I think Walmart's story in particular is one of stupidly bad demand forecasting.

It is mostly discretionary spending that is down; Wal-Mart reported the largest fall in apparel iirc, but demand is demand. One would expect discretionary spending to fall first, and hopefully it stops there.

Again I apologize for not providing a direct citation due to my dumb mobile browser but these are days-old news stories and it should be easy to confirm

McDonalds et al. probably should've been investing a lot more in automating their kitchens. The fact that a huge percent of locations -- and all drive-thrus -- still use humans for the ordering process is, similarly, inexcusable.

Unless the US massively increases its low-skilled immigration quotes, robotics firms will be the FAANG equivalents of the 2020s-2030s.

For all the doom and gloom in the USA, it's still an incredibly rich country.

To be clear: I'm not making a moral statement here. This is a statement of fact, not a statement of ethical preference.

Suburb of top-tier cities? No. Cheapest suburb of a midwestern city? Absolutely.

Again, not saying it's reasonable. Just that it's possible.

Total household income. It is possible to accept a lower wage job if the rest of the family is making more. A spouse or older child can add to the family budget even if the primary breadwinner is making more.

Grants / subsidized housing of some sort. College students making a few extra dollars while living in the dorms where the major expenses are paid elsewhere.

Back to the older children and summer jobs. Getting a job to do something over the summer and get a bit of spending money of their own.

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Yes, lower paying jobs within higher cost of living areas are going to be having trouble finding people to work there. This has been a thing for many years. Even in the before times, there were constantly places that had "help wanted" signs out and were paying minimum wage. The ones in higher cost areas of the city were more likely to close resulting in more expensive restraints that can be supported by the people who are living the higher cost of living.

No. Restaurants will continue to exist. Sit down in particular. In cases where you are paying for an experience; the economics will get worse, but they will continue to exist.

Fast food restaurants will even continue to exist. But the latter only with substantial automation. This has already happened at the front of the house -- kiosks and apps are the "happy path" ordering interfaces at every McD's in a major city. I'm merely projecting that the most cost-sensitive segment of the food services industry will push that automation into the kitchen, the checkout line, and a lot of the administrative work that happens at branches.

Not suburbs, just towns, but there will be services and a hospital and so on.

I think it's unrealistic to expect retail goods to maintain the same highs they had during the pandemic. For a big chunk of the last two years, people couldn't go to concerts, bars and restaurants operated at limited capacity, vacation destinations had travel restrictions in place, etc. This lead people to take the discretionary income they would normally spend on those things and put it into retail goods that improve their lives stuck at home. TVs, game consoles, what have you. Now that restrictions are essentially nonexistent in the US, people are returning to those pre-COVID activities.