The new reality…

A number of political economists and business authorities are predicting that a 9%-10% unemployment rate has become the norm and will remain so for at least the next generation. And what has caused this? The banks? The politicians? The President (or the preceding presidents?)

Perhaps it is none of the above… perhaps it is the mix of our inventiveness, technology and and our growing productivity.

Think about this: we make more and more automobiles, with more advanced engines and technical attributes, but we use less and less employees to manufacture them. Through the use of advanced robotics we have taken what used to be thousands of workers on the assembly lines and replaced them with hundreds. That means 90% of previous employees are no longer necessary due to our technical advances… and more of these are coming. What if the hundred worker line becomes the ten worker line? It’s not only possible, it’s likely.

I heard someone on television ask “When was the last time you dealt directly with a bank teller?” The answer, of course, is that with debit cards and ATM machines, we handle our own deposit activities, get our own cash, check our balances, etc. Do we wonder, then, why the number of bank employees have fallen off?

The people in retail stores who used to mark items with price tags have been replaced by preprinted bar codes which are scanned at checkout counters to connect with computer listed prices. And now, in grocery stores for instance, there is a marked increase in checkout lines where you do the bar code scanning yourself, replacing  the cash register employee. In my supermarket, eight checkout lines are now customer scanned and are observed and approved by one employee at the end of the aisle, thus eliminating seven cash register employees. As the self-checkout system grows, fewer and fewer cash register lines are even lit up and open… this almost forces many people into the self-checkout so they don’t wait in a long line.

The one set of industries that would employ larger numbers of people… construction, both on housing and in repairing our highways, bridges and infrastructure… is being ignored by Congress in an obvious and serious political confrontation with the President. By voting down the Jobs act (or not letting it come into being) there is no support for this help to Americans and their country.

Then there are teachers, firemen and police officers, all who have faced extreme layoffs due to budget cuts after tax income has been reduced due to increased unemployment. There are smaller towns that have eliminated their police departments altogether, if you can believe that. Schoolrooms now have larger and less teachable classes in order to cope with less teachers… and the academic achievements of our children have diminished accordingly. We are becoming both poorer and less educated at the same time.

If there is a solution to all of this… if there is a response other than absolute anger, as the Occupy movements are showing… I don’t know what it is.

This is a new America which we must find a way of dealing with. I’m not sure we will in the near future.

Related articles

• Supermarket Self-Checkouts Being Replaced With People (outsidethebeltway.com)
• If This is the Future of Shopping, Heaven Help Us! (customerthink.com)
• Paypal the future of shopping…retail, QR codes, barcode, scan and more (c24.co.uk)