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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.
The sooner robots replace the workforce, the more leisure time we will have to enjoy life.
There are many bromides applicable here ... too much of a good thing, tiger by the tail, as you sow so shall you reap. The point is that too often Man becomes clever instead of becoming wise, he becomes inventive and not thoughtful, and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. As in tonight's tale of oddness and obsolescence in the Twilight Zone.
closing narration, The Brain Center at Whipple's
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Everything is not rosy with Walmart's penchant to do away with workers. One thing is an exploding crime problem at their stores because there is not enough personnel around. Who wants to go shopping in a crime zone? That and a popular local Walmart has an extremely hard time keeping the store shelves stocked. It's wonderful to have low prices, but I usually am wasting my time going there only to see empty shelves.
So disposing of workers only goes so far. I simply do not believe that our android workers will arrive in the near future to mitigate these problems created by lack of workers.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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.
Hopefully you are arguing for a guaranteed income in that case. Because of course, someone needs to buy the goods that walmart resells, or "middlemans".
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Automation is inevitable as the capital cost falls. But increasing the cost of human labor accelerates the process significantly. Creative destruction is a good thing, but it does hurt individuals temporarily who will need to retrain and adjust. So the pace is no small thing, and accelerating the transformation is not benign.
That's the usual march of progress, as long as people find new jobs that's fine. If everyone were fit for higher education as doctors, engineers, lawyers and so on we'd not mourn the loss of taxi drivers and burger flippers. Not everyone is looking to solve hard, creative problems at work. Me, I'd probably get bored otherwise but lots and lots of people just want to be trained in a task, do that task and collect their paycheck. Those kinds of "doer" jobs are the prime targets for automation and disappearing across the board.
Every time they list a position with hardly any education or experience necessary, there's a massive number of applicants and it ends up a game of musical chairs where most people don't get the job. I know a few people on disability benefit, I'd say for a century ago they'd be deemed "simpletons" and had some basic menial labor. A few hundred years ago most people were illiterate but they still had jobs, today I'd say an illiterate person is mostly unemployable so it's already happened a bit. But now it might start eating into a significant fraction of the population.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I know, I know... I am a communist, socialist and all the rest of it, but it makes sense.
There are 1 basic rule of capitalism. Survival of the fittest.
It turns out, however, that survival of the fittest is not always the best approach when you want to hold a society together. That is why we have things like anti monopoly rules. The "end game" for capitalism is to eliminate all competition so that in the end, there is only one.
This of course is massively short sighted, given that most of the population will won't have jobs and then cannot afford to buy your stuff. Especially since most so many people in the US firmly believe that if you lose your job, you should be homeless and starve to death if you cannot find a new job in time. Being good the Christians that they are.
That is same with automation, It should not be allowed. Can low level jobs be replaced with robots? Of course they can. But what the fuck are the people going to do for work?
Is everyone going to be a manager?
Is everyone going to start their own business?
No, of course not. Instead, those people will go hungry. They will go without insurance. Their kids will not have an education.
This is bad for everyone.
Of course, we all know that we are at a point where most food items and "stuff" can be made nearly with complete automation. We can produce enough for every single person to eat and have a place to live and clothes on their back.
But... We wont. Because those people are lazy, and should die. Right?
Eventually, that will happen. Or at least I hope. But until that time, those people "need" jobs.
You do not "need" a cheaper iphone. You only "want" cheaper stuff.
Next time you shop at a discount store, ask yourself.. why is this item so much cheaper than the local mom and pop shop? What is this really costing me?
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.
Ironically, the ones who scream the loudest against helping the "unwashed masses" are the Jesus people. Conservative Christians seem fundamentally not capable of allowing someone else a basic standard of life. And yes, that makes them bad people.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
The first part is a rather depression dystopia. The second part is pure utopia.
Walmart, and every other major company everywhere, has been replacing employees with technology at this rate--or more--for years.
As the the other reply to your post said, how are people going to get *any* money if their labor can't be sold?
Face it, the more jobs get automated, the less labor can be sold for. And when automation gets cheaper in terms of resources than maintaining a person to do the same thing, then the people who own capital will do away with labor entirely.
Then, people who own "enough" will be fine, and the people who don't own will not be able to labor to make money.
"But there will always be new jobs" you say? That's been true in the past, but look at what has happened to the earnings of labor in the USA as a fraction of corporate earnings. It has dropped 50% in inflation-adjusted dollars.
And a weak labor market brings down the value of *all* labor. People have been climbing up the skills ladder like crazy in the USA. More college graduates than ever before. Yet the wages are not higher. Why? Supply and demand. More supply of labor means lower wages for labor. More people fighting over the same jobs.
Even the poorest won't live comfortably when they can't get *any* money. And the USA has demonstrated a deep hostility to providing a decent safety net. People are reverting to subsistence farming in Detroit.