Why the Amazon-Whole Foods deal is bad news for #FightFor15

Amazon is disrupting every sector it enters, and the $800 billion grocery store chain is no different. Upon buying Whole Foods, Bloomberg news reported Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos planned to retain Whole Food’s reputation, while slashing their expensive price tag to target a larger market share.

Amazon has said they do not plan to layoff employees at Whole Foods. However, they have released their future grocery store vision, and it’s not good for the #Fightfor15 crowd, cashiers, or competitor grocery stores.

Amazon Go stores are fully automated. Shoppers simply swipe in using an app, pick up their items, and walk out —  technology does the rest. Amazon Go stores will require an average of six human employees, according to the New York Post.

Even if Amazon does not implement Amazon Go technology in Whole Foods, the 431 brick-and-mortar store acquisition merged with Amazon’s various services and their razor-thin profits will force grocery competition to cut costs, and cashiers will be the first to go.

“The checkout lines are always the most inefficient parts of the store experience,” Neil Saunders, managing director of retail research firm Conlumino told Reuters. “Not only would you save a lot on labor costs, you actually would make the process much quicker for consumers and much more satisfying.”

Grocery stores have an average profit margin of 2.3 percent, one of the top 15 least profitable sectors according to Forbes.  As competition heightens, automation outweighs employees. The #fightfor15 started fast food and grocery automation, and intense competition will finish it.

Amazon is obsessed with optimization; their warehouses are mainly run by artificial intelligence, which only need a minute of human labor to ship a package.

Robots and other manufacturing upgrades have already accounted for 88 percent of 7 million factory jobs lost in the U.S. since 1979, according to a study done by Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research.

But this study does not measure the benefits to consumers through increased product quality, lower prices, and a higher living standard.

A study by three Deloitte economists found that in the past 144 years, technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed. Lower costs stimulate higher demand in other sectors, which create more jobs. Just as the smartphone originally decimated jobs, it now supports 1.66 million jobs according to the Progressive Policy Institute and provides countless convenience to people of all incomes.

The Amazon-Whole Foods deal is bad for cashiers, but it is good for consumers and the future job market. While jobs will be lost at first, even more will be be created longterm.

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