Comments

1
Those jobs were never safe. Just ask your local elevator operator when you see them.
2
Yes. Shitty jobs that require no skills and pay poorly are in general going away. Plan accordingly.
3
That's right... Jeff Bezos made money off the success of Amazon! And you know what? You can, too!

Just wander down to your local stock market (hint, it's called your web browser), and buy yourself a share or two or ten of Amazon. It'll probably be worth twice that in a couple years! What a deal!

Investing in your own future isn't rocket science, kids. And no one else is going to do it for you.
4
@1 &@2 ...I read slowly... my Russian bot is rusty. When you live on the edge like many low wage workers do you do not have any money for stocks or schools or medicine.
5
@4 You will never be able to live comfortably in Seattle with zero skills, unless perhaps you are a sex worker or you rob banks. All the ad hominems in the world won't change that. In the future unskilled workers will live in trailers in places like Glendive, Montana.
6
(I can see I have to add more these new sockpuppet trolls to my blocking script.)

Funny thing all these rightwing trolls that love to shit on working class people (like barista's) were a mere five seconds ago (in troll time) pretended laud the working class as "America's backbone."

And most of these "shit jobs" used to be well paying jobs before dumbfuck right-wingers thought it would be great to bust their own unions.

And of course since most of these dipshits spend all day reflexively hitting refresh and commenting on liberal blogs like SLOG it's clear they don't even have jobs.

Well. Gee, trolls. You know what other "shitty" jobs are going to go away? Probably yours. Probably a lot of high paying jobs.

Including about three quarters of most entry to mid-level dev and programming jobs out there.

Because machine learning is going to make most of those sweet tech jobs all you moronic broflakes feel so smug about obsolete. I know. It's how I make MY money.

And I can't wait.
7
Talk to your local elevator operator or blacksmith.
8
If people don't take low paying jobs because they can't afford to live on those wages, conservatives blast them for being too lazy or entitled.

If they take those jobs and then need public assistance or higher wages to live, conservatives tell them it's their own fault for taking a shitty job, they should have gotten skills to get a better paying one.

When people say they can't afford college or trade school to get skills for better jobs, conservatives tell them not to look for handouts, take out a loan.

When they have trouble paying college loans because their wages never increase year after year, conservatives tell them they shouldn't have wasted their time going to college.

Conservatives always have an excuse to keep kicking people they hate instead of looking for ways to help.
9
I hear they're hiring in coal country.
10
@6: My my, how pugnacious of you to deem what's troll and what's not.
11
@6, It's called adapting to the new situations. And let's be perfectly honest: if you are standing behind a coffee machine all day tattoos all over your face and bright orange hair..you're probably not wanting or able to adapt.

12
Too bad that Universal Basic Income fell off everyones radar. Maybe that can be a ballot measure for 2018! I know Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are on board.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.co…
13
I just worry for all the Russian Internet trolls who are going to see their jobs rendered obsolete by Russian Internet bots.
15
There's a 50/50 chance AmazonGo will emulate the success (or rather, the stunning lack thereof) of Amazon's foray into the smartphone market.

Since they plunked this prototype right in the middle of Amazon country, I suspect many of those queuing up were Amazon drones "encouraged" to try out its latest product.

We tend to forget Amazon has come up with some highly touted but dismal failures over the years that have just quietly faded away. This could turn out to be the one and only AmazonGo, serving mostly Amazon employees.
17
Personally, I just can't wait til there's only just ONE Trillionaire and there rest of us are either in the gulag or guarding it. I wanna be a Guard!
18
@16,

You're probably right. But then you're not allowed to bitch when the relentless march of profits driven technological innovation results in the creation of new, larger and ever proliferating homeless camps. Hooray.
23
@6 So I'm a right wing troll bot because I want real jobs for Seattle that will allow people to actually live here, and not cry crocodile tears for how big bad Uncle Jeff is stiffing grocery baggers from their living wage jobs? Got it. You clearly are the champion of the working man!
24
@6 ps- if you think being a barrista was ever 'well paying" then you are clearly a dipshit. I worked retail in the 80s. It was *all* minimum wage unless you were a manager.
25
We are rapidly moving towards a future in which algorithms and robots will replace all human labor.
There is no such thing as a safe career.
It doesn't matter how much education or skill is needed, someday a machine will be able to perform the task.

Those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are already being replaced by automation.
It won't take long for algorithms in automation to climb the socioeconomic ladder all the way to the top.
It's already begun.
Just as an example, only about 10% of all stock trades are performed by human brokers, the rest of are performed by algorithms.

Even corporate CEOs aren't immune.
How long do you think it would be before an artificially intelligent algorithm exists that can run a corporation more efficiently than a human?
26
On one hand, losing those jobs is unfortunate and sad.

On the other, the cash register system we currently have is unsustainable with our population growth (especially in the city). Density advocates want our cities to be as dense as possible, but they never want to admit the inconvenience of long lines and wait times.
27
@19 Hey dumbfuck, they were going to start automating these positions independently of whether someone got a raise to $15.
28
Ga. Charles these posts are lame. You’re mildly correctly that the increase of his shares isn’t presently money, but they are fairly liquid assets. They’re more liquid than your home, which everyone counts as part of their net worth without caveats. Their worth is not equal to the money they will earn in the future, they are what someone is willing to pay for the rights to that expected cash flow discounted. You’re choosing language to suggest that value isn’t “real” because you’re interested in turning people out against the whole concept, but that’s a lie. And you’re doing people a disservice by decreasing how well they understand that system. People are more vulnerable because you’re making them dumber. Yea, the value of his shares is not fixed, but that’s also true of the dollars in your pocket. Feel free to try and convince people there’s a better way to do global finance but please stop lying, or at least fact check yourself.
30
@29 Don't pretend to be data driven. The numbers on minimum wages are in and even if all cashier jobs are gone in 10 years (good riddance I've been self checkout for years), the poor are better off with a higher minimum wage. You just don't have the research or the schooling to make this arg work for you. What you're saying is true from the accounting side, but terms like "more incentive" assume that somewhere between the old and new minimum wage and important brink was crossed. You don't, and will never, have the data to warrant that position.

At the very least, we'll need cashiers to sell alcohol, prescriptions, and weed.

I'm interested in watching people figure out and hack these stores. The credit card chargeback process is going to play a very interesting role. I'd dispute at least 25% of every bill from that store just to figure out what's possible.
31
@29

"Why are we denying people the right to "sell their labor" at a fair market price set between two consenting parties....namely the employer and worker? "

Because only one of those parties, that being the employer, can "consent" most of the time.

The employee, especially in lower paying situations, can't really consent because their options are take the job or become homeless and starve. The only difference between that and holding a gun to someone's head is one delivers death quickly, the other slowly and painfully. It's almost the most basic example of coersion, especially considering that for most industries we have a monopsony or near monopsony situation(meaning there are very few people companies for specific positions).
33
32 So you're arguing that people should either be obliged to work at slave wages that afford them only a cardboard box under I-5 or be replaced by technology.

Of course, the exponentially increasing cost of living in Seattle, deeply gouging into the disposable incomes of many, has nothing at all to do with restaurant closures. Yeah sure, it's those greedy bus boys.

And never mind about businesses losing leases because the land is being sold out from under them to a developer, or businesses closing in order to sell their property to developers at prices that will bring in more money than the business could over the next decade.

Let's not mention that many small business owners are lagging edge Baby Boomers who want to retire and can't find buyers for their businesses so they just shut the doors (I personally know several who've done this).

I truly hope there is a God and you get your well-deserved reward in the next life in whatever Hell your faith describes for your simplistic understanding of the current Seattle economy.

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