{"id":25340,"date":"2019-12-22T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T17:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=25340"},"modified":"2019-12-22T23:12:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T04:12:01","slug":"incompetence-of-americans-in-service-jobs-is-a-sign-of-a-vibrant-economy-or-an-uncompetitive-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/22\/incompetence-of-americans-in-service-jobs-is-a-sign-of-a-vibrant-economy-or-an-uncompetitive-workforce\/","title":{"rendered":"Incompetence of Americans in service jobs is a sign of a vibrant economy or an uncompetitive workforce?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Going to Daytona Beach shortly after returning from Shanghai was a bit of a shock. About a third of the people working in retail stores and restaurants were barely capable of doing their jobs, no matter how simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theory 1: this means the U.S. will have trouble competing with the world’s high-education countries (see “China\u2019s Schoolkids Are Now Officially the Smartest in the World”<\/a> (Fortune<\/em>)). Our country is packed with people whose intelligence and education is not sufficient to do the jobs required in an advanced economy, e.g., pour coffee sooner than 30 minutes after a customer is seated in the hotel restaurant for breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theory 2: the U.S. economy is so strong right now that all of the decent workers have been snapped up by high-paying employers, thus leaving people who ordinarily wouldn’t be in the workforce to be picked up by desperate service industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting Theory 2 is that, even in Daytona Beach, there are some spectacularly profitable enterprises. The luxurious new art museum was funded by J. Hyatt Brown<\/a>, who made over $1 billion via insurance commissions from an office in Daytona Beach. His collection of Florida-themed paintings contains at least one item that would be considered problematic today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n