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Former McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour (foxbusiness.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on Fox Business: As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture. "I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour (warning: autoplaying video) bagging French fries -- it's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe," said former McDonald's USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX Business Network's Mornings with Maria. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.3 million people earned the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour with about 1.7 million having wages below the federal minimum in 2014. These three million workers combined made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.
I, for one, welcome our new French-fry bagging robot overlords
The machine does one task and a person does many.
For instance, a $35,000 machine that makes the fries, will only make sense if the station requires a full time person to make them. This isn't the case for all but the most busy locations. (and I suspect, even less so for non-mcdonalds establishments)
And in six months buying a $25,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $12/hr...
And in a year buying a $15,000 robot will be cheaper than paying an employee $9/hr...
They're going to replace employees with robots anyhow, I don't buy that increasing the minimum wage to whatever has anything to do with it.
Guess what? Those $35K robots are also cheaper than paying people $8/hr.
Human beings are incredibly expensive. They're also the economic engine that turns a single business into part of a functional economy, but I digress.
There are very, very few positions that could be automated in a way that makes sense financially at $15/hr that wouldn't also make sense at $5/hr. Either a position is automatable, or it is not, and at 4000-5000 hours per year (plus benefits, etc) that's a lot of money for a single position that could be thrown at a robot if that's the way you wanted to play it. Basically, automating that position will either be super-cheap or super-expensive.
Automation is a very important discussion point. Its disingenuous to tie it to the current debate over moving the minimum wage back up to a living wage.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Whoever does it first is going to cause a PR nightmare, but once that settles down - all of the competitors will be soon to follow the new norm.
My question is, where are the robots from? If they are being made in the US, the losses from fry-baggers could be largely made up by the increase in robot arm company employees/repairpeople. And if the robots can be exported, the economy overall could benefit.
Definitely not the newly unemployed.
Liberal answer: The benefits are localized, the pain spread throughout. In other words, its a tragedy of the commons. Typically, you need government intervention to prevent those.
Conservative answer: They'll get one of the many other jobs waiting to absorb the unskilled labor. Also, fucking government caused this problem by not allowing wages to settle at $5/hour
Your ad here. Ask me how!
People who design, program and maintain the robots.
The robot will be there for the long haul. Sure there will be some maintenance but it'll still be making fries 5 years from now, and efficiently doing so for all of that. Automation is coming and it has little to nothing to do with wages.
It frees them up to do more productive and valuable work.
Someone's got to build and program those robots.
It should have happened a long time ago. It would have except wages have been kept artificially low.
Minimum wage is a convenient scapegoat, but all businesses move to reduce overhead.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And when you pay below that cost, you're effectively asking for a handout, for the employee and their friends or family (or, in some cases, the government) to subsidize your business.
If you can get a robot to do the job, good for you. People will earn good wages designing and building those robots, and maintaining them, and programming them, and so on.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's cheaper to buy a $35,000 machine than to pay humans their current $7.25 per hour. The machines will pay for themselves in a little over two years at the current minimum wage (after factoring in SSI/SSD/Medicare), versus one year at $15 per hour. Either way, they would save money long before the machines' expected lifespan.
It will always eventually become cheaper to automate menial work than to pay humans to do it. In a hundred years, nobody will be complaining about the lack of fast food jobs, just like nobody is complaining now about the lack of cotton picking jobs. The real problem is finding ways to pay for universal college education so that all the people who are no longer able to work their way through college can still afford to get the education that they'll require to get them to a point where they can contribute usefully to society in a post-menial-labor job market.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The people that make the robots and repair them.
You know you do know that farms used to pay for crews of thrashers way back when.
If you can do a job in a cheaper way it only makes sense to do it that way. The idea is that frees humans to do work that is more rewarding.
AKA if the best you can do is make frys then you were in deep trouble to start with.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This scaremongering makes zero sense, there are plenty of countries with higher income than USA and they don't starve from unemployment, rather the opposite.
Few positions that can be replaced by robots will be replaced anyway, as robots are getting cheaper and it makes business sense. Somebody capable of working in robotics will get employment and move up the latter leaving low qualification position for others. There are plenty of low qualification positions that can't be replaced.
If that was the case they wouldn't be doing it, because that would be rolled into the price of the robot.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
McDonald's already has touchscreen systems where customers can touch pictures of food and run their own card to order, I suspect these will be quickly rolled out in any jurisdiction that raises the minimum wage to $15/hour. Using pictures also gets around language problems. Fully automated, you would still need someone to load the raw materials into stacks and watch the customers, but far fewer employees would be necessary. Using a touchscreen in the drive-through would be an improvement over talking over the intercom, but multiple stations would probably be necessary since people are slow.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Also on the front page is how Foxconn is replacing manufacturing with robots. I can guarantee they're not paying $15USD/hr to employees. The talk about minimum wage is just to cut costs until the robots can replace the guys making $8/USD/Hr.
There's a fundamental conflict in capitalism. As an owner, you want to cut costs, including wages. But wages are also known as "purchasing power". We've gotten past this by growth. Capitalism requires growth. But we're cutting so fast, im not sure we're growing fast enough to cover all the lost purchasing power. We'll see
The whole push for a $15 minimum wage will been seen as a "Hold ma beer" moment for the minimum wage activists.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I've said this before on Slashdot, but I'll mention it again. This is not for everyone, especially for those who hate the outdoors or manual labor.
A little over a year ago, I damaged an arm and a hand and was unable to maintain my own lawn for a couple of months. I hired a local Mexican (I live in Texas) guy and his two workers to maintain my lawn, once a week, for two months. HOA requires mowing and cleanliness.
I spoke with the guy about what he charges and this is what I took away:
- He cuts about 10 lawns a day, Monday- Friday @ between $50-75 per lawn. He splits the costs three ways and pays for the gas/oil/weed eater cable his guys use. A nice guy all around.
Math:
At $50, that's 500 a day, that's 2500 a week, 10,000 a month. That works out to about 3333 per man. Not too shabby. No nights, no weekends.
At $75, that's 750 a day, that's 3750 a week, 15000 a month. That works out to about 5000 per man. Again, not too shabby. Again, no nights, no weekends.
In other words, for a small outlay, a man and a friend or two could really make some decent coin. Yes, it's actual work, but work that always requires doing.
You could probably do this with house cleaning, too.
And yet, fast food workers are earning $15/hr or more in most other first world countries across the globe for a decade and their economies haven't imploded...
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
You see, humans that have reasonable motivation are quite adaptable and can develop new skills
I GOT SIX KIDS AINT NO TIME FO SKILL DEV
Several decades later, they (the automotive industry) figured out how to replace the (now expensive) laborers with robots.
McDonald's et. al. have been pumping out cheap food by hiring a bunch of unskilled labor and giving them the minimal training to be one part of the assembly line. No more need for cooks to cook food.
Several decades later, they (the fast food industry) figured out how to replace the (rapidly becoming expensive) laborers with robots.
Anybody sensing a theme?
Sure, McDonalds might be able to afford purchasing the robots, but currently, 81% of their stores are franchised, not owned by McDonalds. I seriously doubt all of those stores can afford to purchase a $35k robot to replace every employee.
This is pure FUD. Just a corporate shill trying to scare people away from raising the minimum wage.
Even at $15/hour, it's not a livable wage in most places. You can't survive on it when your pre-tax, gross income is less than the average one bedroom apartment costs per month, as is the case in Los Angeles. So what happens is that people making minimum wage doing scut work jobs are subsidized by family, friends, or, far more often than not, the taxpayer. They can't afford a car, so they go to work on subsidized public transportation. They can't afford medical insurance, so they get subsidized by the taxpayer, or go to the emergency room they can't afford to pay for. They can't afford child care, so they sign up for subsidized versions of that, or their children grow up feral, and the taxpayer pays for keeping them in prison.
All that so we can buy a cheap, mass produced hamburger for 99 cents.
The problem isn't paying employees $15/hour, the problem is paying McDonald's a quarter of the true cost of making a Big Mac, so that the corporate investors can get richer.
All big, national chains are heavily (if covertly) subsidized by the taxpayer. Sam Walton became a billionarire on those subsidies, while his employees were living on food stamps.
If you can't afford to pay your employees enough to live on without subsidies, then your business model is broken, and you should be driven out of business by pitchfork wielding mobs.
Oh good, One Night at Freddy's, now with 15,000 new locations!
/. today?
Given the pace of technological change, if it's economical at $35K/year now, it will be economical at any rate in very few years.
Those support jobs might to be better paid, but fewer.
And not everybody has the aptitude to be trained for that job.
Also, isn't this like the 4th "ROBOTZ are coming to TAKE YER JERBS!" story on
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Except that it's not a straight-up comparison between the employee and the machine. When the machine doesn't make fries, it's idle. When the employee doesn't make fries, they're cleaning, etc.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Sure seems like it would cost a lot more than $35k.
True, but that means the employee(s) would make way, way less than $15/hr. at their new job - stamping out license plates in prison.
Pretty sure that's not what most folks would want to end up doing...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The first time I find a dead bug or small animal (or parts thereof) or some crud from some robotic arm in my french fries, I'll sue the living fuck out of them. Of course it's totally irrelevant since I don't eat anything from McDonalds anyway (I like to eat actual food, not pseudo-food), but if they start replacing all their staff with robots, then they're ensuring that I'd never go there for anything, ever. Same goes for a real, actual restaurant: I want a human chef creating my meal, and I want human waitstaff to deal with. If I have to sit there and order off a screen, imagine some robotic arm making my steak, and watch some robotic cart deliver the dish to the table, then it's a non-starter, I'd sooner stay home and make my own steak. At least that way it won't end up tasting like gear oil.
Of course I think we'd all be better off if the fast-food industry died anyway; it's all pseudo-food; none of us should ever eat that crap. Stay home and cook your own food. Much healthier, and far less expensive.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Even the workers getting fired would employ robots for things in their personal lives for the things they find dull, dirty, dangerous.
The real question is: are we in a world where the supply of people/population is excessive for the amount of human-required labor demanded? If that is the case, then we're in for a period of shrinkage and serious conflict among the classes...
Is it just me, or has the quality of worker at fast food places really hit rock bottom in the last couple of years?
I try not to eat it, but sometimes its that or go hungry and I've noticed that the service in a lot of fast food places (many places throughout the metro area I visit) has gone right into the toilet. Employees that can hardly grok an order if its not "number 3 with coke" and this includes ordering stuff right off their own menu.
I've ordered countless McDonald's lattes "large latte, no flavor, whole milk" -- and had the employee then ask me what flavor and did I want skim milk or sound confused because I gave them the entire order with answers to their questions. And then watched as more than one employee at different locations managed to not be able to work the totally automatic, touch-screen driven Franke espresso machine.
And at some locations I'm at more often, the turnover is unbelievable, with successive waves of employees seeming to be worse than the previous ones, and this is at presumably "prestige" locations in wealthy suburban malls.
About the only place I haven't seen this downward spiral has been at Starbucks or similar chains (Caribou). I don't know if they screen better or what. I do notice their employee base seems to include a lot of older people (like, over 35).
While I'm sure the fast food industry would like to hold down wages to avoid capital spending on machinery (even if they are wonder robots from the future), I wonder if some of their real motivation isn't just trying to make the business run without dealing with people who seem to be borderline mentally deficient.
McDonalds won't be 1st, but they will be 2nd
Whoever does it first is going to cause a PR nightmare, but once that settles down - all of the competitors will be soon to follow the new norm.
McDonald's already was first. They had a robot making french fries in SoCal for years.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Automation is a good thing. That a livable minimum wage encourages some companies to automate is also a good thing. We MAY need to use other policies to maintain full employment, but at this point, I don't see why anyone should be making just $15/hour.
