
Today in Chicago History: Two police officers killed by snipers inside Cabrini-Green high-rise
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
1955: A Braniff Airways twin-engine Convair 340 trying to land at Midway Airport in the fog struck a gas station sign just beyond the airport and crashed, killing 22 people and injuring 21. This was one of several accidents that prompted the city and federal government to restrict obstructions and the height of buildings near airports.
1966: Chicago Cubs left fielder and Hall of Famer Billy Williams hit for the cycle.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Chicago Cubs who have hit for the cycleIn the second game of a doubleheader against the Cardinals in St. Louis: 'The sweet swinger from Mobile way achieved the dream of everyone who ever toted a bat to the plate,' Tribune reporter Edward Prell wrote.
Williams hit a single, double, triple and a homer — precisely in that order — in the Cubs' 7-2 win.
1970: Two Chicago police officers walking in Seward Park — Sgt. James Severin and Patrolman Anthony Rizzato — were shot and killed by snipers firing high-powered rifles from a Cabrini-Green high-rise.
Within minutes, other officers arrived to retrieve their bodies and return gunfire. Later, Johnny Veal and George Knights were convicted in the shooting deaths. Both were serving 100- to 199-year sentences. Veal was granted parole by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board in 2021.
1974: Illinois issued the first state lottery license to a Chicago coffee shop. Although other agent licenses had already been distributed, the establishment at 1419 W. Taylor St. was chosen to stage a ceremonial 'grand opening' of the Illinois Lottery.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Illinois Lottery's first drawing took place 50 years agoAl and Theresa Prisco were interviewed as lottery officials taped posters to the coffee shop walls urging customers to use their coffee change to buy lottery tickets. A $1.5 million advertising campaign — including a supplement section published in the Tribune that taught readers how to play the games — followed.
'We've been here 25 years,' Al Prisco told the Tribune. 'I didn't expect to celebrate it with a bang like this.'
1980: Chicago Bears founder and owner George Halas signed a new 20-year lease for the team to play at Soldier Field.
1984: 'I tell you we need a change! Come November, there will be a change because our time has come!' The Rev. Jesse Jackson ended his presidential campaign but promised to throw his support behind the Democratic Party's candidate while speaking at the party's convention in San Francisco.
Highlights in the life of Rev. Jesse Jackson: Minister, civil rights advocate, politician, intermediary, social justice proponent and COVID-19 survivorSubscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
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Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Self checkout: retail's saving grace or a gaping problem?
It wasn't long ago that most of us considered a visit to the store somewhat of a social outing. Whether it was a trip to the supermarket or big-box store in town, or a full-fledged visit to the nearest mall, most of us banked on the fact that we'd be interacting with other humans. At least, that's how it had been for centuries. Shopping has been an inherently social business. Most stores are staffed with gregarious and sociable folks who are more than willing to help customers find what they need. And a lot of shoppers prefer to do it with others; there's a reason many of us look fondly back on birthday parties held at the mall or other massive shopping center. From the fruit aisle to the furniture showroom floor, most of us are pretty used to interacting with other humans during the commercial experience. But we've been on something of a slide away from social shopping for years now. That's not the end of the world. Retail is a hard business; anyone who's worked the floor of a department store or at the checkout at a big-box store can attest to that. Still, most retailers depend on some semblance of a human presence in their stores. But that presence has been steadily dwindling, much to many customers' chagrin. Image source: Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images The steady slide away from the human connection is not limited to retail. Anybody who's dealt with a bot on a phone call, an automated teller, or even a health care worker over a video call can attest to that. The outsourcing of troubleshooting and people-facing duties to robots and technology was once hailed as a straightforward and sound business decision. After all, it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay a human to do a job a robot could do for free. Those robots don't require benefits, breaks, time off, or suffer from burnout the way humans do. So everywhere we go, there's been an up-cropping of automated assistance. It certainly saves companies a lot of