dagblog - Comments for "Scary new world continued: Retail, and the jobs in it: dying"

The Image of American

artappraiser — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:52:14 +0000

In reply to Scary new world continued: Retail, and the jobs in it: dying

By Vinson Cunningham @ The New Yorker, June 25

Amid the seeming death throes of retail,
Kmart has a message for Americans.
Photograph by Shana Novak /
The Licensing Project

[....] Kmart adopted this slogan just last March, after several years of market share lost to Walmart, in order to attract a rising generation of millennial shoppers. The hope was to convince them (or, I guess, remind them) that consumption, retail-style, could, in the corporation’s words, be “fun,” even “awesome.” 2016 was the hundredth anniversary of Kmart’s incorporation; the hint of self-consciously campy nostalgia in its new “look and feel” seems connected to the steady decay of the shopping experience that once helped to define, and to bolster, a wide swath of working- and lower-middle-class life in America. In the years since 2004, when Kmart bought Sears, another venerable but declining department-store brand, for eleven billion dollars, retail jobs have continued to vanish, and department stores in particular are languishing, perhaps unto death. A Times editorial lamenting this development was accompanied by an illustration that serves as a kind of foil to Novak’s photo: a tattered shopping bag, emblazoned with a sad-looking Old Glory. Kmart’s retro rebrand, then, offered a kind of time travel: the race through the aisles, the register’s ring, the unfurling of a long, coupon-laden receipt—these were all happy distractions from economic insecurity and a polarized Presidential election that could be explained, in part, by the dynamics that had brought the chain, however smilingly, to its knees.

The irony in the photo—this over-the-top, somewhat desperate slogan, plastered, for all its bombast, on a wispy plastic bag—seems built in, first by Kmart itself, and again by Novak’s straightforwardly beautiful, self-consciously patriotic framing. The photograph is not an advertisement, Novak explained over e-mail; she’s just fascinated by the words people put on plastic bags. It’s not quite satire, though. It reflects perfectly the American predisposition toward hyperbole under duress. (Emerson, during the run-up to Civil War, might’ve written something commensurately hysterical.) It matches, too, the broader marketing trend—derived from an initially subversive, currently stale genre of Internet writing—of addressing younger consumers, and younger voters, with infantilizing language that verges, often, on contempt. The word “ridiculous” is the tell, and, in many more ways than one, the truth [....]

good pix at this April

artappraiser — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:44:12 +0000

In reply to Scary new world continued: Retail, and the jobs in it: dying

good pix at this April NYTimes piece I missed:

From ‘Zombie Malls’ to Bonobos: What America’s Retail Transformation Looks Like

Physical temples to commerce remain, but today the online experience is rapidly changing our relationship with shopping.

By JOHN TAGGART and KEVIN GRANVILLE APRIL 15, 2017

There is a famous scene in

artappraiser — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 20:43:30 +0000

In reply to Scary new world continued: Retail, and the jobs in it: dying

There is a famous scene in the movie The Graduate, where the protagonist is advised on the future: one word: plastics.

Nowadays everyone in business is predicting: boomers are aging, millenials don't want so much stuff.

But it appears there's a big problem with something related:

Jobs Men Don’t Want

June 24, 2017 - By SUSAN CHIRA - Opinion @ NYTimes.com

Online Headline: "Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree"

It seems like an easy fix. Traditionally male factory work is drying up. The fastest-growing jobs in the American economy are those that are often held by women. Why not get men to do them? The problem is that notions of masculinity die hard, in women as well as men. It’s not just that men consider some of the jobs that will be most in demand — in health care, education and administration — to be unmanly or demeaning, or worry that they require emotional skills they don’t have. So do some of their wives, prospective employers and women in these same professions [....]

The article does go into the poor pay of traditional pink collar jobs without the college degree required by things like nursing. Despite the damn GOP Congress' plans, though, I don't see how that can last forever as regards caretaking in old age. The sheer numbers of boomers makes it a given that there will be many with adequate funds willing to pay a pretty penny for quality service.

Getting someone to buy of the boomers stuff as they die is another matter. Millenials shouldn't count on mom and dad's estate to be worth what they think it is...many may never leave mom and dad's house? Freelance work from mom and dad's house while caretaking for mom and dad and having your own kids? The new extended family? I think this is already happening. If you are a millenial that is not into moving out of your hometown, that appears to be where things are going (with the incontinence supplies delivered by Amazon, of course.)

Earlier related news posts:

artappraiser — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 19:44:36 +0000

In reply to Scary new world continued: Retail, and the jobs in it: dying

Earlier related news posts:

Actually kinda scary, clearly major culture change upon us:

The troubles at the American mall are coming to a boil

By Sarah Halzack @ Washington Post, April 5

i.e., What will happen to all those malls? where will the kids hang or will they take them over like a scene from A Clockwork Orange? Retailing jobs? Pfffff!! Now an Amazon warehouse guy or gal. What fun buying an air conditioner or washing machine without being able to see it...comes with the cord on the wrong side or whatever....and taking the jeans back to UPS a hundred times before they fit...ordered your eyeglasses online and you can't see out of them? sorry! Etc
by artappraiser on Thu, 04/06/2017 - 9:26pm

'People aren't spending': stores close doors in 'oversaturated' US retail market

By artappraiser on Sun, 03/26/2017 - 9:15pm |

By Edward Helmore in NY for The Guardian.com, March 26

Boarded-up shops are a common sight in cities across the country as Macy’s, Sears and JCPenney struggle and Credit Suisse downgrades the retail sector