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Walmart isn't known for being a great place to work. If people can live at minimum without having to work, Walmart can kiss its artificially cheap workforce goo

Walmart isn't known for being a great place to work. If people can live at minimum without having to work, Walmart can kiss its artificially cheap workforce goodbye.

jeremyt 11y ago
Known by whom? Several members of my family work at Walmart, and they really don't have anything bad to say about it.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
Yeah why work at a crappy McJob when you could instead do what you find interesting, making weird pottery and selling it on Etsy while relying on the minimum income to cover your rent and food? I think a significant result of these sort of minimum income ideas would be an explosion in the amount of people that opt for risky entrepreneurial ventures (eg. a startup) instead of working bad jobs for the basic necessities. I think many people would rather make art or pursue other risky, generally low income, creative careers than do low skill, uninteresting work. A result could be that companies offering low skill, minimum wage jobs could have to raise wages or improve their jobs in other ways in order to attract workers.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Most likely those jobs will be aggressively automated, with more investment that would be previously to make up for the higher cost of labor. Just as Uber openly wants to eventually get rid of their drivers, I don't see why fast food chains wouldn't want to have a fully automated drive through restaurant in 100 years. Either that or they will have to differentiate to produce more value by having a friendlier and higher quality staff, like one might see at Chick-fil-A
  - beat 11y ago
    People don't think nearly aggressively enough about what "automated" means. In the 18th century, farmers were 90% of the labor force. By the end of the 19th, they were less than 40%. Now, they're around 2%. Automation is not a new thing. Imagine if the people who built the pyramids had trucks.
    - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
      I agree, but I am skeptical of the information age's ability to guarantee employment for a large proportion of the population relative to agriculture (when everyone had to work for there to be enough food) and industrialization (where industry required a large human labor force). There was a commenter on HN who said once: "When cars replaced carriages, did the horses get new jobs?"

Walmart isn't known for being a great place to work. If people can live at minimum without having to work, Walmart can kiss its artificially cheap workforce goodbye.

jeremyt 11y ago

Known by whom? Several members of my family work at Walmart, and they really don't have anything bad to say about it.

Tiktaalik 11y ago

Yeah why work at a crappy McJob when you could instead do what you find interesting, making weird pottery and selling it on Etsy while relying on the minimum income to cover your rent and food? I think a significant result of these sort of minimum income ideas would be an explosion in the amount of people that opt for risky entrepreneurial ventures (eg. a startup) instead of working bad jobs for the basic necessities. I think many people would rather make art or pursue other risky, generally low income, creative careers than do low skill, uninteresting work. A result could be that companies offering low skill, minimum wage jobs could have to raise wages or improve their jobs in other ways in order to attract workers.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Most likely those jobs will be aggressively automated, with more investment that would be previously to make up for the higher cost of labor. Just as Uber openly wants to eventually get rid of their drivers, I don't see why fast food chains wouldn't want to have a fully automated drive through restaurant in 100 years. Either that or they will have to differentiate to produce more value by having a friendlier and higher quality staff, like one might see at Chick-fil-A
- beat 11y ago
  People don't think nearly aggressively enough about what "automated" means. In the 18th century, farmers were 90% of the labor force. By the end of the 19th, they were less than 40%. Now, they're around 2%. Automation is not a new thing. Imagine if the people who built the pyramids had trucks.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    I agree, but I am skeptical of the information age's ability to guarantee employment for a large proportion of the population relative to agriculture (when everyone had to work for there to be enough food) and industrialization (where industry required a large human labor force). There was a commenter on HN who said once: "When cars replaced carriages, did the horses get new jobs?"