I've refrained from posting my thoughts in this thread because I've already earned a reputation of being a old fogey and whenever I read this thread my first thought is, "Back when I was young..."

Nick's post about social contract (which I agree with) makes me want to also throw out, for your consideration, that we Americans have created this situation ourselves through consumerism and the "Walmart mentality."
It used to be that grocery stores
did employ an army of pimply young people who would bag the groceries, walk your cart out to your car, load the groceries, and return the cart to the store's indoor corral. If you told them you wanted to do it yourself, they would still have someone out front watching who would dash over and retrieve the cart. But, if it was a really busy time and all the Clearasil generation were busy, the patrons routinely, and without complaint, returned the carts themselves. Sure maybe there was a few ne'er-do-wells who would leave an occasional cart out in the parking lot, but between courteous shoppers and the lot lizards it was never a problem.
It was only when the "always the low price" stores started popping up that corners had to be cut to stay competitive, which meant employees...low paid employees first. Then, because the shopper wasn't getting treated like royalty, people started leaving more carts around. A few dings in the paint job equal a few complaints to the store but by voting with their dollars the consumer showed that job one was saving a few dollars at the register--the store owner just couldn't afford the full time attendant/baggers. Besides, as has been discussed, it's been impossible for insurance companies to stick store owners with the bill for the paint job. Still, it's not good policy to ignore your customer concerns..so, in an attempt to limit the damage parking lot corrals were invented.
That's where we find ourselves.
Not valuing service and treating service oriented businesses like a commodity to be gathered at the lowest possible price has destroyed a lot of the value we once received.