money. Big tech firms such as Amazon have begun to employ robots to fulfill mundane warehouse orders, freeing up their human employees to work on more nuanced issues. But solutions like these are rarely that simple. Retail has specifically eliminated customer-facing jobs like cashiers and baggers. The reasoning behind this isn't exactly straightforward. For one, brick-and-mortar retailers have to compete with more streamlined, online competitors who have less overhead and fewer employees to pay. This means cutting costs where they can, and for many physical retailers that must keep the lights on, reducing large staff numbers is often priority number one. When Covid hit, this only exacerbated the issue. Suddenly, very few people wanted to work in a confined, indoor space facing the public for hours every day. Retail workers quit in droves, so many retailers lost employees. And they were forced to get creative. Many ramped up their self-checkout capabilities. These automated kiosks, which allow customers to scan and bag their own items (thereby eliminating the need for a cashier and bagger), had been around for years. And largely, they had frustrated customers, who struggled to correctly scan barcodes and resented the idea of doing for free what was typically a paid job. To be fair, some customers appreciated the ease and convenience of self-checkout. Introverted shoppers, folks making personal purchases, or people who just don't want to wait in line tend to prefer the ease of a self-checkout kiosk. But as they became more popular during Covid, when many more retailers relied almost exclusively on self checkout to keep things moving, plenty more customers began to take advantage of the system. Theft, whether accidental or intentional, spiked with the use of self-checkouts. For instance, Target in 2023 reported a roughly $500 million increase in loss due to shrink (the industry term for the disappearance of goods from theft and other causes). It's not all due to malicious intent - roughly one fifth of thefts happen accidentally. Many customers report having great difficulty with self-checkout. It's easy to imagine how a befuddled customer might be rushing to alleviate a long line of perturbed customers behind him or her and accidentally scan something incorrectly. Retailers probably didn't foresee millions of dollars in losses when they set out to install their first self-checkout counters. But the fact is that fewer folks are entering retail as a line of work, which means a lot of these kiosks are here to stay. Still, retailers that have faced the biggest challenges with the automated technology have curtailed customer privileges. In 2024, Target began limiting customers using self-checkout to 10 items or fewer. And Walmart has been tailoring its approach to self-checkout on a store-by-store basis. One Walmart store in Missouri eliminated its self-checkout options entirely after a costly bout with theft since Covid. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.


The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
America's economic waters will calm when politicians stop throwing boulders
It's fascinating to throw stones into a lake, watch ripples interact and spread, and speculate about when the water will become calm again. But when rocks and boulders of policy uncertainty hit the economic waters, predicting the outcome of the resulting ripples and waves requires more than speculation. America's waters are still trembling from past policy boulders, but in some ways the lake has seemed on the verge of becoming calm again following COVID and major Biden and Trump administration initiatives. Now, we must watch how new, spreading waves interact with receding ripples. Let's assess what we can at this point. With the dawn of the decade and COVID, massive policy boulders fell. There were huge transfers from the national-deficit purse to individual and business bank accounts and a shutdown of the economy. The results were more like tidal waves than ripples. The waters were still troubled in 2025 when Donald Trump returned with 'golden-age' promises. In rapid fire, more boulders hit the water: DOGE cuts, government layoffs, deported immigrants and massive ' Liberation Day ' worldwide tariff announcements. To get a handle on all this, there are two kinds of economic indicators to consider: soft and hard. Soft indicators reflect what people think about the economy: Are they optimistic or pessimistic? Favoring long-run investments or sitting on their hands and waiting for fewer ripples? Hard indicators provide the data: Has GDP growth accelerated? Industrial production? Employment or business startups? The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Indicator and University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index are two closely watched soft indicators. Both have multiple components, some focused on the present and others on the future. Both recently took positive turns that can be attributed to growing comfort with a more