The sun sets on Sears

No company is forever — not even America's "everything store"

A vacant Sears store.
(Image credit: FireAtDusk/iStock)

Zombie retailer Sears has finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and observers are delivering a catalog of explanations about what it all really means. Perhaps the gradual-then-sudden decline of the 125-year-old retailer reflects the harmful financialization of the U.S. economy. Or maybe it symbolizes the decline of the American middle class. How about the job-killing impact of Big Tech? Probably all of the above. "Late-stage" capitalism is a complicated business.

But this much the critics are certain of: Something somewhere has gone terribly wrong. What that something is exactly ... well, take your pick.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.