A big criticism of a minimum wage is that it's "not a free lunch" and just causes inflation. But if a minimum wage encourages automation, then it actually increases per-person productivity, thus partially paying for itself and keeping a minimum wage from being purely inflationary (there will, of course, be some amount of inflation due to a minimum wage increase, but nowadays a small amount of inflation is actually a good thing).
If we're paying just, say, $2/hour for people to work menial jobs, which is far below a livable wage, then they are, de facto, being subsidized in some other way. For instance, government assistance through subsidized housing, food stamps, etc. Or perhaps they're living off of charitable organizations. Or perhaps they're living off the good will of their family and/or friends. But paying a sub-livable wage is being subsidized in SOME WAY, perhaps even just being taken from that person's health. It's not a society-optimal solution.
In our society, even low-skilled workers' productivity has increased due to technology. But because there are so many low-skilled workers, their bargaining power is low, and thus their wages don't increase. Thus something like a minimum wage is necessary in order for those people to make a livable wage and to not be on foodstamps, etc.
Again, I see automation in response to a wage hike as a good thing. Ultimately, provided we maintain full employment, this will help everyone. Given our modern technology, human labor is worth more than $5/hour even if the workers do not have the bargaining power to get a higher wage. So employing people at below $15/hour in positions that could be automated if they were paid a livable wage is actually a misallocation of human resources. In a sense, by NOT paying workers a livable wage and NOT automating more, companies are, in fact, having their labor subsidized by the rest of society (government, family, friends, charities).
All the folks who were already making more than $15/hr?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...will be over fast food. Not the building of automobiles. Not the manufacture of complex goods. All over the flipping of a burger, the dropping of a basket of fries.
If it does come to pass, i would go to one of those mcdonalds once, just to see how it is. Then i'd never go to mcdonalds again. My doctor would be so happy.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Random Olds invented the automobile assembly line. Ford perfected it. But the assembly line dates back to around 1800...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ongoing maintenance is cheaper than $15 hour.
You're assuming that the bean counters haven't cut out ongoing maintenance. That's an expense — an unnecessary expense. Might be better to let the machine break down and get it repaired for $50 per hour.
All wages at $5 an hour do is make the rest of us support the workers via the social safety nets.
And if you take the social safety nets away, then you have people who are earning $200/week for 40 hours labor.
That means no medical care, rent is impossible to pay in many circumstances, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Even as it stands now, we subsidize those corporations with our taxes; that's the only thing that makes the wages they pay now survivable in any real sense of the word in any urban environment. Small town or country living, maybe you can make some kind of sane go of it for less than $10/hour, but it's definitely the exception, not the rule.
For McDonald's and the like, when the cost of functionally adequate automation falls below the cost of employment, they're going to move to automation. We either figure out how to handle the consequences ahead of time, or we take the beating when it happens without any fallback position. My guess is that it will probably be the latter, inasmuch as politics-as-usual always seem to target only the nearest term headlights-in-the-tunnel.
Also... speaking now with my AI researcher hat on: I think it's a slam dunk that the automation that will suit the fast food service industries is going to arrive very, very soon. With other service industries soon to follow. This problem is basically on our doorstep right now. Most people fail to see it because it represents a paradigm shift - things will be as they have never been before in history, and it's just very difficult to imagine fundamental changes in one's worldview that have no precedent.
Grab the popcorn and lock your doors. Show's going to start shortly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Talk about wasted money. Overpaid senior execs actually reduce the ROI of any business, as numerous studies have shown.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Let's not fool ourselves, replacing the minimum wage worker at McDonald's with a robot isn't a new idea. They've been working on that since the early 2000's. The increased minimum wage has been a slight, if not small, acceleration to the plan to do so.
Even when they were paying less than $8/hour, they were thinking they wanted to have a one-time-cost robot to do the work for them.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Sure seems like it would cost a lot more than $35k.
True, but that means the employee(s) would make way, way less than $15/hr. at their new job - stamping out license plates in prison.
Pretty sure that's not what most folks would want to end up doing...
So essentially moving the cost burden from the private industry to the state? Always find it curious that we oppose elements of a social system and then end up paying for it anyhow, but in some other way.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
At reddit and other places. Apparently the layoffs+robot-ization of a Foxconn factory in China and this comment from a McDo suit made them freak out about machines stealing our jerbs.
The fact that these are low skilled or burguer-flipping jobs seems to have passed largely unnoticed.
Oh, and the fact UBI doesn't really work for big-enough population countries like the USA (do the math: 300 million citizens x 10K USD per annum = 3 trillion freaking dollars).
When the machine doesn't make fries, it's idle. When the employee doesn't make fries, they're cleaning, etc.
If by "cleaning" you mean browsing Facebook while smoking pot behind the dumpster, then yes you're correct.
Well yes but not everyone gets the same start in life. That doesn't mean they should starve. That never ends well for them or anyone they come into contact with.
I don't eat at McDonalds since I make enough money that I can eat at places that cost more but, in my opinion, have higher quality food. If most people who eat at McDonalds make less than me (maybe they are in blue-collar or minimum-wage jobs?) and their jobs all get automated then who is going to be buying the fries?
Foxconn cuts 60000 jobs, replaces them with robots
That means that robots can be cheaper than a $320/month wage. It's not a minimum wage issue.
There would be at least a few people depending the size and location of the restaurant. At least, you need someone to collect cash to help move the line alone. Someone that can repair or step in for the failed robot, and perform the role of cleanup and closing for the night. So while I doubt you can have a human-free working environment, if you did, you can bet on everything being done remotely overseas.
Life is not for the lazy.
Same goes for a real, actual restaurant: I want a human chef creating my meal, and I want human waitstaff to deal with.
A big portion of the process is already automated - ever seen a point of sale system at a restaurant? Or do you think that bakeries knead dough by hand? Or wash each dish by hand?
Drive thru?
How quaint.
I expect nothing less than delivery from a central location by 3D-printed drone direct to wherever I am in 15 minutes or less.
Boom. Just replaced 15 McD's in the greater metro area, along with 95% of the staff.
During down times, the robots work on my plan to build [REDACTED] from baby [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] the [REDACTED].
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A lot of large movie theatres run their projection rooms that way. The whole thing (projectors, servers, ingesting new movies, setting up playilists, starting shows, monitoring for presentation issues) is done by remote network operations centers and none of the on-site staff has anything to do with projection and movie presentation at all.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Last time we had a discussion about raising the minimum wage (decades ago) McDonalds actually demonstrated a fully automated restaurant. It promptly went back to wage slaves once the talk died down. Now they're so lazy they're not even bothering with the proof of concept store.
If these robots were practical at the price he is quoting they would be in use today. Payoff period would be 2/3 of a year instead of 1/2 a year, but that's barely any difference. This is a scare tactic pure and simple.
I read the internet for the articles.
Sure seems like it would cost a lot more than $35k.
It is not likely anyone will burn the restaurants. Fast food joints already have high turnover, and few employees are there for a long term career. So you bring in a robot to make fries, shift the ex-fry-maker to sweeping the floor, and reduce your workforce through attrition. By the time the next employee quits, maybe a floor sweeping robot will be available. There will not be a big mass layoff, just slow dwindling of entry level jobs.
Most McDonald's restaurants are owned by franchisees. That's not their problem.
Given that those restaurants are owned by franchisees, it doesn't affect McDonalds. Besides, nobody is going to fault them for hoodlum behavior.
Where are you? In the US, "excess" is called "deductible".
Learn to love Alaska
And when you replace all the workers with robots, who's going to buy your fast food?
People on guaranteed basic income. Liberals are pushing for it, but it's going to co-opted by the 1% who will dump the burden of paying for it, as much as possible, on the middle class. Partially through high taxes on the middle class and partially through debt that will be inflated away, which will destroy the savings of the middle class. The 1% will, of course, pay for as little of it as possible.
Time to boycott. Even if just all the Slashdotters boycotted, it'd be something to see. Or perhaps organize a drone-enabled protest outside.. ;)
These jobs used to be filled not just by school kids and retirees, but by anyone looking to get by or pick up a little extra cash. Today there're more and more people clinging to these jobs as their last hope. Things have changed. On 'our' side, its gotten worse. On management's side? Well, let's just say that if the minimum wage had kept pace with the cost of living from 1978 on, $15/hr would look like a sweet deal to them.
I'd gladly pay 2 bits more for a burger knowing it was going to a real flesh and blood person rather than to grease and pneumatics upgrades.
Anybody feelin' the Bern? ;)
Shopping at the grocery store for infinitely more nutritious food than the poison McDonald's serves.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
Well, largely might overstate it, but there's got to be someone getting that $35,000. Someone has to design it, and make it, and install it, and maintain it. And like I said, if you're developing a new market and that leads to exports, it could be a net win for the US economy.
If the state runs prisons directly it's public expenditure, which is communism and encourages homosexuality.
If the state pays twice as much to corporations which run prisons that's private enterprise, which is 100% American and apple pie and NUMBER ONE!!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Penal labor is outlawed in most states, except in very specific circumstances.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Again, I see automation in response to a wage hike as a good thing. Ultimately, provided we maintain full employment, this will help everyone. Given our modern technology, human labor is worth more than $5/hour even if the workers do not have the bargaining power to get a higher wage. So employing people at below $15/hour in positions that could be automated if they were paid a livable wage is actually a misallocation of human resources.
Are you saying they need more than $15 per hour, or between $5 and $15 or something else?
Generally speaking, the fry bagger does not replace just one employee for $15, but two, possibly 3. There are many locations where they are open more than 16 hrs a day, and some 24hrs.
And $15 employee does not cost $15 per hour, it is more like $25 with payroll taxes, SS and benefits added on. $30K a year becomes $50K a year.
So that is $50K a year, X the number of shifts.
In reality, having actually worked at a McDonalds, it takes a full employee only during the rush hours to run the fryer and bag the potatoes. So call it 1 to 2 FTEs.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
1) I never, ever eat at McDonalds/
2) I will never, ever eat anywhere that has dumped humans in favor of robots.
Business people need to recall that without employees there aren't customers. When we get to the point that robots are doing everything who will be buying your products?
In all seriousness, what exactly was it that you were trying to say? Are you for minimum wage, no minimum wage, more automation? I couldn't follow.
For example, what does this mean?
Again, I see automation in response to a wage hike as a good thing. Ultimately, provided we maintain full employment, this will help everyone. Given our modern technology, human labor is worth more than $5/hour even if the workers do not have the bargaining power to get a higher wage. So employing people at below $15/hour in positions that could be automated if they were paid a livable wage is actually a misallocation of human resources.
Are you saying they need more than $15 per hour, or between $5 and $15 or something else?
At least $15/hour.
If we had adjusted minimum wage for per-capita gdp growth (a kind of measure of economic productivity) since the 1960s, it'd be up around $20/hour or so. $15/hour is comfortably below that, so I'm certain a $15/hour minimum wage would not bring devastating inflation or anything like that. We can, as a society, afford to pay people at least $15/hour. And with more automation, we could afford to pay even higher wages.
If you do it slowly enough, the fast food prices won't rise as quickly as inflation, and consumer buying power will increase. That's what actually happens. To buy more stuff, we need more workers--operating the machines, of course--which means new jobs. We spend a smaller proportion of our income on the stuff we buy now, and the remainder goes to new things--since the 80s, we've moved our money from food and clothing onto more and better healthcare, as well as smart phones and electronic entertainment; and houses have gotten bigger, while cars have gained luxury, performance, and safety features while remaining roughly 56% of the median income.
If you do it quickly, you get an unemployment spike, which damages the economy. The bigger the spike, the longer it takes to recover, and the poorer your society comes out of it.
