Are retail jobs going the way of farming and manufacturing?

Very interesting little piece from this month's issue of The Atlantic (Hi, Versatile!) on the decline of retail jobs and what it means for America:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/death-of-the-salesmen/309309/

I post it because it dove tails nicely with discussions not only about Wal-Mart's effect on American, but also one we had on the political thread a few weeks back - I think it was me, Dooley, Azrael, and some others. I argued that "creative destruction," as it is known, is ultimately good for the country, because low-skill jobs are replaced by higher-skill jobs that ultimately lead to a higher standard of living.

Basically, I'm against dead weight use of resources - cashiers when a self checkout is just as good. Az said, not without merit, that the same companies who eliminate such jobs should bear some responsibility in contributing to the safety net for the cast-off employees. Dooley called me a Nazi. Or maybe that was in a health care digression. Or perhaps both.

Anyway, the Atlantic piece makes the argument that there is a fragmentation of the American shopper going on into, to oversimplify, two groups:

• Wal-Mart shoppers who want discounted prices, damned be the shopping "experience."
• Wealthier shoppers who prefer service and experience over prices. Think of someone buying groceries at Trader Joe's, which is far better staffed than your average Wal-Mart or other big box store.

Also good stuff in the piece about the effect of online shopping. And the fact that retail jobs lost aren't being replaced the way that, for example, farming jobs were when industrialization occurred.

 

You can't buy a hot, fresh espresso over the internet!

 

http://www.aroma.us/locations.php

 

"You can't take a computer with you to the john!"

Remember that one?

 

Ragu, I agree with all of that. Though there's really not much to "agree" about - it's pretty much all accepted fact at this point, among the people who study it. The purpose of the social safety net should be to retrain workers, and support those who are not yet retrained as a bridge to when they are retrained. It should not be to help a modern economy cling to obsolete jobs.

 

Huh.

Bad idea to order it ahead of time though. An espresso should be drunk within seconds of it being pulled. It goes flat if it sits.

 

I once had a conversation with the girl cutting my hair about how her parents didn't really approve of her career choice. But as I pointed out, that's one thing that definitely can't be outsourced. Of course, every time I say "that's something that can't be outsourced," someone proves me wrong. Maybe in 25 years, we'll be getting our haircut by robots programmed by Bangladeshi grad students.

 

I fail to understand the logic that says combining a continually expanding global population with a reduced need for labor and an increasing pool of sources for said required labor must necessarily lead to a situation in which "the jobs will follow."

Why is the U.S., or any other country, simply guaranteed to have enough jobs? Is there any way that you can justify that optimism, other than to point to "well, it's always been that way"? A lot of things that had "always been that way" have stopped being that way. And one of the things that hasn't always been that way is upwardly mobile former backwaters with burgeoning pools of affordable, increasingly educated labor.

 

To me, this is where government comes in, no? Retail jobs are disappearing? Subsidize or even create - like via the stimulus - jobs that add value to the economy. Like infrastructure improvements. Or whatever labor is going to be required to map the human brain. Or the genome before it. Even a staunch free marketeer like Ragu would, I imagine, agree that government has a role to play when it comes to preventing market failures. But forcing Wal-Mart somehow to hire cashiers when the self checkout line can do the trick just as well, that isn't good for anybody in the long-term.

 

I can't see how you could argue that Ragu would be in favor of anything remotely like that, when he's plainly stated that you have to "let demand dictate supply." I guess my question to him is why assume that the demand will be for U.S.-based jobs.

And when you have many of the companies at the forefront of this trend actively working against any government involvement*, that doesn't fill one with much confidence, either.

*-And that's in pretty much anything, including but not limited to the education that would be required to put people in a position to, for example, map the human brain.