The Core

code for letting companies fire employees on a whim

Funny you should say that. I've been hearing people say a lot lately that they have trouble recruiting. I say, "Well, you're not offering enough money."

Invariably, they say something like "We already offer $2/hr more than our competitors."

To which I say, "What part of 'free market' don't you understand?"

In other words, I find myself encountering more and more people who extol the free market when it means they can fire at will, but are completely baffled at the fact that they are unable to hire labor at the price they want. People say "I simply won't pay $20/hr for a dishwasher. That's unskilled labor" and I say, "Well you better get some rubber gloves and an apron."

That's the thing. Especially post-recession, these managers got used to a hiring market where people were desperate for jobs. Now people are pickier and the hiring managers don't realize that they need more incentive (and education help is a great one, as is health insurance, etc).

The other part of this, is we were in Truckee for the weekend. There is no affordable housing. The *mayor* had to move out of town because his lease was up on his apartment and he could not afford anything within the city limits. Almost every store we saw had a Help Wanted sign. But they are paying $12, maybe $15/hr for retail positions, while you pretty much can't find, say, a one-bedroom apartment for under $2500/month (and even at that cost, it's hard). We were pondering a "sabbatical" there and found some apartments that seemed reasonably priced... until we realized they were quoting by the week.

Meanwhile, people were desperate to find snow shovelers and shovelers were asking $45/hr. People complained, said "Snow shoveling should only cost $15/hr" and that it was ridiculous and they wouldn't pay it to have their 3000sf ski "cabin" shoveled out so when they arrived from San Francisco in their BMW, they could walk straight in. "Fine," said the snow shovelers, "It's a free market. Hire all the people you can at $15/hr."

The quip that's going around ski towns now is that there's a division between the people with two jobs and the people with two houses.

So a minimum living wage in Truckee for someone who didn't manage to buy their home 10 years ago is probably $30/hr. Of course, at that wage, retail prices go way up and everyone buys online and the death spiral begins.

I feel like it is yet another place where we are approaching a tipping point in our society. I suspect the endpoint is that all jobs in Truckee will pay a lot and there will be very few jobs. Clearly, at $30-$40/hr for a retail clerk, stores are going to automate and probably just accept more customer theft because it's cheaper to get the occasional item stolen than to hire at prevailing wages.

I fear that the "solution" to this will take the form of something rather bad.

As a means of psychological preparation, I just read Grapes of Wrath...

Fitch essentially predicts that well-located malls - calculated by their proximity to population density plus the per capita income of that region - will prosper in the future as distribution and pickup centers for e-commerce retailers like Amazon (AMZN)

Or parking lots for Uber drivers...

https://www.thestreet.com/story/14154385/1/malls-of-the-future-may-be-nothing-more-than-giant-parking-lots-for-uber-drivers-and-amazon-workers.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO&yptr=yahoo

Grocery stores are moving into dying suburban shopping malls to save them

 "Food retail is one thing helping struggling malls survive," June Williamson , an architecture professor at the City College of New York and an author of "Retrofitting Suburbia," tells Business Insider.

Kroger, the nation’s largest grocer with nearly 4,000 locations, recently purchased a former Macy’s at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio for $10.5 million, not long after the department store announced it would close the 45-year-old location.  365 by Whole Foods (a smaller, more economical version of the well-known chain) will open at College Mall in Bloomington, Indiana in late 2017, according to Indiana Public Media.

And Wegmans Food Market is moving into a former JC Penney at the Natick Mall in Massachusetts. The shop is set to open in in 2018. The grocer decided to move into the mall because the vacant department store has a large square footage, a loading dock, high ceilings, and ample parking, Wegmans spokesperson Valerie Fox told Business Insider. The mall's location, near a number of housing developments, is also convenient for shoppers.

http://www.businessinsider.com/grocery-stores-malls-2017-7

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Lots on this in my feeds today

Retailers Sound Alarm on Organized Theft as States Warn of Rise - BNN Bloomberg ^{(interesting stats)}
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/retailers-sound-alarm-on-organized-theft-as-states-warn-of-rise-1.1686207

The Rise In Retail Thefts Is Hurting More Than Just Best Buy's Wallet
https://www.ibtimes.com/rise-retail-thefts-hurting-more-just-best-buys-wallet-3343750