Black Friday mad rush in USA

[Megatran]

Every year for at least the last five years, I've watched on tv the mad rush by shoppers in the USA to grab the best bargains in store. There is pushing, shoving, people getting trampled on, fists flying, even stabbings & the occasional shooting in the car park. The length some people will go to in order to grab a fridge for example. The footage can be funny I must admit. :D:o

This practice was outlawed some years ago for the Boxing Day sale in VIC for safety reasons. It appears safety is not the highest priority in the USA.

[griffin]

It's a big online event now as well, and I remembered a business last year in Australia wanted a similar event to start here as well. I was getting emails last week from several different sources advertising something similar this year as well... but I didn't take much note of it.

Thanks to sites in America like Amazon, prompting most major retailers to offer free shipping within America, their online sales are climbing at exponential rates.
So massive, that I was surprised to see on the PBS Newshour tonight (on SBS), that about a third of their shopping centres (yes, centres, not just shops), have closed down or been re-purposed as non-retail buildings since 2008. Even though the economy has been slowly recovering, the extra money is being spent online instead of in stores.
Apparently, in the whole of the continental America, there hasn't been a new Shopping Centre built since before the GFC in 2008.
One example they used was one in Ohio called Rolling Acres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Acres_Mall), which was one of the largest shopping centres in America during its peak in the late 80s, with 2 storeys of over 140 stores, 5 major retailers and a cinema complex (a similar size to most Westfield-type centers here). Imagine seeing a nearby Westfield being closed down and abandoned within the space of just 3-4 years in the middle of a city like Rolling Acres was. It was just bad timing that online shopping became too competitive at the wrong time, preventing retail stores to be able to recover properly after the economic crisis. The money was starting to flow again, but the people didn't go back to the brick-n-mortar stores.
It's probably why their unemployment rates haven't done too well since 2008, because retailers aren't able to re-hire all the people they lost before the economy started recovering.
At least for us here, we weren't hit as hard during the GFC and don't have a big competitive online marketplace... but it might not be long, as unemployment is rising due to a depressed economy and falling business confidence here now, and if big retailers set up online shopping with full range of their in-store products as well as incentives like free shipping, then less jobs will be created to help improve the economy (as we know, more jobs means more money being spent to support other jobs, as well as funding government items from the extra income tax being collected).

[jazzcomp]

I'm waiting for the batman robin slap pic ;)

[UltraMarginal]

This practice was outlawed some years ago for the Boxing Day sale in VIC for safety reasons. It appears safety is not the highest priority in the USA.

maybe in Victoria, but there are still people getting hurt at our boxing day sales every year and regardless of the enforcement of management at the 9am boxing day opening rush, there is still plenty of the other carry on everywhere.

I had an email from David Jones today advertising cyber Monday sales of up to 40% off online today. It's not just America, many places around the world now are involved in the black Friday cyber Monday sales bonanza.

[Bidoofdude]

Wait, it's ON TV?! I must watch.