If you do it poorly, you get rough destruction of wealth. Raising minimum wage already concentrates wealth into a poor elite--some minimum-wage workers get richer, all other consumers become poorer, and we lose jobs: The cost of a burger increasing by 17 cents, with 282 billion burgers sold per year, is $50 million; that's over 3,000 $8.25/hr jobs. Raising minimum wage such that the old wage was cheaper than a machine *and* the new wage is more expensive ($8.25 wage becomes $15 wage; machine is $9.50) eliminates the minimum wage jobs and exchanges in more-expensive machines, so your economy takes it both ways.
A lot of people can't grok this because it's a continuous-operation function. Basically, people reason, "Hey, but the minimum-wage worker has more money to spend, and so you wouldn't lose any jobs!" By such reasoning, you have infinite money, and thus infinite jobs, and we are all fabulously wealthy (we are, but that's not the point). You have so much income *per* *time*, and the cost of purchasing certain goods increases, and so the number of goods increased *per* *time* decreases, thus the jobs decrease. Again: doubling down on this kind of damage by making wage workers non-competitive with machines is bad.
It gets even worse: normally, product price increases occur slightly more slowly than inflation for products whose costs have decreased. That is to say: If you displace 10% of the labor cost of making a hamburger, that hamburger will approach 1.8 times the price after 100% inflation--10% of its price doesn't keep up. As this money returns to the consumer, the consumer base becomes capable of paying the wage of another worker, and thus can buy new products. If you've pushed up the cost of labor, then it takes *longer* for those two things to intersect, and so the transitional period of unemployment extends: jobs lost to technical progress take more time to become new jobs.
So you're de-employing workers *quickly* (unemployment coming more rapidly); you're increasing the cost of goods instead of decreasing it (setting the far point of technical progress growth years farther out); and you're making human labor more expensive (requiring much more purchasing power movement back to the consumer's hands before replacement jobs are created--and reducing the total replacement jobs possible).
That's a recipe for an economic disaster and a permanent feedback loop to make a society poorer. It's one of the reasons I push for a Citizen's Dividend that migrates costs off wage-labor (reduce payroll taxes and replace minimum wage raises with a non-wage income basis): that plan increases the number of consumer take-home dollars per employer wage-labor dollars paid to have an employee. You can describe that as "decreasing costs" or "increasing consumer buying power"; if you stare long enough, you realize the two things are eventually the same.
Technical progress is what makes the middle-class, the poor, *and* the rich richer. It's what's given us the ability to *afford* modern healthcare, high-speed internet, wireless ph
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No mention of Google in the title. That's weird.
Have you seen where the rise in prices has been the most rampant? Yup - the medical field. You can complain all you want about lawsuits, but the real cost of medicine is flesh-and-blood humans to take care of you. And they don't come cheap.
You will always be able to go out and have a (time/cost adjusted) $300 meal for two with personal service to your table. If you want a $5 bag-o-food, you're going to get it from a machine.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Throughout history, we have automated many of our jobs. If the next stop is to be served food by robots, so be it. Over time, our economy changes.
The only news here is a former McDonald’s CEO got some air-time on FOX Business Network’s "Mornings with Maria", saying something that happens to dove-tail with Fox's anti-everything that keeps its audience agitated and receptive to ads for Cialis (for daily use) and other products directed to the aging demographic that sits at home watching cable news all day.
Flash: There are already automated order-taking machines in McDonald's restaurants throughout Europe. And automated check-out lines in Supermarkets throughout the U.S. And robots welding cars together throughout the world. Progress marching on, regardless some barely adequate minimum wage.
OTOH, whether people LIKE robot-made-and-served food remains to be seen. The only thing that's certain is robots are far more sexy in the Board Room than people. Nobody gets props anymore for motivating people to be more productive, not when there's a guy with a fancy suit and a toothy grin from Acme Robots showing fancy color pamphlets to a hungry Vice President who wants the Big Promotion.
By the time the dust settles and McDonald's is shelling out support contracts to third, fourth, and fifth-party vendors who show up as reliably as a Comcast repairman, the VP with the great idea will have moved on, maybe to run HP (another nail in that coffin). And who keeps the McDonald's running when the robots break? That same tired assistant manager you always see picking up the slack at the fryer or turning the key when the cashier fucks up. At least he'll be making $15 whole dollars an hour for his trouble.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
And then, hopefully, those former employees get thrown in jail.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
HEY GUYS! I JUST SOLVED THE PROBLEM!
To prevent robots from coming in and stealing your job, just put a robtots.txt file in your root directory.
Don't want self-driving cars driving down your street? Just post a robots.txt
Don't want drones flying over your house? robots.txt!
Even stops Google.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Taxes? Healthcare? Months of the year when lawns don't get maintained? Maintaining a competitive advantage in an essentially no-skill occupation?
Seriously??? He did say "Texas" and "Mexican". I'm sure taxes and healthcare is not in play here. And here in Texas I mow my lawn from March to November so there's not much downtime for the lawncare industry.
Karma: Bad
Fast food automation? Well yes and no. A human grabs the bag/box of frozen fries and scoops some into the basket. Then the human pushes a button to say fries and the basket lowers into the hot oil for a preset time period and raises back up at the end of it. This allows the restaurant to take human skill/error out of the cooking process. The human empties the basket into a pan, applies seasoning and proceeds to bag as ordered. Someone still has to stock that freezer, empty used oil, clean the fryer and refill with fresh oil. Stock bags and seasoning, remove and replace same. This is all just for fries. It would seem that there'd be a lot of effort and capital required to automate all of that.
Think about coffee from a vending machine. Other than stocking and servicing the machine now and then it is pretty well automated. I won't drink the swill it vends and neither do tens of millions of other Starbucks customers. So, good luck McDonalds with dumping human employees.
Ideally? Yes. From my experiences (and those of my friends) that's not terribly accurate. Plus, you can still have a few people on staff for full-time cleaning, if you want.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
You don't need a manager, you need another robot.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
I'll share something with the fast food industry: I don't eat fast food now, and I'm not going to start if they hire robots. Put up, or shut up.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
No worker's comp insurance!
No worker's comp insurance claims!
No overtime!
No lunchbreaks!
No discrimination lawsuits!
No sexual harassment lawsuits!
No unions!
No calling in sick!
No goofing off!
No incompetence!
We seem to be averaging one of these "fast food robots will kill jobs if workers are paid more than a pittance" stories every few weeks.
I predict we are going to continue to get these stories trying to drum up fear of a living wage for workers, until the "Raise the Wage Act" finally passes.
Perhaps if the fast food executives were to tell us the magic wage that would guarantee that robots will never take jobs slinging burgers we can have an honest conversation about this.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
2 robots at $70k is still cheaper than one employee. One for cleaning and one for frying.
- He cuts about 10 lawns a day, Monday- Friday @ between $50-75 per lawn.
Holy crap you're getting ripped off...
I pay $20 a mow and that includes edging, trim, and cleanup with a blower...
And that is to a COMPANY... still Mexicans, but there is a white guy who owns it who has to make something as well.
The one I worked at 10+ years ago was still 100% manual. They are out of business now and closed. Probably got the bill for the upgrades for what you mention. But I look backwards in the new theaters when they start a movie, and there's someone in the booth.
And for the recent re-plays of Legend, they were all print-only, so the smaller theaters must still handle prints
Learn to love Alaska
Here's the thing though, that $15 wage is a strawman. They are already planning on buying the robots, they're just using the wage increase as a smokescreen. If the wage continues to stagnate they will still buy the robots and dump those workers! They've been talking about centralizing the drive thru to a call center so they don't have to staff the window for years.
Personally I think robots are the worst thing they'll ever do, for a lot of reasons.
Robots won't stop teens from coming into the store and spray painting penises on all the terminals.
Robots won't notice when the homeless guy who smells like a tuna sandwich that's been in the sun for a week decides to take a nap in the store.
Robots won't stop the aforementioned homeless person from shitting on the table.
Robots have no idea how to deal with humans who give no fucks and want to be destructive.
Better buy 5 fry bagger robots, because at least 3 will be constantly down for service during the lunch rush.
Where I live HOA isn't a thing. There are no requirements of how you maintain your property anywhere for about 50 miles. People also won't pay $50/week for their lawn to be maintained. You'd be lucky if people here would pay $10 (and from my own experience people are willing to pay somewhere between $5-15).
I have a friend whose older brother has run a 'lawn carer' business with a single truck and his own tools for a couple decades now. He only gets paid good money by businesses and they pay about $40-50/hour of work done. He does very few houses because they simply won't pay even half what he gets from businesses. He also can't maintain 10 hours of work a day, he's lucky to get 6. So at the best possible rate here he earns (by himself) $300 a day, $1,800 per week (6 days a week which is what he works), or roughly $7,200 a month. Which is a best case scenario and it looks good until you factor in equipment (including maintenance, repair, and fuel), insurance (which is around $800/month for him and his family), and everything else he needs to factor in. However the one time we talked numbers he actually made about $50k that year, so his earnings are sub optimal compared to these best case numbers above. He used to hire teens to help with larger jobs and paid them in cash, but that's become to much of a hassle and so he doesn't do that anymore.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Consider that the low wages is a large part of the high turnover.
But those people who don't have jobs now won't be able to eat at McDonald's, and I'm pretty sure the robot doesn't eat...
It started back in Team Fortress Classic
http://www.triplepundit.com/20...
If you've seen In-n-out, always crowded, very cheap food, a lot of workers.
While in other states it's very common.
I think you misunderstand the purpose of "Fast Food". People don't go there for the fine dining experience, more of a quick meal.
Here's the thing though, that $15 wage is a strawman.
I agree with you about this. With tidal changes in technology and how civilizations do things, there have some businesses made obsolete. For example buggy whip manufacturers with the advent of the car. With robotics and AI, what if humans (labor, thought, creativity, bargaining, etc) are the buggy whip?
Personally I think robots are the worst thing they'll ever do, for a lot of reasons.
That is because you only see in black and white...
Robots won't replace 100% of workers at McDonalds, just most of them...
Here's the thing though, that $15 wage is a strawman.
No, the $15 wage is pushing companies to action. Lots of companies weren't moving very fast on this stuff, but now they are. At $7.25/hr lots of companies were just sitting around with the status quo. At $15/hr, they have done the math and will get off their butts and change things.
The $15/hr thing was much too big of a move. $10/hr likely would have caused fewer disruptions.
And in related recent news, Adidas will be moving shoe manufacturing to Germany and the US by replacing USD $1 to 3/hr workers in Asian factories with automation. (Estimated wage - the BLS data is only as recent as 2009.)
Here is the text of a Bloomberg article from 2013 (since going to the website itself didn't load for me) discussing "Asia Soaring Wages" where people make USD $226/mo in Indonesia and USD $10/day in Thailand which is apparently a significant increase (or not, depending on who the article author talked to.) China factories outsourcing to Indonesia and Thailannd factories is discussed. The drive to automation is discussed.
Automation is certainly not anything new. Even without minimum wage increases it's still an inevitability.
Until you buy a lawn mowing robot.
So some people in China then?
The first time I find a dead bug or small animal (or parts thereof) or some crud from some robotic arm in my french fries, I'll sue the living fuck out of them.
But this kind of thing already happens, even with human workers.
Of course it's totally irrelevant since I don't eat anything from McDonalds anyway
Oh, so you won't.
Seriously though, these restaurants will probably be cleaner than the ones you're used to, because the equipment won't have to be designed to accommodate humans. It can have splash shields and the like that would prevent them from doing their jobs. Each function could well end up being served by a sealed unit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My understanding is the combines now start in southern Oklahoma head north and stop in central Saskatchewan, priced just a little less than the Farmers could do it themselves. AgServices is a growth industry and yes John Deere is working on robotics, especially on the tractors that haul the harvested grain between the combine in the field and the truck that hauls the grain to the elevator.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In the 1950s, Henry Ford II, the CEO of Ford, and Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers union, were touring a new engine plant in Cleveland. Ford gestured to a fleet of machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union boss famously replied: “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?”
