Postcards: Oh Lord... Please

The City of Chicago is considering efforts to create city-owned grocery stores to address the exodus of retail chains due to crime. Good. Let's actually witness the failure of the state up close.

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” - Milton Friedman

Dear Fellow Expat:

My neighbor is from Cuba.

Nice guy.

He’s been here for 30 years.

When I meet someone from Venezuela or Cuba, I eventually get around to the sociology of the conversation.

“What was the first thing that you really loved (or noticed you were in a better place) about America?” I ask.

“The grocery stories” is the first answer roughly 80% of the time.

Grocery stores in America are like cathedrals.

The sheer abundance of the American grocery store is unlike any other store on the planet.

There’s always a clerk walking around and straightening out boxes to be accessible.

There’s rarely a shortage of anything in the building.

There’s an incredible vanity to them.

Sadly, Americans take grocery stores for granted.

Goodnight Chicago

Crime is killing retail across the United States.

It’s obvious in Chicago, where companies like Walmart and CVS are simply packing up …