Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.