It's cheaper than hiring 3 people at $8 too. The only question is exactly how much you're saving.
Except that it's not a straight-up comparison between the employee and the machine. When the machine doesn't make fries, it's idle. When the employee doesn't make fries, they're cleaning, etc.
When the employee makes fries, he makes a mess. When a properly designed machine makes fries, it won't. A decent machine will be largely self-cleaning. The employee has to clean the fryolator nightly (if only to de-sludge and replace filters, and put the same shit oil back.) And then he has to clean the wall behind the machine, and the floor under the machine. At least, you pray that this happens nightly. During my stint in fast food, that was the practice, but it does not happen everywhere.
You're damned right it's not a straight-up comparison. The machine reduces your cleaning needs in the bargain.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And when you replace all the workers with robots, who's going to buy your fast food?
The newly trained technicians who design, develop, install and maintain the robots will have the income to buy the fast food.
Yeah because Mcdonalds has never heard of using a spreadsheet.
These companies are acutely aware of the cost of labor at all times, just like they are with the cost of food... if they can cut costs, they will, it means more profit for the folks on top.
You're absolutely correct, and if only one company cut thousands of human positions to improve the bottom line, the economy could probably withstand it.
Ironically, the replacement of the workforce's lowest wage earners with robotic devices will negatively impact places like McDonald's first.
The robot workers are not fast food consumers. Though the initial ($35,000) cost will go to a developer/manufacturer, any savings associated with a diminished human workforce will not necessarily be reabsorbed by the industry.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This. It's probably a lot easier than a fast food robot too.
I've made french fries for a living and all of these problems can be utterly eliminated by clever packaging. The fries get parked in the freezer, the oldest fries get removed first and they go to a slacking rack before frying so that they cook properly, and then they go through the process you describe. Except I actually had to take fries out of oil when beepers when off. But if you just replace the brown paper bags with a recyclable rectangular plastic container, or even a reusable one, then a robot can trivially handle the stocking, the slacking, the dumping, etc.
Most of the other problems can be solved essentially the same way. Cooking a burger can be done by formula, but you could actually use either IR temperature measurement or even visual processing to determine whether the burger had been cooked (in addition to cooking time... but sometimes grills go wrong, and sometimes they go wrong in parts) and then assembling the burger could be made trivial by loading the ingredients into magazines. Sure, some worker (or some more expensive, delicate robot) in a plant somewhere would basically have to file and collate lettuce leaves and tomato slices, but that's hardly a show-stopper. Actually, tomatoes and onions could probably be sliced by the machine, and could certainly be automatically loaded into a magazine by a slicer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Buy once, cry once. Ongoing maintenance is cheaper than $15 hour.
I'm not sure about that. Maintenance is cheap... when they work.
And the other problem with robots is that they're obsolete in two years, and you need to buy an upgrade, or another one.
if McD's cost is $35,000, and they're open 16 hours per day, then it pays for itself in less than a year with employees making less than $8/hour.
(8 * 16 * 365 = $46,720)
I know that for myself, I go to McDonalds embarrassingly often, and I would absolutely not go if that were the case, just as when I go to the super market, I intentionally don't use the self checkout lines. I don't care if its cheaper, and even if they extended a fraction of the savings to me, I'd RATHER help kids keep employed and have some money to spend. And even if they're not kids, I'd rather they get paid the money, than just give huge bonus' to the C-level guys for thinking "hey, lets automate away everyones jobs! what could possibly go wrong with that? oh and while we're at it, lets support politicians who want to do away with social safety nets! Like anyone actually needs those things!"
And I wish I was sarcastic about that...
and they eat electricity and you have to have an IT guy zipping to all the stores to reset the beasts when they flip stuff all over the building. actuators break. crappy programming freezes them.
yeah, good luck with that. maybe the robots will lurch over to the Wendy's kiosks on "break" and run them over, too. lawsuits!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Kinda like buggywhip workers burning down the buggywhip factories in 1903. Good luck.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Who do they think their customers are? Make all the low income people unemployed and they won't be able to buy your shitty food.
With robots, I don't have to worry about workers spitting in my food.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Fast food restaurants ARE going robotic. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Raising or not raising the minimum wage is a red herring. Just look at what has happened in the auto industry. Sure there are people still working on the assembly line but when you have a robot that can perform 100,000 welds absolutely perfectly the writing is on the wall.
Eventually these fast food robots (McBots?) will be able to make a batch of fries with greater consistency than a human can. Without any waste. Without dropping any hairs in there. Without any cross contamination between the cash drawer and the fry station. Without using the bathroom or blowing your nose and forgetting to wash your hands. Without calling in sick.
Raising the minimum wage merely gives these companies cover to accelerate the whole process. "Why, if we have to pay $15 an hour we'll be out of business. You leave us no choice but to automate!". Even if the minimum wage were only $5 an hour eventually the process will be automated. It's just a matter of when.
Not really. The owner has to pay taxes, some of which fund the prison system.
The minimum wage in Australia is more than $16/hour US and the McDonalds there do just fine. Do not listen to their scare tactics. http://xpatnation.com/how-does...
Ed will soon find out that robots are not all they are cracked to be. This $35K does not cover maintenance and obsoleteness. Then the work area needs to be setup just right and every slightest mishap results in lengthy work shutdown if not property damage. Want to add new items to menus? Hehe!
Those factory robots are maintained by full time stuff with 6 digit salaries. Thinking the same is going to be practical in a franchise run by a high school dropout in a poor neighborhood is delusional.
Looking forward to eating in Burger King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So sad - he will never achieve his dream now!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
http://www.engadget.com/2016/0...
Cleaning? You obviously haven't been to a McDonald's in a while...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Except that it's not a straight-up comparison between the employee and the machine. When the machine doesn't make fries, it's idle. When the employee doesn't make fries, they're cleaning, etc.
Go use a fast-food restroom and check its' cleanliness.
While there, notice that it takes 2 minutes to get hot water to wash your hands, which means none of the employees has actually used any hot water recently to wash their hands...
Both your answers are absolutely stupid. If a robot does a task cheaper than a human, then the human labor can be put onto another value adding task. The same amount of resources as before can now produce more overall sands low for more consumption overall. If you only look at the robot and the one work who is fired, you completely miss the rest of the unseen economic effects. The robots cost will be tired to the resources and labor to make it. The cheaper food will allow people to consume in other areas of the economy. There would be no net loss of jobs overall. Technology has been replacing factory workers for eons. We don't have massive unemployment and a short supply of jobs (the current economic problems are more from government meddling, not because people are suddenly worthless).
Or they just re-heat pre-prepared foods from Sysco and plate them uniquely.
I, for one, welcome our new Freedom-fry bagging robot overlords
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
This is what happens when employees leave a fast food restaurant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvLDFtaL5HI. I might get my fries from a robot arm, but who's going to be there to stomp the roaches?
Robots make economic sense at even 5$ an hour. It is complete and utter BS that it is the 15$ an hour that is driving the interest in robotics.
nothing more odious than a plutocrat whining about the rising cost of peons.
Really, so he thinks you buy a $15K arm and it magically does what it is told? it takes a lot of hours of programming at $190 an hour. It takes a LOT of maintenance at $125 an hour. Oh and if you think local health departments will give a free pass to automation... Nightly Sanitization, replacement of the plastic coverings to protect the food from the operating arm shedding paint flecks, shedding oil, etc... Food processing on a LARGE scale with robots where profit levels are far higher as that robot is making hundreds of thousands of product a day between cleaning and maintenance evenings is hugely different than one that is making hundreds a day that are not all 100% identical but can have almost random requests. the software will have to be far more advanced, and absolutely more expensive. All of your product now has to be in standardized containers increasing the cost... no more pickels in a 5 gallon bucket, but now pickles need to be stacked in a dispenser package. Pickles now triple in price. etc....
Sounds like a CEO shooting off his mouth about a technology he knows absolutely nothing about but thinks you can go to Robots-R-Us and buy what you want and install them ready to go.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Really? cutting costs means it spits hydraulic oil in your food. Mmmm hydrocarbons.......
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And the owner now has to pay SIGNIFICANTLY more taxes as all those robots are now a Taxable asset. Employees are not.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A niece and a friend's wife have been cleaning homes for the past 25 years; they constantly turn down new business and if they lose a client, there are many more interested in their services. Neither of them work weekends. They each make $40k/yr cash, unreported revenue. Neither of them will ever be without work.
Until someone reports them to the IRS (for the reward) and they get a hefty fine or jail time, or at least big bucks in lawyer fees. Not to sound too cynical, but only the uber-rich get away without paying taxes.
"The IRS Whistleblower Office pays money to people who blow the whistle on persons who fail to pay the tax that they owe. If the IRS uses information provided by the whistleblower, it can award the whistleblower up to 30 percent of the additional tax, penalty and other amounts it collects."
https://www.irs.gov/uac/whistl...
Robots don't buy hamburgers.
Blaming this trend on higher minimum wages is ridiculous. Lets say you've got a $35k robot capable of performing as fast as a human at a task where it can stay busy all day. At someplace like McDonalds, that robot is probably going to be working, what, 16 hours a day, 360 days a year? That doesn't just replace one full-time human, it almost replaces three. Amortize the purchase price across a single year and it only costs $6.07/hour. Assume it lasts just three years and you're down to only $2 an hour.
There's just no way humans can compete at repetitive jobs once robots get good enough. At the worst raising minimum wage just accelerates their adoption by a few years. If they would make sense today with a minimum wage of $15, then it won't be more than a few years before they'd make sense with a minimum wage of $7.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Good food, like fresh fruit and vegetables can be rather pricey. McDonalds is one of the cheaper alternatives. Just don't order soda.
...and the temperature of the water has nothing to do with how well it cleans hands. So yeah, pretty scary stuff.
A friend of mine and I have decided not to go to any robot-run restaurant or fast food place, basically because of the anti-worker attitude this embodies. When a place we go to switches over to automated food prep, that'll be the last time we go to that place.
Yes, I know that in a robot-restaurant the food may be made more uniformly or more sanitary and orders may be less likely to be messed up, but displacing tens or hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers in pursuit of a few more dollars seems like a shit move to us. So we'll just go to places where there are humans.
We may end up paying a few more bucks for our food, but we'll do it. This race to the bottom for profits helps no one but some shareholders and CEOs, but our hearts don't bleed for them, sorry.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
They've been talking about centralizing the drive thru to a call center so they don't have to staff the window for years.
Why haven't they? It seems like the technology has been there for years.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
to clean the kitchen? Robots only do what they are program for. They won't notice anything out of the ordinary. One other thing a rich person can be replace by a 2yr old. They are equally self centered.
Oh shut the fuck up. You know goddamned well what I mean and you're just being a difficult douchebag on purpose.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Keeping 1 manager on duty would though
captcha: reject
Labor costs only account for about 20% of the cost of a typical fast food item.
People have done the math and McD's would only need to raise the price of a bag of french fries about 4cents to cover a $15 minimum wage. That is not an increase that the majority of people would even notice.
Perhaps, or perhaps not. $70k is the equivalent of 2 1/3 years of a $15/hour wage (eight hours per day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year). So even in a perfect world, it'd take 2 1/3 years to break even, assuming you can only replace one employee's job with each robot. And that also assumes that your robots never need maintenance, adjustment, calibration, cleaning etc., nor do they use any power or consumables.
