“Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking. Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America,” - Warren Buffett
Economists on and off Wall Street say homeownership is the primary means by which Americans accumulate wealth. Home equity allows Americans to pay for college and cover medical expenses without going deep into debt, fund retirement, and pass on wealth to the next generation. (WSJ)
We are constantly evolving and the evolution of business can be cruel, especially when it is accelerated at a rapid pace. I was reading about the Lord & Taylor building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and how well it demonstrates the evolution of real estate and business. This magnificent building that once housed a prized department store for over a century was sold to WeWork in April 2017. As we all know by now, reckless leadership and unrealistically inflated aspirations caused WeWork to turn around and sell this building to AMAZON in February 2020. Lord and Taylor was not the 'first' at this site. Prior to Lord and Taylor it was residential homes and prior to that, it was farmland. Before Lord & Taylor was a retailer, it was actually a wholesaler. Everything about this building demonstrates the realities of evolution and today it symbolizes the 'next' retail which is focused predominantly on digital online retail. Simply dig deeper into the past to see that change is the only constant. One day, Amazon will be upstaged by a new entity just the way Lord & Taylor was. The hope is that evolution delivers improvement.