Brick-and-Mortar Stores Are Shuttering at a Record Pace

[MisterVeritis]

It is not my problem to solve. It is a personal problem. If you want to earn more be worth more. Stop whining. You are boring me.

Tiny_violins.jpg. Well, son, there's a real easy and OBVIOUS answer for that problem: put me on ignore and don't pollute my threads with your antimatter-wisdom.

You have the irritating habit of believing that personal problems are the public's problems. They are not.

So stop whining. Mom.

[Chris]

It's hard to stop progress. Online shopping is replacing brick and mortar stores. That's just a fact. I'm sure blacksmiths felt similar when Henry Ford started flooding the streets with Model A's.

People have to shift as the times shift or they fall behind. We're entering a new phase in retail marketing. I order a LOT online. Because, it's so easy.

I don't know what the answer is, but the job market will have to change to accommodate progress.

A lot of my friends from Colorado are very upset about the cutting back on coal mining. It's their life-blood. It's what's supported their towns for decades. Now, alternative energy sources are increasing and starting to squeeze coal out. They, too, worry.

But, the world keeps turning and we must all learn to be flexible -- or perish.

The problem is manyfold. Primarily it is driven by consumers who want cheaper, easier to obtain, freely shipped products. Secondarily it is a mountain of ever increasing regulations, from taxes to min wages. And then there's automation. Mom and pops, bricks and mortors cannot compete with the bigbox and/or online stores to meet these consumer demands, deal with legalities and fund automation.

But it's a creative-destructive process out of which savings and investment arise new products and jobs to produce them. Always has, always will. Jobs are not lost per se but displaced.

[Newpublius]

I guess all these retail sales clerks can get jobs as warehouse employees at online distribution centers. Oh, wait, they have robots for that. Ok, they can drive all the delivery vans for the online distribution centers. Oh, wait, they will soon have drones and robot trucks for that. Oh, wait, I know! They can survive on their yuge savings accounts while they go back to school and learn programming and computer repair!




That's a lot of computer repair people. All that beautiful money wasted on wages! Some bright lad will have to think up a repair robot to replace them.

This is just the modern form of Luddism. Neo-Luddism is just as wrong today as it was in the 1800s

[Newpublius]

Please tell the forum how an unemployed minimum wage retail clerk is supposed to do that. Colleges cost money. If Republicans have their way and starve public education it will cost even more. Should they: hit up their parents? Rob a bank? Go on welfare?

You people are like the sadist-rapist who holds down the struggling victim and keeps saying "Stop hitting yourself!"

How did agricultural workers adapt as agricultural mechanization replaced what once consumed 50% of the US labor force.....now less than 2%.

As of today, 2017, this is still a world of scarcity and poverty, one with many needs that need to be attended to. Minimizing the use of labor for one purpose, in this case the provision of retail services, frees those resources for other more valued uses.

[OGIS]

How is this a Republican issue? How is this a college issue? I represent 16 different contractors. Not one of them can get enough workers. Not one. Not a single one. The trades need people. They can't find them and when they do they struggle to get them through the drug test. When the do, they get great jobs with good benefits. My brother runs a car dealership. Same problem on his end. They can't get people to work.

Where I sit, it's largely a result of a lack of desire and drive rather than Republicans-hate-everybody. Sure, though, keep up that boogeyman theory. That'll help you in 2018.

So a fresh-faced eager beaver motivated ex-minimum-wage retail sales clerk arrives at your desk asking for a job. You gonna train them, or pay someone to train them, to do construction work? How do they learn the trade? Remember, they were minimum wage and have no savings to live on while they train.

Hey, I was a fresh-faced eager beaver motivated ex-five-to-six figure a year Controller and CFO and I was turned down for all kinds of work because I was overqualified. (And it was suspicious that someone with my resume was applying for the job! At least according to the i-dotting t-crossing box-checking twits in HR.)

[OGIS]

This is just the modern form of Luddism. Neo-Luddism is just as wrong today as it was in the 1800s

Incorrect. This actually sounds like a form of knee-jerk name calling based on the misunderstanding of what that term originally meant, and means today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The machines immeasurably improve our lives. What concerns me is not the machines. I welcome the machines (probably more-so than you do). No, what concerns me is society's/government's non-response to the serious economic dislocations that are about to run us over like a goddamned robot semi-truck

[resister]

Tiny_violins.jpg. Well, son, there's a real easy and OBVIOUS answer for that problem: put me on ignore and don't pollute my threads with your antimatter-wisdom.

Ignore is for sissie, snowflakes.

[DGUtley]

So a fresh-faced eager beaver motivated ex-minimum-wage retail sales clerk arrives at your desk asking for a job. You gonna train them, or pay someone to train them, to do construction work? How do they learn the trade? Remember, they were minimum wage and have no savings to live on while they train.

My job requires a license, but we pay our clerks well,as they train.

I libed in the ghetto and worked two jobs in law school. When there's a will, there's a way.

[resister]

The problem is manyfold. Primarily it is driven by consumers who want cheaper, easier to obtain, freely shipped products. Secondarily it is a mountain of ever increasing regulations, from taxes to min wages. And then there's automation. Mom and pops, bricks and mortors cannot compete with the bigbox and/or online stores to meet these consumer demands, deal with legalities and fund automation.

But it's a creative-destructive process out of which savings and investment arise new products and jobs to produce them. Always has, always will. Jobs are not lost per se but displaced.

Well said, every time one door closes, another one opens!

[MisterVeritis]

So a fresh-faced eager beaver motivated ex-minimum-wage retail sales clerk arrives at your desk asking for a job. You gonna train them, or pay someone to train them, to do construction work? How do they learn the trade? Remember, they were minimum wage and have no savings to live on while they train.

Hey, I was a fresh-faced eager beaver motivated ex-five-to-six figure a year Controller and CFO and I was turned down for all kinds of work because I was overqualified. (And it was suspicious that someone with my resume was applying for the job! At least according to the i-dotting t-crossing box-checking twits in HR.)

This is a personal problem. Begin by pulling your head out of your ass.

If you are overqualified consider putting some of your skills in the hobby category.