relaxed and predictable Trump tariff policy. The Michigan index recently rose significantly for the first time in six months following 'steady drops that left the preliminary number at the second-lowest level in the nearly 75-year history of the survey.' Affirming similar signals, consumer confidence rose significantly in May (but declined in June with consumers again expressing concern over tariffs). The National Federation of Independent Businesses produces a member-derived monthly optimism index that, in June, was positive for the second consecutive month. It had languished in weak territory from January 2021 through October 2024. Finally, it seems, small businesses were observing calming waters. Next, consider the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, a daily measure based on the frequency of the word 'uncertainty' observed in a large sample of major daily newspapers. On June 15, the index registered 521, down from a high of 976 recorded on April 5, (the first reading capturing the effects of the April 2 'Liberation Day' announcement and the highest since COVID). Yet ripples were still present. Due to high and rising interest rates, we get a negative outlook from the National Association of Home Builders-Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which fell from 34 to 32, the lowest reading since December 2022. When it comes to hard indicators, the picture has been a similar mix of encouraging and uncertain. First-quarter real GDP growth came in at minus-0.5 percent following the previous quarter's 2.4. percent. The negative number was worsened by the efforts of U.S. importers to bring in goods before higher tariffs took hold (imports subtract from GDP). Reflecting a hangover from the same tariff-fueled spring buying frenzy, May retail sales fell 0.9 percent relative to April's numbers. On the labor front, May payroll employment growth of 139,000 workers was below the 149,000 average for the past 12 months but still decent. Industrial production growth declined 0.5 percent in April but rose 0.1 percent in May. A loss of construction jobs due to high interest rates was the largest sector drag on April's employment numbers. Tariffs seemed to be the main source of uncertainty. More germane as a prosperity indicator, new business formations have been occurring at a sustained high level. Better still, important measures finally suggest that one ripple that has widened for a half-decade — the inflation effects of COVID — is settling and that tariff-driven inflation is for now being observed at a low level. Yes, we seemed to be getting beyond COVID, DOGE and Liberation Day's troubled waters when Trump decided to bomb Iran's nuclear bomb-making activities. The Middle East now rocks with another wave of uncertainty. U.S. allies and adversaries may throw boulders of their own. For now, we can expect volatile petroleum markets, higher energy prices and perhaps complications regarding inflation and interest rates. Will calmer waters and peace emerge quickly, or will more boulders hit the water? We can only speculate and cannot fully account for future boulders. But many are under our control and will stop falling when our elected leaders stop dropping them. Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University's College of Business and Behavioral Sciences.


CNBC
2 hours ago
- CNBC
New York City braces for wealth flight with Mamdani's political rise
Zohran Mamdani's primary win in New York City's mayoral race and proposal to raise taxes on millionaires have touched off fears of a new wave of wealth flight from the city. Yet so far, there is little evidence of a slowdown in high-end real estate or real wealth losses in New York. Florida real estate brokers say they've seen a surge in inquiries from the New York wealthy looking to move to Miami or Palm Beach. Business owners are threatening to leave the city or close. And New York developers, caught in the crosshairs of Mamdani's rent control platform, have banded together to fund Mamdani's opponents in the November general election. At the center of the economic concern is Mamdani's so-called "millionaire tax." He's proposed an additional 2% tax on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year. Added to the city's current top rate of 3.876%, the tax would bring the combined New York City and state tax to 16.776%, by far the highest in the country. The combined federal, state and city rate would be 53.776%. And New York's high earners won't have to go to Florida to avoid the tax. They can simply move to neighboring Long Island or Westchester County or even New Jersey. Unlike New York state, New York City can't tax people who work in the city but have their primary residence elsewhere. "New York City can only tax its own residents," said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation. "A high earner doesn't need to give up the convenience of the city, they just need to move outside the five boroughs. Migration across city lines is the easiest." Importantly, Mamdani