are serving you a burger at your favorite fast food, and recently IPOed, burger place.

Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-04/history-made-first-time-ever-us-consumers-spent-more-food-restaurants-grocery-stores

2015 Mighty Ford F-750 Tonka is the Dump Truck of your childhood dreams -

2015 Mighty Ford F-750 Tonka is the Dump Truck of your childhood dreams - 



Do you have a big sandbox behind your house? Like Sahara Desert big? If so, Ford may have just the thing for you.

The automaker has teamed up with Tonka on a custom dump truck to promote its new 2016 F-650/F-750 medium duty lineup.

The Mighty Ford F-750 Tonka that debuted Wednesday at the National Truck Equipment Association Work Truck Show in Indianapolis features a Truck Tech engineers dump truck body and is finished in Tonka’s iconic yellow paint with a black grille and decals touting that the toy brand has been “getting dirty since 1947,” which happens to be one year before the Ford F-Series debuted.

The F-750 it’s based on will be built in house by Ford, has a 33,000 gross vehicle weight rating, and in this configuration can haul up to 17,000 pounds. It’s powered by a version of the 6.7-liter diesel V8 offered in Ford’s super duty pickups, here with up to 330 hp and 725 lb-ft of torque.

And while Ford can’t match Tonka’s lifetime warranty, it comes pretty close. The engine has a five-year, 250,000-mile warranty. Unfortunately for those with young hearts and big backyards, the Mighty Ford F-750 Tonka is a one-off show car, but you can always just buy one in yellow and pretend.

Read more - 
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/03/04/mighty-ford-f-750-tonka-is-dump-truck-your-childhood-dreams/?intcmp=trending