That's a pretty unlikely scenario, to be honest. Far more likely is that your two robots will set you back the equivalent of around three years before you've saved a cent. After all, while you got rid of the unskilled labor to assemble burgers, you replaced it with skilled labor to maintain the robots, and you probably have to pay that skilled labor for their travel time and expenses servicing robots at many, many locations around the country. (No single location or district is going to provide sufficient work for the robot techs to live locally, so they'll be traveling to and from your stores for a large proportion of their time.) If much maintenance, calibration or cleaning is needed at all, you'll find the projected cost savings quickly vanishes.
And then what's the service life of the robots? Answer that, and you'll know whether this is going to be worth the PR downside. If a robot lasts ten years and pays for itself in three, you've got a good argument for phasing out the meat puppets it replaces. If it takes three years to pay off, but you're having to replace it after just four or five due to its service life or obsolescence, well, that's another matter entirely.
But then all of this is pulling numbers out of our butts -- both on your part and mine -- and has little to do with the real world.
The machine doesn't need to be trained when the prior machine quits. The machine works all three shifts a day and doesn't need a lunch or coffee break. The machine doesn't take maternity leave (although, if it did, that might be an advantage - you have to rent another robot for 12 weeks off but then you have two robots 12 weeks later might be a good deal). The machine is probably able to produce exactly the right number of fries at the right time because it isn't distracted by having two jobs. The machine probably responds much more accurately to "discard stale fries" rules and algorithms that request smaller batches of fries because demand is low.
(I'm pretty sure I've had quite a few fries at two in the morning at rest stops along toll roads on the way to my destination from a delayed flight that would have been much better if a machine ran the process as it would have applied the "rules" for stale fries which, obviously, the highly unmotivated worker behind the counter didn't.)
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
They will then complain when there is no-one with enough money to buy their products. Employing more people is good for the entire economy plus its a social responsibility
No robot ever made so far can clean with the same degree of robustness as a human. Humans are intelligent, and can often adapt to changing circumstances seamlessly. Robots not so much.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why?
The robot that fills the baskets with fries does not brake down that often.
It is not precision engineering here, it is sticking the right weight of fries in the bag. Ever watch "How It's Made"? They show lots of machines that do exactly that, hundreds of times an hour for things like bagged candy. The only difference is they seal both ends of the bag.
And believe me, they spend a LOT of time training people to do it right, even a 5% overfill makes for losses, 10% underfill makes for pissed off customers who think they were cheated.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
You can write off a percentage of your assets as a depreciation of value every year.
If you save that money it can go towards investing in a new robot in a certain number of years. The cost of maint, power and upgrades is the cost of operation of business and is exempt from taxation. You only get taxed on your *net* profit. Which *will* hike dramatically.
Now you will have tech-managers running a store.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
"eight hours per day, five days per week, 50 weeks per year"
Those are not constraints of a robot's work schedule.
Or perhaps you're suggesting they unionize?
There's more to hiring people than just giving them a paycheck. On average, an employer has to pay an additional 2/3's of the employee's pay in taxes, insurance and in some places other benefits.
But lets forget all that for a moment and stick to the numbers we have, while thinking in MAN HOURS:
35k divided by 15 an hour is 2,333 *man hours*
Most stores at peak times have 5 crew members.
That's 466.6 hours of operation for 5 people.
Assuming there are 5 people running a 24/7 store that's 19 *days* of operation that will be required to return on that investment. ( Gross )
But without people the costs of operation will drop also.
- You wont need the space or restroom facilities for a crew.
- Without people Minimal HVAC will be required.
- Robots can certainly run 24/7
- The building size for a drive through only restaurant can now shrink.
- Multiple lanes with highly efficient production will shorten wait time and provide much more consistent quality.
Cons:
- You still need someone to unload trucks, restock machines, and maintain the automated devices. An owner can pay one person minimum wage to do the rounds, responding to alerts for low stock or malfunctioning equipment etc.
Additionally, I KNOW someone won't be spitting or adding any other 'secret sauce' to my food in the back.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
My local grocery store replaced half their cashiers with self checkouts terminals years ago.
Once there will only be a single human to supervise robots, strikes will become effective again. A single man will lock out the whole company.
I find it funny that these companies in the rush to automate exploited wage slaves out of their jobs forgets that the very product they sell depends on PEOPLE buying it. The more they push such people off of payrolls, the less number of people that will buy their product.
Fortunately, the current CEO of McDonalds has already discovered immediate increases in revenue and profits by increasing wages and benefits of their frontline workers.
http://www.politicususa.com/20...
About a third of my friends now use a robotic vacuum cleaner in their house. Most lawn sprinklers are now permanent and automatic. With battery powered mowers, I predict the automatic mowing and fertilizing of lawns is coming very soon. Putting some brains inside a battery-powered mower just seems like such a small, incremental step compared to the one involved in making the leap to a battery-powered mower.
As I see it, automation is absolutely critical for maintaining rich societies that de-populate. First-world economies rely heavily on immigration from second and third-world economies to maintain societal growth. That's not sustainable by the planet or by the third-world society. At some point, those sources of population growth will dry-up as population growth will slow, reverse or collapse due to availability of condoms, lack of resources, such as clean water, and the ever-increasing spread and homogenization of cultural ideas, via wireless services and global trade. Future porn, sex-bots and ever-increasing liabilities in forming human bonds will further impact population growth and replacement rates.
In the general case? Not with any current levels of technology.
We need AI of the level of sophistication to be as adaptable to input that is not expected in a given context as an adult human mind. We're at least 2 decades from there.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
All of which will be applicable to the service techs.
Nope, but it was represented as one robot replacing one person, so I continued that logic. However, given that most restaurant business happens in three relatively short periods (and that most fast food employees are part-time), the eight-hour day for the human is already overkill. The robot will be sitting idle most of the day, just as the few humans manning the restaurant outside of peak hours already are.
As noted in a reply above, the payroll taxes, insurance, etc. will now need to be paid to the highly-skilled robot tech instead of the unskilled burger-assembler. Also, you're assuming that one robot alone will be able to replace the entire staff of the store. (That's almost certainly not accurate.)
And you assume that the stores will also be going take-out only, otherwise you still need HVAC, restrooms and space. And either cleaning robots capable of dealing with humans' sometimes-disgusting habits, or human employees to do the cleaning part, still.
Also, it's rather an interesting assumption that the person capable of repairing these magical, majestic robots will find their job so easy and unskilled that they'll actually be minimum wage. That, again, seems rather unlikely.
You're right that nobody will be spitting in your food, though. They'll be dripping machine oil into it, instead. Mind you, somebody in one of the suppliers could still be spitting in the raw ingredients or on the pre-prepared items (buns, patties, etc.)
There are companies dedicated to taking care of a building and they have a call center to address issues quickly.
Cleaning will not be a problem.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Called the "Living Wage", introduced long ago. Includes free medical, and free schools that are not too bad even in poor areas. And overtime pays more.
Hasn't destroyed the economy. Unemployment low. Although crappy hamburgers might be slightly more expensive.
We have some problems with long term unemployed, especially Aborigines. But none of the working poor that the US has.
That only works becuase of digital projection, nothing but bits to move around, fast food has ingredients that need assembling etc, that drop on the floor, the get jammed in the dispensers, that don't get cleaned out of the nozzles, and thus spread food poisoning etc, it's a whole different ball of wool.
stamping out license plates in prison. But you get an doctor that does more then the ones that take the mcd's mini med plan
Need to swap the lenses in and out for 3d and non 3d movies.
There will be some jerk with a laptop doing some hijacking for kicks. You know that McDonald's will jump on the wifi bandwagon in some regards for the robot.
"Highly-skilled-robot-tech"
I know a few mech techs that are perpetually out of work and happy to take 15 an hour. Thing is these robots will likely be modular. Pull the failed part, put the new one in. Green light everything and return the old part for the core-charge.
No 'highly skilled' anything.
I admit to the math error. Let me hit that one again.
5 x 35,000 == 175,000 Cost ( assuming it includes installation and facility modifications )
11,666 Man hours. ( Omen maybe? )
486.08 Days to realize a profit. ( 1.33 Years )
Thing is, you start realizing a return on the investment via reduced overhead as soon as operations commence. The work was either financed or paid in one lump sum.
Depending on the power draw these things may draw $100 per day for cost of operation. That's 6.6 hours for a human employee.
It's still more profitable by far to replace everyone with Robots. Notice that 6.6 is just a little under the current federal minimum wage. That bot is working for $4 an hour and won't call in sick, play hooky to get laid, complain, steal, or sue the company etc. ie. is MUCH less a liability that the flesh-bot.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I used to go to a store where after we finished shopping, we could buy french fries from a machine which deep fried individual portions and cooked them. It was cheap and easy.
... that's a stupid ass idea for people who don't think far enough ahead to properly design a restaurant to not need humans.
Consider a simple machine which would lift a potato and pass it over a row of blades and then a single blade perpendicular to the row. This would cut multiple fries side by side. Let them drop into a basket which is then lowered into oil for two minutes. Using a rectangular vat, it should be possible to queue 4-8 orders in a relatively small bath of oil similar in size to what would be expected in a consumer deep fryer. Lift the basket from the oil, move it over a "salting area" and grind salt or shake salt onto them and flip the basket into a cardboard box and voila.
Fries are the easiest issue to solve.
Cycle the oil automatically by using two separate vats to keep the machine in operation at all times. Release oil that has cooled through a drain valve which pumps into a "bio-diesel dispensary" so that people driving biodiesel cars can be kind enough to dispose of the oil for McDonalds or buy a diesel generator to run the restaurant itself. A McDonalds delivery truck could pump some more oil into the tank on delivery. An intelligent design would automate this so the truck could be self-driving later on.
Burgers aren't a challenge either, automatic sauce dispensers are easy enough. If the burgers are frozen in stacks where the stack itself is engineered, you could have a stack that appears like a roll of 100 burgers (or more) which can be dispensed one by one onto a belt. The belts can feed a cooker (I'm assuming some sort of microwave oven?), the hardest part is the cheese which tends to be a bit sticky, but if the cheese is shipped as a block instead of slice by slice, then the cheese could be managed by using a Norwegian style wire cheese slicer mounted inverted. Onions can be cut more or less the same as potatoes.
Other deep fried foods are easy enough.
So far as I can figure, most parts could easily have "self cleaning" using disposable or washable sanitary wipes after each portion is prepared. The remaining part... less so.
In Europe for years, we've been using computers or telephone apps to order fast food (at least in Scandinavia and I first saw a touch screen ordering system in Strasbourg 10 years ago.
A conveyor belt system can easily allow food to be prepared and loaded onto a tray as it's prepared.
A second conveyor belt system can solve most of the waste disposal issues and can even properly sort recyclables.
For most of the cleaning of the restaurant, I recommend a rooba type robot capable of lifting chairs by their legs while vacuuming and washing the floor. Again pretty easy design... especially with the new Microsoft vision SDKs coming as part of the Hololens development kits.
Windows on the inside of the building should be pretty easy... adapt the roomba to have a squeegie. I am curious to try this one and will likely do so next week.
Bathrooms can be mostly cleaned using some of the "self-cleaning bathroom" technologies found at some of the European public facilities. It's not perfect, but it does work well enough.
I honestly don't see why it should be necessary to need more than one or two employees on staff at any time... and they should follow the steps told to them by a computer.
Of course, it would be better to pay that employee $15/hr before it becomes minimum wage and $20/hr when it does so a professional of some type is in the position instead of an unskilled laborer. They would spend most of their time managing when things go wrong and handling things the robots aren't versatile enough to do otherwise.
As for "robotic arms"
Some projectors don't require a lens swap. The Real D Z-screen (the most common 3D projection technology) just slides in front of the regular projector lens. It runs on a little track like an upside down curtain rod or a sliding closet door, so the switch from 2D to 3D takes literally two seconds to accomplish.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Sure, a $35,000 robot could run the fry station. At the McDonald's where my teenage son works, they already have a robot that prepares drinks for drive-thru customers. But they still need 2-3 employees to work drive-thru.
