I think you are stating this as an absolute truth, but that’s not really the way things are or have to be.
11 Reasons To Love Costco That Have Nothing To Do With Shopping
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The problems are clear. XT correctly points out that unskilled labor is an ever-diminishing portion of production value, so increasing inequality is inevitable result of market principles. But what’s the solution?
Let’s start with you, XT. Do you have a solution for the problem you describe? What advice do you offer a low-wage worker who lacks the skill and intelligence to get a better job? Commit a crime if the standard of living in prison will be an improvement for him?
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I suppose it depends on what problem you are trying to fix. If it’s to make no skilled or semi skilled labor intrinsically more valuable then you’d need to basically make companies dependent on it again. To do this I suppose you could prevent companies from using or purchasing products or services outside of the country, and force companies not to use automation or expert systems and go back to a heavily manual process. Simply dictating that companies have to pay more for labor that’s not worth more to them via raising the minimum wage isn’t going to do it…in fact, IMHO, it will have the opposite effect. You’ll have fewer workers making a bit more as companies instead continue and even accelerate automation. The higher you push minimum wage, again IMHO, the more companies will push automation or offshoring/outsourcing.
If the problem you are trying to solve is to help the poor or the unskilled/semi skilled laborers, then that’s why we have a social safety net. If you feel it’s not adequate then to me that would be a better cause to push for than upping minimum wage. To me, a better (still not optimal) solution might be to totally get rid of minimum wage laws and let labor be worth what it’s worth to the various companies, and then up the social safety net, make it more accessible and less bureaucracy and paperwork. Maybe do the whole BLS thing with direct payments from the general fund going to anyone making below a certain amount…or make it tiered. Don’t tie healthcare to the job. There are all sorts of things you can do through direct taxation. The point is, that’s what a societal safety net is for…and society (we) have to decide where we want to set the bar.
In the long run I think this is going to be a real problem (not that it’s not a problem today), as more and more automation and expert systems are going to decrease the value of labor more and more. When I used to read this sort of thing in Sci-Fi when I was a kid I thought, yeah, that could happen in a few hundred years. But you can already see it starting to happen now. The transition to a more automated world is already happening and we are just at the beginning of the curve…and it’s starting at the low end. How we will deal with this is still up in the air, but we will HAVE to deal with it, and the old labor verse management/corporations meme simply is out of date for dealing with it. You can’t simply trot out that old mindset of unions and holding management over a barrel anymore, because it’s increasingly becoming less and less in touch with the new reality.
To me, automation and expert systems in my own field are just as noticeable. When I was first starting off as a network engineer you had to have a huge amount of knowledge about all sorts of esoteric things. IP address architecture, routing protocols, spanning tree bridge algorithms, etc etc, and how all of this worked on individual vendor implementations…and, of course, their cryptic CLI commands and quirks, as well as an understanding of layer 1 and how all of THAT worked. The reason why we commanded such high salaries is because it wasn’t intuitive and you couldn’t just take someone off the street and train them in a few weeks…or even a few years…to know and understand all of the levels you needed to know to be successful. Today you don’t have to know all of that. Oh, you have to still have at least a working knowledge of some of it, but with expert systems, wizards, and of course the GUIs available you don’t need to know it to the level you once did to make it work or even to optimize it. And the different vendors have all converged on a series of standards AND on a de facto nomenclature for the various terms that makes moving between vendors equipment and integrating it much, much easier. And, again, we are only at the start of the automation curve. What you can do with things like UCS and SAN integration connecting directly into your integrated core is just astounding to me, especially the single pane of glass software that lets you configure and manage it all from one piece of software.
If I sound without compassion, oh well. I am a firm believer in not having kids if you can’t take care of them the way you intend to. Matter of fact plan for the worst, this is earth people, shit’s always been unpredictable.
I wasn’t aware that the turnover rate was that low by that metric.
I disagree with number 11. Free samples block the aisles. We go, when possible, before the sample people set up.
I’d add not just inequality but quality. also.
More to the point, Costco shows that there are other approaches than cutting staff, salaries and service to the bone - successful strategies.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t believe you, I merely had never heard of it, and was interested in learning more.
For other markets. WalMart and Costco don’t serve the same market. I’m sure there is some overlap, but WalMart is not in danger of being put out of business by Costco.
They are linked. Clearly increased unemployment has forced a downward pressure on wages, even with the so-called recovery. Overseas manufacturing has been an issue for decades now. And certainly the move of people into service industries is not that affected by a decline in manufacturing. It is an issue, but not a new one.
To a certain extent though I was replying to XT also. That WalMart employees are a fairly small part of the labor force in no way means that their policies don’t have immense leverage. The easy thing for other companies to do is to copy them. Costco got a lot of flak for their policies from Wall Street - until they proved to be good for the bottom line, that is.
Well, if people want a better life for their kids than they have, don’t you think they should plan for that. How about having kids that you can support in a fashion that you see good things for them.
I agree that it is immoral to have more kids than one can afford to take care of and expect society to not only clothe, feed and educate them, but do so in a manner that equal to someone whose parents made better choices.
Now where I do agree with you is on the issue of the dearth of factory-type jobs. It behooves us as a society to have abundant jobs for all, not just those cut out for four years of college. BUt it’s really hard to convince a CEO—and CFO—who has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to not go the cheaper route and ship manufacturing overseas. I don’t think this is the whole answer, but lowering taxes for corporations would be a step that would help not make China quite as attractive,
Oh, I see, this amoral, supremely skilled corporate entity doesn’t give a rat’s ass about government programs that decrease the cost of labor for it. Tell me another one!
