The New American

It is a cool, quiet night in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where strangers are kind and beauty is overflowing.

Customer service is not what to used to be. Lucky to be alive and availing himself of the services still rendered, the customer should not complain. As a matter of intellectual curiosity, though, the customer is entitled to ask: Why have services deteriorated? Here are some possibilities:

1. Idle during the lockdown, some workers discovered the taste for leisure that they did not know they had, while others discovered distaste for leisure. Those who have discovered distaste for leisure, naturally, remain eager to work at the old wage. Those who have discovered unanticipated taste for leisure are now reluctant to show up at the old wage. As a result, at the old wage, labour is in short supply. This shortage persists until employers catch up to the new reality and adjust their wages, whereupon it is likely that the services become more expensive and inferior relative to the pre-pandemic times.
2. Employment is less attractive for everyone because of the risk of catching the virus. Unemployment is more attractive for everyone because everyone has had a chance to develop coping mechanisms during the lockdown. Both effects call for higher wages to attract the same number of quality workers as before.
3. Before the pandemic, the economy was stuck at an equilibrium with generous opening hours and impeccable service because every cafe and every hairdresser were working hard to outdo their competitors. “You stay open until 9pm? I shall stay open until 10pm!” With the pandemic shuttering some businesses and dissipating the customers of others, businesses have restricted their hours and services. Now that the economy has reopened, it nevertheless remains nine-to-five — the European way. It will take time for businesses to rediscover the American way — the pre-pandemic equilibrium — by iteratively improving on each other’s opening hours, price, and quality in competition for customers.
4. Maybe the pre-pandemic equilibrium is no longer equilibrium. Thanks to high demand for their services, workers have discovered their “class consciousness” (as a Marxist might put it) and have managed to organise, to unionise. Maybe, the new American way is the old European way.

Thank you kindly.