Are retail jobs going the way of farming and manufacturing?

When I went to Greece, I stayed with a hairdresser. She has chosen the professional because she could up and move anywhere and always have a job.

Honestly, if I did it all again with the knowledge I have now, I'd more than likely go one of three routes: massage, barber or bartending school.

 

Because I think that's shorthand he uses to express his basic Chicago school philosophy about economics. But he knows about externalities, that businesses should have to internalize the full cost of their endeavors, rather than pushing off costs onto the rest of us (example: air pollution). And he knows about collective action problems - i.e. the difficulty in getting a start-up industry off the round because nobody wants to be the one to put in the substantial costs at the outset. For example, on a more micro scale, this is why we have patent protection.

 

I imagine that Amazon Prime is taking a sizable portion of sales from Target, Best Buy, Kohl's and other stores.

http://www.amazon.com/DeLonghi-EC155-Espresso-Cappuccino-Maker/dp/B000F49XXG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369319237&sr=8-1&keywords=espresso+machine

http://www.amazon.com/DeLonghi-EC702-15-Bar-Pump-Espresso-Stainless/dp/B001CNG7RY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369319237&sr=8-2&keywords=espresso+machine

http://www.amazon.com/Breville-BES860XL-Barista-Express-Espresso/dp/B002S51RQG/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1369319237&sr=8-6&keywords=espresso+machine

http://www.amazon.com/Bialetti-Express-6-Cup-Stovetop-Espresso/dp/B000CNY6UK/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1369319237&sr=8-9&keywords=espresso+machine

 

Technological advancement and shifting in the labor market are always happening and should be viewed positively. So I'm not that concerned so much about a reduction in crummy retail jobs; it's the way wages and benefits in all low-skill jobs (retail, service industry, warehouse, etc.) haven't kept up with overall economic growth, exacerbating the gap with skilled (college educated) workers.

The following op-ed piece suggests no one wants to talk about the increasing gap between college- and the high school-educated people who typically fill these low-skill jobs. Much of the problem has to do with the decimation of private-sector labor unions (now down to about seven percent of the private sector labor force) in the past 30 years, which has kept an entire class of people from sharing in economic growth.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/the-1-percent-are-only-half-the-problem/

This is the gap that makes it pretty clear who shops at Wal-Mart and who shops at Trader Joe's.

 

Trader Joe's is less expensive than Wal Mart. Whole Foods on the other hand...

 

So has the student-loan debt they carry into their 20s and 30, correct?

What I'd like to see is the "break even" point. At what age do you start coming out ahead? Because a 22-year-old with $80,000 in student loan debt isn't going to be living any better than the high school grad with four years of work experience and no (school) debt . . . for a few years anyway.

 

I think most retail people will tell you that self checkout lines aren't that effective.

They aren't always the best customer experience because of various technical problems, and shoplifting goes up as more people use them.

 

No question the cost of higher education is driving a stake in the middle of the gap and it's also hurting the economy by sending people into the working world who are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt before they start. These are the young people who might otherwise be spending on big-ticket items like homes and cars.

 

Well, sure. And, at first, TVs didn't sound great as compared to radios. Presumably, the technology will improve over time and, with it, the experience. And if there are shoplifting losses, I imagine that they are more than offset by the lower labor costs.

The concept of self checkout, just like the concept of online shopping, is an improvement over human cashiers. The execution is another matter, of course.

 

One of the grocery chains here added three self-check lines to its store for about six months and wound up taking them out and replacing them with manned check-outs because shoplifting went way up.

 

If young people enter the workforce saddled with substantial student loan debt, it is reasonable to assume that their portion of aggregate demand will be lower. However, you also have to assume that someone else's portion of aggregate demand is higher as a result of those education expenditures. That debt just doesn't appear on students' balance sheets without also appearing on someone else's income statement.