Those who cry that robots will soon take over all our jobs, forget just how many jobs there are in even a single McDonald's store. Taking orders, making shakes, fries, sandwiches, washing dishes, cleaning floors and restrooms (theoretically, at least), taking out trash, filtering fry oil, restocking condiments, baking cookies, and on and on. These $35,000 robots can each take over a single job. But they aren't as versatile as a human being, who can switch from job to job as needed.
Automation is hard and expensive. It will be quite a while before McDonald's no longer needs teenage employees.
there's a big problem with that logic...
so, you don't have employees that you pay 15$ / hour... means you have no customers to eat the junk food coming out the robots.
it's as simple as that...
unless, you end up paying way more taxes for the state to give to all those people that you fired, so that they can come in your mickeyD and eat the burgers.
think a little bit more, and it's similar to giving those burgers away, and stop using money altogether...
As someone who has worked in F&B, that is Food and Beverage for those of you who have never been a part of the Hospitality industry, I've thought about robots in the workplace for a long time. And by a long time I mean going back to when I was reading sci-fi by Harry Harrison who wrote about such places that were purely staffed by robots.
Knowing the nuances of F&B I honestly question that any of the robots that we have these days could replace a human worker. That is just because you see a "robot" that is able to flip some burgers is doing it's thing over and over and over but can it go to the back of the shop to get the frozen burgers out of the freezer? Can it clean up the burger that fell on the ground (oh it will happen) and is starting to stink? Can it do any of the other jobs that it has not been designed for?
There likely will be a point, very likely in my lifetime, that we have robots that are sophisticated enough to replace low level workers. That time is not yet. For right now my burgers are going to be made by humans and personally, downvotes incoming, I'd like them to be paid well.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Cant we make a robot to do the CEO job?
It's been long overdue that we replace mindless jobs with robots. There are so many jobs out there that should not be done by human beings.
The main reason it hasn't happened is that we cling to this outdated model of having to work for a living. Just for the moment make one step away from the hyper-competitiveness we've all been brainwashed into. Consider the productive output of your country to be a team result. (funny how "teamwork" is en vogue when it comes to producing something, but not when discussing the profits from it). Now consider the crazy idea of distributing the profit, or let's say half of the profit, among everyone in the country simply as a way to say that all of us in one way or the other contributed to it. Let the filthy rich keep the other half, fine with me, we don't have to put them up against a wall.
Imagine (to quote Lennon) if everyone in western countries were given a small income by the government, simply for existing. No conditions. Maybe you are working somewhere, maybe you are an artist, maybe you just make people happy around you, maybe you are taking care of a home and children. It doesn't matter, one way or the other, you are contributing to society.
If people had enough to survive, they would not be so willing to do mindless jobs for tiny money. Companies that rely on shit jobs would be faced with two choices: Pay enough for them to make it interesting for people to take the job, or replace them with machines. The amount of innovation this pressure would generate, can you imagine?
Let McD replace workers with robots. I'm sure 90% of the jobs there can be automated and it would be better for humanity if they would. A thinking, feeling being should not flip burgers for eight hours a day.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Good, maybe these robot workers can tell their robot friends about McDonald's so THEY can eat there, thus eliminating humans from the McDonald's equation at all, now that would be useful
You realize your entire post is the first half of my conservative answer, right? The one you called stupid.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The scoops are coming! The scoops are coming!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
ITYM DeFry. [cymbal]
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Nope. That is true for CFA, but not mcd.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Tech only gets cheaper. No matter what the minimum wage is, hell even if we bring back slavery and make it zero, sooner or later the robots would be cheaper than the workers. Companies around the world use the "we will automate" argument to suppress wages, but it's a bullshit argument because there is no way to escape the threat in it. They are GOING to automate everything that can be automated. At most the minimum wage change may accelerate it a little... so what ?
There is only two possible outcomes.
1) The one that has always happened in history repeats and the automation actually creates MORE jobs throughout the economy than it absorbs, including many new minimum wage jobs, the workers would then still benefit from the higher minimum wage (as would everybody else since taxpayers no longer have to subsidize company's wage bills by having workers that still need welfare to live).
2) This becomes the automation that changes the historical pattern, job after job dissapears - and we enter a world where everything can be and is automated. When that happens we will have to rethink the entire concept of wages and earning a living anyway. For starters, if we don't, all the rich people starve too - nobody will buy your products if nobody has money. The evidence suggests we're headed to that outcome, getting there a little faster or slower isn't going to change the scale of the transition. If that is where we go, then if anything, it happening a little faster may actually give it the force to overcome the legendary inertia of governments and conservatives (the ones who believe living must be 'earned' as a moral thing) a bit quicker and actually decrease the collateral damage as we figure out how to live in this new kind of world and economy.
Either way - the threat lacks substance, you can't make an efficient threat unless you offer the person you are threatening a way to avoid the outcome. Merely offering to postpone it a bit won't change anybody's minds (and it shouldn't, it's utterly irrational to change your mind based on a promise to postpone rather than prevent a bad thing).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
... regulation. Just because you can build a fully automated restaurant, it does not mean that you'll be allowed to operate it.
McDonalds is large enough to lobby for laws that will make such an idea non-marketable.
Just like the municipality-run ISPs, which have been feasible for more than a decade now, but are illegal due to lobbying of the big ISPs.
The robots are coming - that's a cold hard fact and there is no two ways about that.
But there is another hard fact: Humans need human interaction and they want interaction with humans that heightens their self-worth. One of the reasons I visit my favorite cafe and leave up to 150â a month there is because there are nice young ladies behind the counter, both cute snd polite, willing to take care of my cafe latte needs. I've got machines at home that could do the same thing but somehow those are not quite as good at smiling and holding a little conversation.
It's for that reason that a core of gastonomy jobs will remain, even if robots do most of the gruntwork.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Time to tax the sale, use and maintenance of robots to support the minimum basic income then.
Goes doubly for companies that shift their profits out of the country to avoid paying tax.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
McD has been automating everything they could for years. Replacing inefficient worker? Right, here is what they are going to do, blow a bunch fricken smoke about how its costing them profits.
Then in 2 years when their profits go up because more people at 15$ can actually afford thier crap food, they will SFU.
Yes, McDonalds is so crafty. They will be defunding the class that most often frequents their restaurants. Brilliant economics; destroy the economic base of those who buy your product... What could possibly go wrong?
"Moogs! Would YOU buy that for a quarter?" CMK
>The newly trained technicians who design, develop, install and maintain the robots will have the income to buy the fast food
Good luck selling fast food to people who almost certainly earn enough to eat anything else. Face it, fast food is the Earth equivalent to Dwarf Bread. Nobody eats it if they can find anything else.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
As evidenced by the incomes of judges. None of the public prisons ever thought of rewarding the judges who send them inmates they can put to work while billing the state for housing and feeding them. Just shows how fairminded the corporations are. At least they figured out that, if you want judges to send you lots and lots of people who really don't belong in prison for as long as possible because they committed the horrifying crime of truancy... you should pay the judges to convict, it's economic incentivising at it best. Surely you can only get better outcomes when the justice system is responding to market forces right ? The market does everything better right?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
We're talking about McDonalds... without worker spit their food would have no taste whatsoever.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If the wage continues to stagnate they will still buy the robots and dump those workers!
Of course, eventually, because as the technology improves, it also gets cheaper. But they're not going to do that for as long as human labor is cheaper, which is the entire point people don't get, you're accelerating the process toward automation. Wages are a result of competition. They're low because you're competing with other people who are willing to take the job for that wage. And the moment that technology improves to where automation can do your job, you're now competing with the cost of the machine.
Personally I think robots are the worst thing they'll ever do...
You might be right, and then those costs will be factored in when companies decide whether to automate or not. That said, all your examples are terrible, because they're solvable with replacing the jobs they're talking about and adding one human security guard. Still comes out cheaper.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
"That doesn't mean they should starve."
That is where the government comes in. A social safety net has value. It is not business's place to be the social safety net. Supply resources for the social safety net sure but not be it.
The problem is that too many people do not have skills needed today.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Labor costs only account for about 20% of the cost of a typical fast food item.
It's 14% of revenue. Industry standard. Below 14%, they start calling people in if business is expected to pick up; above 14%, they start sending people on break or dismissing them early. 20% would be huge.
People have done the math and McD's would only need to raise the price of a bag of french fries about 4cents to cover a $15 minimum wage.
14% of an $8 value meal is $1.12; $15 is 181% of $8.25. It's 92 cents extra for that extra value meal.
Even at 4 cents, that's 1 job lost per 412,500 boxes of small fries sold.
In reality, the total U.S. fast food industry revenue (total sales) in 2013 was $191 billion. That's $191,000,000,000. The cost of direct wages was 24.6%, which accounts for managers, district managers, corporate operations, and so forth; at the line, it's 14%, which *doesn't* account for minimum-wage workers (or anyone making $15/hr) up the chain.
Let's assume all minimum wage workers in the United States make $8.25/hr (MD standard, higher than $7.25/hr Federal standard) and that anyone making more than minimum wage makes more than $15/hr. THIS WILL SKEW MY NUMBERS LOW. Let's also ignore any non-direct wage, which will also skew my numbers low. That means *only* the cashier and burger flippers are getting raises; the managers, truck drivers, packing industry workers, and so forth aren't getting raises. If you don't work at the bottom rung in a Wendy's, fuck you.
14% of $191 billion is $26.74 billion. Multiply that by 1.81 and you get $48.40 billion. That's a difference of $21.66 billion dollars, or 1.3 million U.S. jobs lost. To put this into perspective: the United States gained 9 million jobs between 2010 and 2016; 1.5 years of population and job growth gone in one sweep is pretty big.
You have this ideal where it's like 53 cents extra for that $8 value meal, and you can afford 53 cents, so this isn't a big deal. Aggregate that 53 cents across the entire consumer base, and it turns into entire years's worth of wages for millions of people--wages that are going to fewer hands. It's still the same amount of spending per year, too: these people were getting paid before, they're getting paid more now, and others aren't getting paid at all; they don't magically have more consumer money to spend and create new jobs because they can't spend it until they earn it, at which point everything is slightly more expensive and the same impact occurs.
Remember: that 1.3 million jobs is *just* the direct impact of low-level line crew at McDonalds getting bumped from $8.25 to $15. It ignores any manager salary raises; it ignores janitors at corporate; and it ignores any sub-$15 wages in the domestic portion of the supply chain (we are obviously not raising minimum wage for the Chinese). Any of these things will eliminate more jobs.
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Consider that menial tasks like sweeping the floor, bagging the fries, and flipping burgers merits nothing like $15 an hour. It's an entry level job in a world where staying at entry level for life is commonly known to be a bad idea. People not able to make it on minimum wage are doing it wrong. This is why the United States doesn't need to bring in (or allow in) any more unskilled Third World labor. There aren't even going to be enough entry level jobs for those already living here.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Except that it's not a straight-up comparison between the employee and the machine. When the machine doesn't make fries, it's idle. When the employee doesn't make fries, they're cleaning, etc.
When the employee makes fries, he makes a mess. When a properly designed machine makes fries, it won't. A decent machine will be largely self-cleaning. The employee has to clean the fryolator nightly (if only to de-sludge and replace filters, and put the same shit oil back.) And then he has to clean the wall behind the machine, and the floor under the machine. At least, you pray that this happens nightly. During my stint in fast food, that was the practice, but it does not happen everywhere.
You're damned right it's not a straight-up comparison. The machine reduces your cleaning needs in the bargain.
