How Can They Possibly Surive, Quite The Mystery (insurance, small business, profit)

[tijlover]

When I drive around Tucson and I see all these small businesses everywhere and all these medical offices, it's one of the biggest mysteries to me, how on earth do they all hang on? Space for Lease, space for lease, all over the place!

I've driven by one large dental clinic, and I've never seen any cars parked outside. Not too surprising in Tucson, where a number of people go south to Nogales for dental work, including myself.

And to think there's a movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour! With a number of these businesses I would think it would be a hardship just to pay the minimum wage!

I do know some of these money losing businesses are owned by bored retiree's, or bored housewife's, married to a big bread winner, and they open a business, even knowing it'll lose money, for tax write offs!

What's even more mystifying is the effect of Amazon on these businesses today, how many of them can stay open.

Do you find it all mystifying as well?

[Quietude]

There is a vast number of standalone ERs and urgent care clinics here - sometimes four visible from the same intersection. My understanding is that it's a peculiarity of the laws and insurance funding that makes them enormously profitable, even when there's a high saturation.