wouldn't be able to raise income taxes. The city's income tax rates are set by Albany, where Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she will block any tax hike. "I don't want to lose any more people to Palm Beach," Hochul told the New York Post. Critics also fear Mamdani's policies toward the police and public safety could make the city even more dangerous, becoming the final straw for many business owners and top earners who were already considering leaving. The top 1% of New Yorkers pay over 40% of the income taxes, so losing even a small number of high earners would set off a downward spiral of lower revenue and lower services and more out-migration. The Inside Wealth newsletter by Robert Frank is your weekly guide to high-net-worth investors and the industries that serve them. Subscribe here to get access today. New York state had a net loss of $14 billion in net adjusted income due to taxpayers leaving between 2021 and 2022, according to the Tax Foundation and IRS data. The city's revenue from personal income taxes declined between 2022 and 2024, from $16.7 billion in 2022 to $14 billion last year — although they're still above the pre-Covid levels of $13.4 billion in 2019, according to data from the New York City comptroller. At the same time, however, there are signs that New York's powerful wealth machine is constantly replenishing the ranks of millionaires and billionaires, more than making up for the rich who move out. The number of millionaires in New York City has more than doubled over the past decade — despite the Covid losses — to over 2.4 million, according to Altrata. There are now over 33,000 New Yorkers worth $30 million or more, nearly double that of Miami, according to Altrata. Whether it's measuring millionaires, multi-millionaires or billionaires, New York City has maintained its dominance as the richest wealth hub in the world. "New York remains a powerful magnet for the wealthy, offering a blend of luxury consumption, vibrant culture, high-quality education and lifestyle cachet, with the borough of Manhattan the epicenter of ultra-prime real estate," said a report from Altrata and REALM. Demand for pricey luxury apartments in New York also shows no signs of slowing, even after Mamdani's win in the June 24 primary. There were 64 contracts signed between June 23 and July 13 for apartments priced over $4 million, up 13% over last year, with a sales total of more more than $555 million in sales, according to Olshan Realty. Among the signed contracts was a $35 million, three-bedroom spread on Fifth Avenue that was first listed in December. "The luxury market is on pace for one of its best years," said Donna Olshan, of Olshan Realty, who also cautioned that any potential Mamdani-related weakness could show up in the Fall. Not only did New York's millionaire and billionaire population rebound quickly after Covid, but high earners also bounced back. While the city lost a net 5,000 households earning $1 million or more during the pandemic, their ranks have grown from 30,400 in 2019 to 34,127 in 2022, the latest period available, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute. Nathan Gusdorf, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, said the narrative of wealth flight from New York is fed in part by the media, which highlights a small number of high-profile billionaires who move from New York to Florida. Stories about billionaires like Josh Harris, Carl Icahn and Daniel Och decamping to Florida ignores the broader ebb and flow of wealth in New York. New York's powerful economy, fueled by the financial services industry, continues to produce more new millionaires than it loses. "We do not have a fixed population of millionaires that just declines whenever one of them leaves," Gusdorf said. "The city regenerates that lost millionaire population." Even if Mamdani were to win the mayorship in November and raise taxes, the direct impact on wealth flight may be more limited than many expect. According to the Fiscal Policy Center's latest research, the top 1% of New Yorkers by income (those making more than $800,000 a year) leave the city at one quarter the rate of all other income groups. When the New York wealthy do move, they have most often oved to other high-tax states like New Jersey, Connecticut or California – suggesting lifestyle rather than taxes are the driver. "There is a strong indication that higher tax rates at the state level imposed on the top earners are not having real behavioral effects," Gusdorf said. Others, however, say taxes have outsized importance for the wealthy, proven by the sweeping population moves in recent years from high-tax to low- or no-tax states like Florida and Texas. A study by the California Center for Jobs and the Economy described a "taxodus," or net loss of $5.3 billion in personal income tax, from high earners who left after a 2016 extension of higher taxes on the wealthy. "High tax rates do lead to outmigration and lower income growth," Walczak said.