You can't just design a machine that doesn't need to be cleaned. Everything that touches food needs to be cleaned. Food has to be removed from all the cracks and crevices. There are invariably parts of the machine which are more difficult to clean than others. It is inevitable, and those parts have to be cleaned too. Not doing this is asking for trouble- it is the main reason for the Blue Bell Listeriosis outbreak and countless other food recalls.
I agree that machines could be designed to reduce cleaning, but cleaning of automated food service equipment is a nontrivial and very important part of the operation. Taking the humans out of the work can actually cause unsanitary conditions. Most humans wouldn't use a spatula to flip burgers if the spatula was very dirty. They would clean it, or get another one. The machine is going to keep going because that's what it was programmed to do. The automated burger flipping mechanism may be buried inside the machine where it can't even be seen.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Still in business: http://www.westfieldwhip.com/
You can't just design a machine that doesn't need to be cleaned.
but you can design a machine that only needs to be cleaned occasionally.
Everything that touches food needs to be cleaned. Food has to be removed from all the cracks and crevices.
It can be designed literally without cracks and crevices, and with self-flushing systems for any parts where that's not true.
I agree that machines could be designed to reduce cleaning, but cleaning of automated food service equipment is a nontrivial and very important part of the operation.
Taking the humans out of the process is nontrivial, but removing them will actually improve cleanliness and quality! Every leaf of lettuce can be UV-inspected for contaminants before it's used and every slice of tomato can be checked for sugar content with laser spectroscopy and rejected if it's sour, let alone has a discoloration indicative of some defect. A human touch may be beneficial for more complex foods for the foreseeable future, but the sad truth of fast food is that the human touch is often primarily a vector for pathogens.
Most humans wouldn't use a spatula to flip burgers if the spatula was very dirty. They would clean it, or get another one. The machine is going to keep going because that's what it was programmed to do.
The machine will both clean its own spatula and scrape its own grill, and it will sense when the bucket is full and a robot will come to empty it. It's not 1985 any more. These days, we can use visual processing to determine whether a spatula (or grill) is dirty. I would scrape every time, and use visual processing to determine if I had been successful.
The automated burger flipping mechanism may be buried inside the machine where it can't even be seen.
Personally, if I were building an automated restaurant, I'd put the machines where they could be seen, with shutters to pull down to hide them if I needed to perform maintenance. People would come in just to watch the machines work. How very postmodern.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is no 'clean occasionally' when handling food. It's 'clean and sanitize daily', otherwise you start killing customers.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
My local grocery store tried that as well. The self-checkouts are mostly empty and now one of the stores selling points is that all (human operated) checkouts are open, Sat-Sun 10:00AM-10:00PM. It's nice as the time spent waiting in line is a minute or two and humans are much nicer to deal with then a machine that's always bugging you to follow a certain routine for theft prevention.
They also pay their employees better then minimum wage, treat them good enough that there is no talk about unions and their prices are about the same as the new Walmart and didn't change when Walmart opened.
They're also profitable as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What upsets me the most about $15/hour for fast food workers is that is more than we pay our social workers. Jobs that require a college education and help people. Any unskilled idiot who is willing to show up can work fast food, so why should they get paid more than other people who require college education and intelligence?
In your nicely formatted list, you can replace "Robots" with "Minimum wage workers", and it will still hold true. All that stuff is what MANAGEMENT would need to take care of, and a human one at that.
Who the f#ck is going to buy the burgers, then?
Humans are just better to deal with. I was "encouraged" by a store clerk to use the self-check once - the store clerk broke the 18 kg bag of dog food - what a mess. It would have been quicker to just do what I always do - use the human cashier. Friendlier too.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
We're talking about McDonalds... without worker spit their food would have no taste whatsoever.
And then there's the "secret sauce." Yuck!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I guess you don't live in a city that has food inspectors and lets the media publish the fines, etc.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Only 12 weeks maternity leave? What barbaric country still does that?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Ype. It's going to happen at a lower and lower cost point, so we'd better figure out ways to put money into consumers hands or we won't have any consumers left.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You'd be correct, except for "math". At $15 an hour full time, that's roughly $30k per year per employee. If I add another 33% for McDonald's INCREDIBLY GENEROUS benefits (lol) that's $40k. So a human is still cheaper by almost half, and you haven't begun to pay for electricity or maintenance on said robots, much less the software development, QA and maintenance contract costs, to say nothing of upgrades and safety training, insurance and safety cages.
I have no doubt that robots will eventually render all of us idle, but $35k per pop versus a minimum wage employee, the economics don't come close to working. This is FUD, plain and simple.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Agreed. FoxConn is dumping 60,000 employees for robots and their "minimum wage" is a something like a moldy loaf of bread for a 15 hour day... https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
As well as that I've read that 95% of what goes on in the restaurants, from where they get all the food, to the uniforms, and most of the profits go to... MacDonald's, Inc. And I mean, having to pay people a living wage just cuts into the CEO's bonuses and dividends *so* much....
mark
You have no clue. There are millions of working people in America working for cash. Almost everyone on SS disability to start.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Minor quibble, but the fast food places and restaurants I've seen only have one set of bathrooms for both customers and staff, so you can't get rid of those. Similar issue with HVAC.
I agree - there are plenty of ways to keep the place clean even with a mostly robot staff.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
This is what is happening: The Macroparasite, comprised of government, finance, and business, identifies and targets all assets of the mass of people in order to absorb those assets. Those assets are time, money, jobs, and anything else you can think of as an asset. The Macroparasite has been trying to turn them into money in its own pocket since the beginning of time. However, there have always been inefficiencies in identifying and absorbing the assets of The Mass. But with the advent of advanced computer and communications technology the Macroparasite has become extremely good at taking your assets. If you plot the advance of high tech against the wealth gap you will see what I mean. American industries could not have gone overseas at the rate they have been in recent decades without the revolution in computers and communications technology. Why did they go? They were transferred overseas to absorb your job asset and put the money in it's own pocket. The fast food industry would eventually absorb its jobs by way of robots even at a 3 dollar per hour rate eventually. It is not about the cost of workers; it is about the money workers take from the bottom line at ANY pay and benefits level. They are transferring the job asset of the mass into their own pockets and blaming The Mass for its greed to have a decent life....or any life at all. As for money, tuition increases are far beyond inflation and interest rates. The future debt load of today's graduate is unconscionable. The education business part of the Macroparasite, in its overarching greed, has realized that future earnings are an asset of a significant part of The Mass and it wants them. Student debt is now over one trillion dollars, more than all credit card debt. It used to be that an education was something you bought and paid for and the benefit accrued to you and your family over your lifetime. Not anymore. The benefit is rapidly being transferred into the pockets of the Macroparasite. Also, interest rates in this country have taken 400 billion dollars a year away from depositors in interest and transferred it directly into the pockets of the finance community part of the Macroparasite. And now it wants to take what you have in the present through NEGATIVE interest rates. Effectively saying that all you have belongs to them. As for your financial future, you don't have one. The U.S. Government part of the Macroparasite, by way of the Congress, Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve System, has saddled you and your children and grandchildren with about 100 trillion dollars of unsustainable debt and obligations. As for the rights asset of The Mass, look around you. Rights are under relentless assault by the Macroparasite on all fronts from free speech to gun rights etc. What can you do? Not much. Hyperliberals intent on saving everyone from everything, including your rights, and the smug, fatcat lobbyists of smug, fatcat corporations in conspiracy with a corrupt and incompetent government have stripped you, the citizen, of practically every form of influence. We even have a President who, in his recent State of The Union Address, referred to the American People as "noise." But you still have the vote. And if a sledgehammer is all they leave you to express your anger, perhaps you should swing it.
E Proelio Veritas.
Three points:
1) This is basic labor vs capital economics. Our monetary policy for the past 15+ years has basically made capital free. When given the choice between building an expensive robot factory vs one that uses labor, and interest rates are 2-3%, you might as well build the robot one. So there is less demand for labor and the value of labor declines = less wage bargaining ability.
2) McDonalds corporate charges a franchise fee of 12% of revenue (not profits). Since Pappa Ronald controls the cost of inputs (fries, burgers, etc) and the prices you can charge, that basically leaves franchise owners with one option for making money: screw over their employees. Corporate McDonalds averaged $5 billion in profits over the past few years, by the way.
3) Pay your workers a decent wage and charge prices that reflect actual value. I really don't care if my cheeseburger costs $1.50 instead of 99 cents.
Bullshit. The two times I neglected to gas up in PA I got fucked so bad in NJ.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Than McDonalds? Buying fresh hamburger and making your own. Tastes better too.
If you turn the restaurant into a vending machine there is no need for restrooms. :)
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
You have no clue. There are millions of working people in America working for cash. Almost everyone on SS disability to start.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of cheaters out there, but actually the US's compliance rate is pretty good in comparison to many countries (83% or so, that is by dollar so the per capita rate could be a lot lower if a few people are doing big dollar cheating). Do you have any reference to the idea that "almost everyone on SS disability" are cheating to a significant degree?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/as...
The odds of being caught cheating are fairly low, but they are not insignificant, especilly in cases where someone turns you in, and anyone working for cash has a lot of people who know about their non-compliance, and who have incentives to turn them in.
Why?
In Ye Olde Times, when there was actual scarcity and plenty of work, it was sensible (even required) to mark an individual's value by their contribution. But we're in, or at least very near, a post-scarcity society where production of goods and food for everyone does not require even a majority of the population to contribute.
Busy work can only do so much, and if we as a society keep placing profits/capitalism and low taxes/small government above all else there won't be much busy work to be had (and most of that can/will be automated away).
There are only two plausible outcomes I can see: blood revolution, beginning with food riots, or a universal income with programs aimed at stagnating the population and eventually decreasing it. We can't keep limping along with increasing income inequality forever.
There is no 'clean occasionally' when handling food. It's 'clean and sanitize daily', otherwise you start killing customers.
One of us has a certified food handler for a partner, and it's not you. It's not clean and sanitize daily, but as necessary — for example, when contaminated. At minimum that is daily. However, the machine can absolutely be designed to handle that step itself.
Putting the produce in pre-sealed containers dramatically minimizes contamination to begin with. The single largest source of contamination is a human hand, usually because it has shit on it. Minimizing human interaction is going to substantially reduce contamination. Taking the human hands out of the mix completely eliminates cross-contamination, as well.
The truth is that humans are dirty.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
One of us has a certified food handler for a partner, and it's not you. It's not clean and sanitize daily ... At minimum that is daily.
Alrighty, glad we cleared that up.
However, a more expensive machine can absolutely be designed to handle that step itself.
FTFY.
Putting the produce in pre-sealed containers dramatically minimizes contamination to begin with.
Meaning more waste that has to be hauled away... gonna make that robot more complex again?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Deductibles aren't cheap.
Putting the produce in pre-sealed containers dramatically minimizes contamination to begin with.
Meaning more waste that has to be hauled away... gonna make that robot more complex again?
It doesn't have to be waste; the containers can be reused. They can go out empty on the same truck that brings new ones in. And you are completely ass-backwards about the machine complexity; putting the food into special containers will actually reduce the complexity of the machine substantially. Firing bullets from a magazine is far easier than loading each one individually, and the same is true of tomato slices.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Crew use customer bathrooms - no savings there. Unless the customers are also robots, but what are tehy doing at McDondald's then...
Same HVAC requirements. Customers do still eat at McDonalds. They like to be cool. Robots prefer cool too, generally, for improved longevity.
Building size will still be the same. I see no reason for that shrinkage. Even maintenance service requires space. And people will still have to work in these locations.
Wait times won't change.
Consistency will improve.
Now the secret sauce will possibly be machine lube that drips because of overzealous maintenance workers... Some of our robots where i work... Ugh.
