Walmart Raises... u thought it would go this way, but it went that way
- Thread starter TLR Is Mental Poison
- Start date
Type Username Here
Not a new member
They won't have a choice soon enough. The machines will make nearly everyone in this thread obsolete in terms of labor. Good luck on having consumerism without consumers.
This is the refrain everytime some game changing tech comes out, and yet since we have moved away from an agricultural society it has never born fruit. All this new wave of tech will do is enable us to do the same things more efficiently, and open things up more... the same way every other big tech has done in the past. Key though will be to facilitate a smooth and fast transition for everybody. A McDonalds worker having their job replaced by a machine is a good thing- IF he/she is transitioned into something else that pays better and is more fulfilling, which tech and its resultant higher productivity have done every damn time. Yall are being alarmist w/o reason, history does not jive with your fears. Maybe we should go back to all being farmers.
Type Username Here
Not a new member
The problem is the IF, isn't it?
As more fields become replaced with machine labor, the result is that the transition opportunities you speak of become limited. This will occur on an exponential level, not linear.
BlaKcMoney
Hijo Del Ray
you can stay on the plantation and beg the slave master not to pay you like a slave or you can take control of your own life and community by starting your own businesses that will provide jobs and finances for those getting taken advantage of by corporate america.
Machines just change the mechanisms and productivity of the roles. Yes, for a fixed amount of work, machines = less opportunity. But the amount of work available to do is hardly fixed, especially in the service realm. People need to get over this fear of the unknown
Type Username Here
Not a new member
I don't think you understand the argument presented.
I'm all for machines doing the work. This would leave time for human beings to focus on an array of things pertinent to our species and place in the universe. Automation is a good thing if its goal is to end human suffering and needless labor.
The problem is when automation leads to global human suffering.
There is a clear line at this point: the choice between automation as I described it, or consumerism as is practiced to day. One will have to give, and the pessimist in me believes it will be the former.
Wat human suffering are u talking about. More humans have emerged out of poverty and suffering over the last ~50 years than ever before, thanks largely in part to automation/machines/computers etc. I mean u can see it everywhere. In Ghana someone just partnered with drug companies and made an app to help combat counterfeit medicine. Is that taking money out of the hands of doctors and pharmacists who could do the verifying of the drugs and treatment of illness and death from fake drugs? Sure but I would rather they spend time treating other things and have less people be sick. Across the world but most notably in Syria online schools are booming and gaining legitimacy. Again, are colleges and then people who work for them making less money by putting courses online than they would if they taught everyone in person only? Sure, but they net more in total, more people have access to college grade education, society in general wins.
So like I said its easy to take this short sighted paycheck to paycheck view of technology..... largely because of the problem I am speaking of.... people don't have the means to transition out of menial minimum wage easily automatable work into good paying careers. But the benefits of automation and technology on employment, fighting poverty, etc etc are pretty obvious to anyone actually looking
Business owners should earn profits , but why are they making it sound like Walmart will file bankruptcy just because they need to pay their workers a decent wage?
The wages Walmart pays are decent for what its workers do. The wages aren't the problem. The fact that those workers have no choice but to work at Walmart is the problem.
And yea, a disruption in Walmart's profits will definitely affect its business model. Walton family owns half, the rest are run of the mill shareholders like institutions and shyt. Not fat cat Wall St dudes. Not to mention the Waltons are giving stock away. Despite all the hulabaloo Walmart is not that profitable. They generate huge revenue but only make about 3-4% profit on it. Basically it's like if you have a business that makes 1 million a year and you had to spend 980,000 to get that revenue. Your income/paycheck is $20K. Its even worse for their stock. If u buy a Walmart stock now history says u will get back about 2-3% a year. In other words it would take u about 30-50 years or so to get your money back. Further erosion of that profit would just prompt people to pull out of the stock completely, washing out Walmart's equity and its huge cash base on which it can leverage and invest in the business with. What would all that mean? Walmart would be in a more precarious business position, which would mean all the people working for Walmart would be too.
This is why I get a little frustrated in threads like this. There is a gross ignorance or misunderstanding of how business works.
I've got 4 friends who have their bachelors degrees and are uber drivers atm.
Brown_Pride
All Star
Well minimum wage in 2005 was 5.15 so if you started out at minimum in 2005 and had a pay increase of 8.75% each year (which is good) you'd be at $12.
Wat are their degrees in
Bilz
Superstar
I think it is more about tempering public opinion than anything else. Walmart doesn't fear a minimum wage hike. The day the minimum wage goes up, they'll have price increases in place that cover it. The reason big businesses and the conservative candidates aren't outraged by this is because they can easily find a way to profit off of all of this.
1. They will be justified in immediately raising prices and the competitors will all be doing it too, so they'll still easily maintain the margins they have always had.
2. While the impact on pricing will be immediate, the salaries of non minimum wage earners will grow at a much slower rate. The resulting inflation will actually mean they are paying less to the mid level earners. In scale, the mid level earners will move closer to the bottom and the separation of wealth becomes larger than ever.