A worrying article from the Daily Mail on August 23 2018 covering huge job losses in the retail sector due to the increase in online shopping;
‘The employment crisis that’s about to hit Australia: How nearly 30,000 retail workers have lost their jobs in just three months ‘because of the rise of online shopping’ – and the worst cuts are yet to come’.
This is of course, the madness from modern extreme capitalism. More and more people out of work and more and more billionaires – we now have seventy-five billionaires in Australia and only 15% are known to be philanthropists. Absolutely outrageous! I’ll be doing a video on this subject very soon.
Please read article here.
Perhaps an idea worth looking into is that of Bill Gates, I think it was, who proposed that we tax the machines, their productivity I guess, to raise funds for a UBI.
I don’t know how great a factor this is, however a reason people shop online is for access to goods unobtainable from stores. I know this because on two occasions I ordered photographic equipment from two Sydney stores and then waited months only to be told the goods were unavailable. With no other recourse I went to Amazon and had them within three weeks at a far-lower price.
Stores are limited with what they can stock. There is only so much shelf space and capital to buy goods for retailing. The advantage online retail has is the range of goods on offer, rapid delivery and lower prices. Is there some way stores can compete with this?
Philanthropy is one thing, I think the case for a UBI is gaining strength as we can’t rely on philanthropy alone. Technology is not to blame, it’s how it’s used & abused. In Japan, technology (robots) is helping them cope with an ageing population without having to have high immigration or birth rate to fill labour shortages.
But the rich should do their bit, some hardly pay much tax as it is! I thought the age of entitlement was supposed to be over (per Joe Hockey), but it seems they meant that for the less well off, not the rich!