[pbnjay]

Square footage is a pretty dumb metric. square footage of the US >> square footage of Japan, Switzerland, UK, etc. We have more room, and it's much cheaper - of course we use more of it.

Normalize square footage by some reasonable metric (price per sq ft in percent GDP perhaps?) and maybe I'll take the "bubble" idea seriously.

[VLM]

Ah but that analysis assumes the only cost of retail area is initial purchase price of the undeveloped land. I would theorize the cost of construction is "more or less" the same and certainly the cost of labor to maintain and clean it is very high. Also energy costs to heat, light, cool, ventilate... all "about" the same.

Another failure of analysis is the cost of a sq foot at a reasonably constant level of development. What I mean is a sq foot in Tokyo needs to be compared to a sq ft in Manhattan, not a sq foot in New Mexico 100 miles from the nearest Starbucks. What I'm saying is it doesn't matter if land in Wyoming is cheap, if its empty and shopper-free.

There is also the inventory aspect... assuming a stable scenario (admittedly unlikely) my annual purchases have to subsidize the annual costs of 50 sq feet of "stuff" both inventory and maintenance whereas someone in .jp only has to subsidize the annual costs of 10 sq feet of "stuff", therefore their standard of living should be higher than mine because they don't have to support so much deadweight.

[pbnjay]

Much of these costs will be "built in" to the price per square foot. Land in Wyoming is cheap precisely BECAUSE it is empty and shopper-free - it has lower profit potential. No one will pay $10k/sq ft for space in Wyoming because it would take forever to make their money back. Simple economics - supply and demand - there is ample supply in wyoming but no demand.

Inventory is also a bad metric, Wal-Mart for example makes much of its profits by way of logistics (getting stuff onto the shelves as it sells), not by keeping inventory in stores.