I am not a big fan of Trump but most of the media criticism has been absurd...or worse. However, there are plenty of legitimate things to criticize him for. This Amazon idiocy is one example.
While the country was consumed with the Charlottesville debacle last week, President Trump was busy reigniting his PR campaign against an American retail staple: Amazon.
Source: Amazon Destroys Jobs? Really? - Foundation for Economic Education
I think the thought is that its a monster company that gobbles up local businesses. I think Amazon is basically getting most of the blame for people shopping online instead of going to local stores. Is it killing jobs...yes. I would say the jobs lost are greater than the jobs gained. As people buy online directly from the seller the is an increase in shipping jobs but a decrease in sales and marketing jobs.
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I don't think that in the long run that it is necessarily true that Amazon has a net negative impact on jobs. How many people does Amazon employee? They are also planning to hire another 100,000 in the not too distant future. Also, complaining that Amazon kills jobs is a little like complaining that the bulldozer killed jobs or that the automobile killed the carriage industry. The nature of jobs available is certainly changing, has been changing for a while now and will continue to change. Online sales and automation are a big part of this. But Amazon certainly hasn't done anything that warrants threats from the President of the United States.
One thing Amazon has been able to do is to provide products cheaper. This presumably leaves people more money to spend on other things which is good for the economy and can improve quality of life. Their sales success has also enabled them to develop their own products (kindles, Echo, FireTV, etc.) which no doubt put a number of people to work. Higher quality jobs than sales jobs too in my opinion. There are a whole host of intricate economic impacts other than the displacement of purchases. You can certainly look at just one aspect, like the number of people locally selling phone cases, and say that Amazon is a job killer but if you look at the big picture I just don't think that is the case. Either way, you can't penalize a company for developing more efficient processes or products. If Amazon is putting someone out of business then it is only because they are better at what they do. They won't dominate forever...no one ever does.
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I agree with your point of view. It still represents a huge danger to Trumps agenda in protecting 'American' jobs. Amazon delocalizes jobs and creates new ones that can work remotely.These jobs can easily be sent overseas. I don't know how Trump plans to handle it since you cannot put a tarrif on customer service.
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I don't see why you couldn't put a tariff or some equivalent on customer service but tariffs only hurt in the long run.
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Amazon's goal is to replace people with robots. For better or worse, this will mean less jobs. All the tech giants are open about this, hence them all suggesting that Universal Basic Income is the future.
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Just as people with shovels were largely replaced by construction equipment. It's not that jobs go away necessarily, it's just that the nature of the jobs that exist change. Automation has been increasing since at least the Industrial Revolution and robotics is just one of the latest forms. I'm a bit skeptical of a Universal Basic Income. It or something like it may be necessary one day but until robots are good and building, fixing and improving other robots and we get to a point where resources are not scarce (say Star Trek replicator level technology), I don't really see the net amount of jobs decreasing by a huge amount in the near future. Maybe a UBI would be a good thing but they would have to get rid of social security, medicare, welfare, etc. and just have the UBI. It really depends on the implementation I suppose but government hasn't been very good at implementing massive welfare programs so I'm not optimistic.
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