How do we pay people for these tasks we claim we value? The free labor market is failing completely at the task of providing well paid jobs for anything short of highly skilled workers, e.g., RNs and college graduate teachers.

Remember 67% of Americans over 25 do not have a 4-year bachelors degree. Amazon is great for college grad programmers, OK for some transportation workers until they are automated away, and really bad for low skill workers in, e.g., retail.

I love Amazon one day delivery. However, it is directly related to why my local auto parts store just closed, putting the two semi-skilled guys, who worked there making $15-$20/hour, out of a job.

You make the classic businessman’s mistake: you look at the wonderful things that are happening at the microeconomic level of one business, with quality service, new products, and jobs, and fail to see the implication at the macroeconomic level, where Amazon is decimating the largest employment sector in the economy for low skill workers, retail.

Amazon is going to wipe out retail jobs, and that is a good thing.

Figuring out a mechanism to distribute our national production to all Americans is the hard part we haven’t solved.

For the last 35 years, our lightly regulated free labor market has been failing to provide high paying jobs to high school grads.

Nothing Amazon is doing makes this better. We need a solution.