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California's $15-an-Hour Minimum Wage May Spur Automation (computerworld.com)
An anonymous readers links to an article on ComputerWorld: For many California business groups, the state's decision to gradually raise its minimum wage to $15 by 2022 is a terrible thing. But for its technology industry, it may be a plus. Higher wages, says the California Restaurant Association, will force businesses to face "undesirable" options, including cutting staff, raising prices and adopting automation. But a higher minimum wage will "signal to tech companies and entrepreneurs" to look at the restaurant industry, said Darren Tristano, president of Technomic, a research group focused on the restaurant industry. The state's governor and legislators reached an agreement Monday to raise the wages. "I think there are a lot of tech companies that are looking at the restaurant industry to accelerate their growth," said Tristano. The restaurant industry is primed for change, said Tristano, "Many of the routines that take place in restaurants are not very different from 30 to 40 years ago," he said.
The goal of any advanced civilization should be 100% unemployment and automation.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I don't know about anyone else, but if I go to a real sit-down restaurant, I want an actual human server, not a robot or some other form of 'automation', and I sure as heck don't want a robot or some automation preparing my food, either. If that was my only other choice then I'd just as soon stay home and cook my own food.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Talks cheap, till you have pay for it. If the machines existed today, they'd be purchased; regardless of the minimum wage. Those machines that do exist are being purchased, today. And it's OK for Papa Johns to get his panties in a twist.
If you want human service staff, be prepared to pay the premium for that. Some people, like you, will desire it and to get that kind of personal, custom service, won't be as cheap as what you can get from a machine.
If people who normally live paycheck to paycheck now have some disposable income, maybe they will spend some of it at restaurants. Maybe they will even spend enough to more than make up for the increase in employee wages.
But then again, it may not...
Here in Ontario, Canada, we raised the minimum wage from $10.25 to $11.00, and unemployment went down in the following months and year, from around 7.5 %to 6.75% (source). While that doesn't prove that minimum wage increases never result in unemployment rises, it does disprove that they always result in unemployment rises.
Minimum wage increases killing jobs is a ridiculous notion - prices can always raise as well, and besides, the naysayers repeat this line almost Every. Single. Time. - even for overdue inflation-indexed increases, which generally casts doubt on their positions. In reality, it's a lot more complicated than that.
I will never understand why minimum wage is not tied to inflation rates - this is a ridiculous argument to have Every Five Years.
http://www.thenation.com/artic...
http://www.thestar.com/busines...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda...
"Government is like fire; a handy servant, but a dangerous master." -- George Washington
To be fair, a wage hike of $0.75 (Canadian) is not really comparable to a $5.00 (US dollars) wage hike.
One constitutes less than an 8% raise, while the other is a 50% raise.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I've never understood the argument that minimum wage increases increase unemployment. People on minimum/low wages spend all of their money, and usually locally. People who can save money invest it where they get the best return, which is likely not locally. Increasing the minimum wage is the best thing you can do for an economy, as long as it isn't taken to ridiculous lengths where wages exceed production.
Minimum wage increases killing jobs is a ridiculous notion - prices can always raise as well
Not true. You can't just arbitrarily raise prices when there are substitute goods available. Fast food is labor intensive. If the price goes up, more people will cook at home or purchase low-labor pre-packaged food at grocery stores (using the self-checkout line).
California already has a much higher minimum wage than the rest of the nation. If you go in a McDonalds in California, you don't see teenagers working there. You see adults, since the pay is enough to attract them. Adults are more productive than teenagers, so you need fewer of them. So California has removed an important rung on the economic ladder, by turning entry level jobs into permanent no-skill "careers" flipping burgers. This effect is worst in minority neighborhoods which already have extremely high teenage unemployment.
Why don't you hire them at $17 / hour so they can have an even better living? You've probably been around for a while and should have put away some money for something like this.
Most businesses aren't operating at the kind of obscene profit margins that would allow them to do that kind of thing. If they were, someone else would have opened shop and started undercutting prices to take the business. Not everyone who owns a business is some kind of millionaire that could give their employees more money, but chooses not to because they are so miserly.
Never mind that it's a comic shop, which now has to contend with online merchants, digital distribution, etc. The local shop here is probably only open because the owner is big into Warhammer and has a lot of people come in when he has tournaments who buy more miniatures from the store.
And if your employer lays you off, sends your job overseas, automates your job, or closes their doors, how much are you spending locally?
Why stop at 15? why not 30? or 300?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Here's the actual sitiuation.
On the one hand, cost of employing people in jobs that can be automated is rising. Picture this as a graphed ramp up on a plot.
On the other hand, cost of ever-higher quality automation is dropping rapidly. Picture this as a graphed ramp down on the same plot.
When those two lines cross each other, businesses will automate as soon as possible. Not may; will. Any of them that might be inclined not to, for whatever reason, will be out-competed in very short order and subsequently fail.
This can't be fixed by raising the minimum wage; it can only be accelerated, because it doesn't change the rate of the dropping automation line, but it only steepens the rate of the rising employment costs line.
So the solution cannot lie in "just raise minimum wages" approach. There has to be some way to either add costs to automation (most typically taxation is the cost suggested... which businesses generally arrange to be taken from the income of the remaining workers) or change the entire economic model to something along the lines of Basic Income. Something along the lines of that is inevitable due to inevitable technological change, but there's a lot of pain and screaming that will be done between where we are and that point. The former is right where we are already:
Walmart, for instance, is one example of severely low wage workers that are subsidized by the social safety net, which in turn is paid for by the middle class. This is what enables Walmart to keep prices low; they only pay part of the worker's survival needs. Same thing for waitresses, burger flippers and so on. Your hamburger isn't cheap if you're middle class; it's just that you pay for part of it at McDonald's, and then you pay for the rest when you pay your taxes. Very handy for McDonalds. They get to maintain the illusion that they sell cheap(er) food. Most taxpayers fail to make the connection, and continue to support McDonalds' business model by buying those burgers.
The question is how long that will be sustainable in the face of a mandated wage increase -- will people still buy a burger if, instead of $1.00 at the window and $x at tax time, it's $1.++ at the window? And what, do you imagine, will McDonald's do about it if they see this as less likely?
Pretty obviously, they will automate. People will lose their jobs. But now instead of paying for part of the burger flipper's wages at tax time, the ex-flippers are unemployed, so the social safety net must cover their entire cost of living using the income of those who remain employed. Business will continue to see to it via legislative control that they are not the ones who do the paying.
Isn't it clear that severe pain is on the way no matter what under the current economic model? I can't see a way out of it. At all.
This is why I support a change to a formal basic income. Looking at the stats and polls, though, I don't think it's likely in the near term.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Dunno why you were modded as "Troll", because your post makes perfect sense, especially when asking at what point do we set this wage? What calculus is being used to set it?
"Living Wage" is not only vague, but it becomes a moving goalpost... so that can't be it. Setting it against a cost-of-living index might work, but that becomes a moving goalpost as well (and barring massive deflation, it always moves upwards).
So at what objective point does one set this wage without creating a self-feeding loop that pushes it upwards?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?