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Walmart Is Cutting 7,000 Jobs Due To Automation (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo: The clairvoyant folks over at the World Economic Forum warned of a "Fourth Industrial Revolution" involving the rise of the machine in the workforce, and the latest company to lend credence to that claim is none other than Walmart, which is planning on cutting 7,000 jobs on account of automation. But the Walmart decision may be a bit more alarming for those in the workforce. As the Wall Street Journal reports (Warning: may be paywalled), the most concerning aspect of America's largest private employer might be that the eliminated positions are largely in the accounting and invoicing sectors of the company. These jobs are typically held by some of the longest tenured employees, who also happen to take home higher hourly wages. Now, those coveted positions are being automated. The Journal reports that beginning in 2017, much of this work will be addressed by "a central office or new money-counting 'cash recycler' machines in stores." Earlier this year, the company tested this change across some 500 locations. "We've seen many make smooth transitions during the pilot," said Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman.
How will you pay for what you need to live without a job, exactly? Or do you think we'll be living in some idealistic world where everything, including housing, is free?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And there is no economic model to tell us how that is going to work. But, not far in the future - many of us will see it, if we don't kill ourselves off first, all manual labor will be automated. And soon after that there will be no labor required to produce any products - production and distribution will be totally automated. At that point labor will have no value and our world economy will cease to exist.
#1 Walmart employs around 2 million people worldwide. This does not even move the needle. #2 This has been happening for years. First it was the adding machine, then the electronic calculator, then the big computers, then the smaller ones. This should not come as a shock to anyone.
You Bernie retards that can't spend more than 10 minutes research to disprove your "I want free money" bullshit need to be lobotomized. Here is a hint since people have become full on retard: $10,000 in Detroit spends quite differently from $10,000 in Phoenix, and different than DC, and different than LA, and different than Chicago. Your fucking Utopia won't exist without a perfectly even cost of living across the globe, and how exactly do you plan to work that into your "gimme shit cuz I like smokin pot more than workin" plan?
Go move out to Burning man and stay there. Dipshit
What's the alternative? What should be done when every available job requires such a high level of exceptional ability that only a couple of percent of the population have it? That is, when the only people who can outperform automated systems are those who are exceptionally intelligent, very talented as entertainers or have remarkable athletic capability. And the first category will keep shrinking when automation becomes more and more capable and the latter two cannot expect any remuneration either for what they do from the masses since the unemployed masses earn nothing. Really, what's your solution? To let nature run its course and wait and see whether the desperate masses manage to bring down the system or lose the battle against automated systems that are in place to keep the peace when people riot? If such automated systems do not have the authority to, if necessary, kill people or incarcerate them, those systems will lose but if they do, the masses will lose.
Oh, and to which category do you think you belong? Those capable enough or those who become redundant? And I'd of course also like to know what you will do, if it turns out that you belong to the latter? Accept your fate?
This benefits all shareholders, of which the Waltons are the largest.
Do you own index or mutual funds in a 401(k) account to fund your retirement? If yes, the "blood" is on your hands, too. You proportionally benefit as much as the Waltons when jobs are cut and money is freed up for other purposes, including returning it to the people who own the enterprise.
Anyone here a California public employee counting on a pension? How do you think CalPERS is going to achieve those rosy 7% returns to fund the payments to future retirees? Dividends, share repurchases, and growth from allocating retained earnings -- the shareholders own this money, after all -- in value-additive projects. Cutting the fat is one way of freeing up additional free cash for these purposes.
I think it's interesting how millions of Americans are shareholders who benefit from these moves as much as the fat cats.
In some ways the goalposts have moved but not in a simple linear progression. Because of technology, the poor can have cheap TVs and phones. But in trade, they now cannot afford a place to call home. If they tried the popular solution from the middle ages of pick out an un-occupied spot and build a house, the city would come arrest them and bulldoze the place. They can no-longer make a job for themselves by planting on the commons and selling whatever surplus they grow (In many places, you are not even permitted to plant crops on the land you own).
An income is no longer optional, but the ability to have an income is not guaranteed.
As has always been the case, the nobility doesn't trouble itself with these things.
So, in the US, we automate agriculture enough to get the workforce down to 2% of the population. Then we automate enough of the manufacturing sector to reduce it to 8% of the population, not including the millions of offahored factory jobs. Then we tell everyone they have to go to college and get at least a 4 year degree to have any hope of a stable future. The vast majority of people at non-top tier universities are doing the minimum required to get a degree, majoring in business or psychology or communications. In the past, all of those people were absorbed into random entry-level positions doing the kind of work Walmart is now automating. It's a ritual - party through 4 years, show up at the campus career center during your senior year, do a few interviews and pick Random Large Employer to work for as a Random Paper Processing Position. What exactly are people proposing that we do with these "C students," who number in the millions and contribute to society through taxes, buying stuff and raising little C students?
- Most of them don't have the aptitude for tech careers (many of which are being automated as well...)
- Most of them can't be trained in a skilled trade without asking them to go back through another 4 years of apprenticeship
- Almost none can become doctors, lawyers, etc. because the competition is so keen to get in to medical/law school
- They can't be investment bankers or management consultants, because those professions only recruit from the Ivy League
I know it's no one's dream to process paperwork, but it has traditionally been one of the most stable ways for middle-skilled people to earn a living and have a career. Students starting out as a Associate Paper Processor have the opportunity to become a Senior Paper Processor, then a Paper Processor Supervisor, Manager of Paper Processing, Director of Document Services, and so on. For everyone in corporate IT, think of all the paper processors we directly support, working away in their cubicles. Most are incapable of doing any more than a defined procedure on an input stack of work. If you suddenly say all these people are unemployed, what do you propose replacing their jobs with? When that good salary goes away, the government doesn't get its payroll tax, the unemployed person chooses not to buy a house and therefore doesn't pay property taxes into the system, they choose not to procreate and reduce the birth rate to an unsustainable level. And, they don't buy anything, meaning businesses can't sell the products they make.
I'm not saying we become Luddites and stop the automation, but we as a whole need to think about what we're going to do with a very large disaffected population. Look how much support Trump has among factory workers who are still unemployed or underemployed even though everyone's being told the economy is in OK shape. I'm one of those people who feels that full employment above all else should be the goal, even if we do make-work for some of it. You can't have millions of people sitting around with nothing to do and no purpose -- it will lead to massive crime over the long run as people get bored and tired of being broke.