Well of course, Walmart is not totally responsible for the situation that makes employment there a no-choice option for many. It’s the economy and the lack of a strong social safety net that does it. If you can lose your house, your car, your ability to live a decent life if you have no job … and you CERTAINLY CAN in America, hell, you can be homeless even WITH a job … then it’s not much of a choice to take a job at WalMart if you have no other employment offers on hand, and to stay with it so long as you have no other employment offers on hand. Homelessness is no fun, my friend. No cable, just for starters!
Walmart offers a pitiful low wage job with no benefits, so low wage that many employees are eligible for government benefits, yet it has more applicants than it can handle. This should tell you something about the economy and the society that WalMart operates in … just as FoxConn tells us something about the society it operates in.
If people could lead decent lives without a job, I imagine many employers, including WalMart, would sweeten the pot. Which is why we need strong social safety nets.
Ah, welfare for profitable companies but not for the underpaid workers.
Sure, I’m all glad for the improvement of the quality of life for Asians workers who have displaced American workers, and I’ll eventually be glad for the African workers who will displace the Asian workers. But I’m not glad that this is leading to a race for the bottom for all workers. Can you offer some reason why I should be?
If you agree that the Chinese worker is better off now than 30 years ago then it’s not a race to the bottom, is it?
I agree 100% with this sentiment. Why is it always the people that can least afford to have kids end up having a brood of 8 or 9 kids? In this day and age, there is simply no excuse whatsoever for it. There is free contraception available everywhere . Or heck, just get your tubes tied and be done with it.
It simply come down to poor choices that people make, and expecting the rest of society to bail them out of their poor choices. I’d consider myself upper middle to lower upper class and I wouldn’t even consider the added expense of a single child, much less 3 or 4. A lot of it has to do with my preferred lifestyle, in which kids would be a huge hindrance, but even if I did want kids, I would think long and hard about the time and expense of having children before I decided to have even one.
Well that’s all right. People with your opinions tend to go away in the long term. Darwinian, you know. Basically you are saying you are a happy corporate drone who does not understand why all those worker bees insist on continuing the human race. What fools they are!
In general throughout the world the more money people have the less they reproduce. If people have enough for a stable relationship, if they are spending time at work every day and not bored at home or on the streets, if having kids means they have to give up something, they might not have so many.
Yet another argument for full employment and a living wage.
I’m gonna pile onto this one along with Snowboarder Bo. There is a constant refrain here that some of us just Don’t Understand Business. As stated by Snowboarder Bo, there is no one way that business has to be conducted. Let me share an anecdote.
In an earlier life I worked for IBM and was involved in a project based on a software product used by banks to automate some of their services. The company wanted to expand into the Canadian market. I attended a trade show in Toronto where this software was presented to Canadian banking executives. After the presentation, one of the Canadian bank executives said the following:
“I don’t think your product is going to be very successful here. In Canada we still clear check by hand. We can clear a check in 3 days, and we think that’s fast enough. If we were to adopt your software, it would put too many people out of work.”
I’ll let you reflect on that for moment in light of the comment that “any business worth it’s salt tries to eliminate as many jobs as it can, often by automation.”
You see, some of the things that are being labeled “Business” are really “Business as it’s commonly practiced in America”. There are other ways to do it, and other values that can be applied besides pure pursuit of profit.
But why do those who can least afford it have the most kids in the first place? Decades ago, when contraception wasn’t available (or very difficult to acquire), I can understand having kids even though you couldn’t afford to fully provide for them - people basically had no choice in the matter (other than not having sex in the first place). But these days, I just don’t get it. You’re basically condemning your children to continue the cycle of poverty - or at least tilt the odds very heavily against them.
No, I apologize to you. I get so tired of snark, nitpicking, and requests for cites that are then ignored that I “flew off the handle” inappropriately. Your post was fine.
It is interesting you hadn’t heard of it. It should be instructive to Americans that – at least in my anecdotal experience – the most thorough and objective news about America comes from RT.com, Al-Jazeera,or good foreign newspapers like The Guardian.
If you have no money, what will you do to entertain yourself? Outside of wandering aimlessly through a close by park, watching the five to eight channels you can get on rabbit ears (and watching the same 20 episodes of Ricky Lake over and over and over, by the by), or having some nookie, there isn’t anything you can do for free.
And the cheap contraception has very easy pitfalls to fall into. Condoms break. Pills can be rendered ineffective by both medication and innate biology.
The more effective forms are expensive when you have no money. $50 for the day after pill. Female tubal procedures are around the $2,000 to $2,500 mark. Male vasectomies are around $900 to $1,200.
Now that you’re pregnant because you went the cheapie way of contraception, what next? The pill-based abortion is $350-450. The actual medical procedure is roughly $1,000. But giving birth? If you want to accrue almost no cost, you can do it at home with a midwife (or one of those “alternate birth technique” videos you can find online). And caring for a baby, while expensive, can be offset very easily by government programs aimed at Women, Infants, and Children.
So: They have no money to entertain themselves in any way, so they make their own. They can’t get birth control that’s always effective, so they get pregnant from their entertainment. It’s far cheaper to deliver the baby and get benefits than it is to terminate the child.
Sounds to me like they are making the best decisions they can from the options available to them.