You'll still need more than one person there... Robots clean for crap in places like that. Someone still has to provide customer service. Drive through will still need a person. ATM type payments would really suck in terms of speed. And reduce customers.
The only thing that I could see robotized is making of sandwiches at current state of tech.
UV scanners, laser spectrosopy, and visual analysis means you're no longer talking about $35k robots.
I won't contest most of your points for a restaurant that's not solely drive-though, but the following have issues;
Someone still has to provide customer service. Drive through will still need a person.
-- Remote Call center in Podunk wherever for drive through, customer service, Building or quality issues etc.
ATM type payments would really suck in terms of speed. And reduce customers.
-- I haven't paid cash at a fast food joint in the last 10 years. All POS cc transactions and under $25 I don't even need to sign. Swipe and run. No ATM required.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
It doesn't have to be waste; the containers can be reused. They can go out empty on the same truck that brings new ones in.
More complexity.
Firing bullets from a magazine is far easier than loading each one individually, and the same is true of tomato slices.
Guns don't self-clean.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The CEO has 100,000 robotic employees and ZERO customers that can afford his products?
Guns don't self-clean.
They could, but that would add more complexity than the gun itself. That won't be the case with a self-cleaning hamburger machine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The government needs funding for that which, between the tax avoidance and hoarding by the rich and the gradual impoverishment of everyone else, is going to be increasingly hard to come by. Something is going to give. Donald Trump is just the start.
About 2333 hour. Good business choice.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
..... Those $35K robot will cost quite a bit in lost sales. Neo-Liberal corporate tools forget their customers are people, too.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Not at all like that. Buggy whip production wasn't automated. Buggy whips became obsolete. A totally different thing.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Remote call center for all that, yeah, I'd like to see that. One thing for some support, but food issues? Doubtful.
When I wrote ATM type, I meant POS... I like you, I just swipe - but pin and chip - see below... . However there are many many more who use cash.
And so far I have not seen a PIN and chip run smoothly for long - cards getting inserted incorrectly, wrong time, etc. Lots of issues that will slow down a drive through line or even in store, even if only 1 in 10 transactions has issues.
I am not a luddite in automation sense - my job success has been on the back of helping automating people's processes sometimes (rarely) to the point of eliminating said person (or job)...
The social consequences of all this are real interesting to think through...
In our case we are a small manufacturing company in the US. 16 years ago when I joined this company we where little over 300 people and extremely inefficient. Now little less than 200, and so lean it has exposed other negatives...
Gotta run...
Food trucks already exist prior to the robot revolution, but they haven't driven restaurants out of business.
To some businesses, switching onto machines right away seems like a good idea. Poor foresight I guess.
I would say that your post is one of the best posts I've ever since. There is a lot to it that should give people pause in trying to understand the effects of raising the minimum. With that said, the decision to switch to robots is not necessarily one that is 100% factual or objective, but one of instinct.
In this particular sentence I'm quoting, you suggest that early adoption might be poor foresight. But that is only for companies that are expecting early yields or if expected yields are the only consideration.
This doesn't apply to companies that are looking at the long term and from whom the additional cost up front is seen as a form of insurance against the risk of not doing the transition. You might want to adopt early to immediately assess the risk, to understand the nature of operations. You might to add the additional cost of an early transition because the transition can give you an edge (in terms of quality or quantity) against competitors.
A not-so-perfect analogy of swallowing upfront costs as a strategic move is Amazon selling its Kindle Fire line of products at a lost. It is natural for a business to run on the red for the first few years, or to operate on the red when trying to position itself favorably. So the decision to having an otherwise unnecessary cost upfront early one, by itself, is not necessarily poor foresight.
You do, however, highlight both 1) the real dynamics of robots phasing out workers, and 2) the acceleration rate of such workforce replacement.
It is at this point that we need to stop looking at this purely from a private business or economics point of view, and look at this as a matter of social/national policy. Sooner or later we are going to have to face some (or all of the following):
This nation needs to have a better social safety net, a better educated workforce (hopefully a workforce of autodidacts) and a simplified corporate tax code.
We have the capacity to do so. We simply lack the foresight and will (and we will pay for it.)
I understand that this is a CEO's argument against a $15 minimum wage... but isn't it more of an argument that the price of the robot is too high?
When the price of the robot drops (as technology inevitably will), it won't matter how much you pay your employees... in terms of pure cash, the employees will be replaced regardless.
I don't usually rewrite my programs just because a new machine is installed -- it always just seemed so much more efficient to load the same software on the new machine as the old machine. But then perhaps I'm a bit old fashioned - maybe there's some new fad I missed.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Relevant to the discussion of Robots?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
And so far I have not seen a PIN and chip run smoothly for long - cards getting inserted incorrectly, wrong time, etc. Lots of issues that will slow down a drive through line or even in store, even if only 1 in 10 transactions has issues.
I agree with you there. It's my perception though that this is an American problem. The rest of the civilized world has been using these cards for some time. We are late-comers to the PIN and chip deal.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
humans are much nicer to deal with then a machine that's always bugging you to follow a certain routine for theft prevention.
Yes, but that is because you assume that current self-checkouts are it, that's the peak of the technology, it'll never improve.
You're wrong. BADLY wrong...
https://youtu.be/eob532iEpqk
THAT is the future... or some form of it...
The idea of scanning items one at a time is stupid, it is only a matter of time.
Put it all in your cart, bag it as you go, walk out of the store, it charges to your card.
There won't even need to be checkout lines at all, you just come and go as you please, because the store knows who you are.
UV scanners, laser spectrosopy, and visual analysis means you're no longer talking about $35k robots.
UV scanner is a normal camera, some UV LEDs (some good ones, not the cheap ones that come in 5-for-$10 UV flashlights) and some visual analysis. Visual analysis is not only not that expensive any more but could be done by a dedicated server appliance used by all the robots. Laser spectroscopy is now doable with a $100 kickstarter dingleberry as long as you know what you are looking at.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This isn't some hobbyist building a robot in a garage, cobbled together from Arduino's, held together with duct tape to show off at the next maker fare. These will be fully developed and engineered robots, serviceable, highly reliable, with low MTBF and designed to work with food. These are industrial robots, in this market a simple welding arm can run $40k, a complete work cell can run upwards of $100k. Welcome to the world of product engineering
These are industrial robots, in this market a simple welding arm can run $40k, a complete work cell can run upwards of $100k.
Sure. So what? You can pay that off in a few years. It's almost affordable already. Hiring humans is expensive. MGI would torpedo the whole thing, by turning that around. But the money has to come from somewhere, and the rich don't want to turn out their pockets. They'd rather see the whole system come crashing down, and their slips of paper become meaningless.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Store operators care about one thing, Return on Investment. A business case that works based on $35k robots and $15/hr. minimum wage, may not work based on $100k robots. Sure a super burger machine "could" laser scan the tomatoes, and only pick the best lettuce, and IR view the patties to ensure they are at optimal temperature, and cost $100k, but does the business case still work at $15/hr. labor?
So more privacy invasions that 1/3rd of the population will resist or not be able to partake in due to other reasons such as bad credit or no bank account. Actually if under-employment keeps increasing it'll likely be more then a 1/3rd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
No, again you lack vision...
Paper money is only going to last so long, at some point everyone will have to go digital because the government will do it...
That is why it will work...
Raising the minimum wage will accelerate what has been happening for the past couple of decades.
Read an article recently that each McDonald's franchise only has a profit each year of about $150,000.00. I had to check that number and other sources agreed that was correct. The level of profit is thin. Eliminating employee costs and improving efficiency could make that profit much better.
As to raising the minum wage:
First, while there is an increase in entry level wages, eventually wages for everyone increases to cover the increased costs for goods sold by companies that employee minimum wage workers. So in fairly short order the person that was making minimum wage today is back in the same position, they can not afford basic rent and other goods on minimum wage. This will happen regardless of how much minimum wage is increased.
All that setting a minimum wage does is establish the lowest cost you can get someone to perform a job. Any business will pass along that cost to their customers, they have to in order to stay in business.
So while there is a short term improvement in entry level wages eventually entry level wages only buy the same amount or less of goods they did before.
Second, increase the wages at that level and companies will automate. This will reduce the number of entry level jobs. Jumping to $15 an hour in a couple of years will accelerate the move to automate. All positions won't be eliminated immediately, but as automation improves more and more will be replaced.
Third, our economy is moving ever quicker to automated systems. There are fewer factory jobs because of automation. As automation is pushed into the service industries, there will be fewer and fewer jobs. Eventually, the vast majority of people will never have the opportunity to work.
This raises the bigger question, how do people live when there are no jobs? A huge welfare state is not sustainable. But many of our politicians want to try that. Once you run out of other peoples money the system collapses. We are not quite there yet but getting closer every day.
How do you organize a society where production of goods is primarily automated and most people don't work?
Correct, those jobs were the entry level jobs back in the day. Now due to elimination of factory jobs and our country's move to a service economy what was an entry level job is all that is available.
Increasing the minimum wage feeds into inflation. So that is a short term remedy at best.
Very soon we will have an entire generation that will never have an opportunity at an entry level job like we had. No one will work. there will be no jobs. Everything will be automated. There will be fewer and fewer technician jobs as well as better self repairing machines are built.
We are headed toward a state where no one will have jobs.
Not clear how that will work out. A pure welfare state is not sustainable for very long. Other people.s money will eventually run out.
Is a $35K robot 'cheaper' than a $15/hr employee? Of course! If we are talking about a restaurant that is open from 6:00 am till 10:00 pm (16 hour day), seven days a week that $15/hr person costs over $87K/year - not including employer FICA, SS matching which makes a $15/hr employee cost more like $18.50. A $35K employee will pay for itself in well under 6 months - after that, it is essentially free labor, aside from maint/upkeep/power costs.
As you say, for those people that make minimum wage, where might they eat out most often? Robots don't eat either.
Yes but when a burger price soars to $10, people won't care if they order from a human or not.
These types of jobs were meant to be transitionary, not a career. And who thinks it's fair that fast food employees make the same rate as a fire fighter, for example? Prepare for job losses, and further complaints from those who don't understand why it doesn't make sense to earn that much cooking and bagging food.. ridiculous...
If you're only paying your firefighters $15/hour and total hours so that they don't get benefits, you deserve to DIAF.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Perhaps, though there is a lot to be said for anonymous money, which I'd think parts of the government would agree with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
14% of $191 billion is $26.74 billion. Multiply that by 1.81 and you get $48.40 billion. That's a difference of $21.66 billion dollars, or 1.3 million U.S. jobs lost.
You do realize that you've just argued that if "U.S. fast food industry" was "forced" to pay minimum wage of $15 - they would have to let go 1.3 million of their 1.6 million employees?
Which would be a bit tricky, cause then they would have to do the same job with only about 19% of their workforce.
So... not only are you arguing that they would have to fire most of their employees - they would also have to close shop. End of fast food.
Just so they would not be "forced" to continue to have the same growth in revenue, which would cover most of the $21.66 billion difference ($19.19 billion of it) by the far and distant future of - 2018.
And that's NOT including increased purchasing power OR higher growth due to positive publicity.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Perhaps, though there is a lot to be said for anonymous money, which I'd think parts of the government would agree with.
And the IRS would disagree... If it no longer became possible to move money around without the government knowing about it... :)
The CIA and various other 3 letter agencies like to self-finance, including rumours of counterfeiting, though I guess bits can be counterfeited. There is also the under the table gifts, contributions etc that many politicians would like to keep quiet about, not to mention the payments for hookers and blow, though those can be easily faked. What is hard to fake is all those pallets of $100 bills that the government uses for foreign policy reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The amount a company pays now at minimum wage, full time with benifits, it is cheaper to buy a new 35k robot every year. Basically if the minium wage did not change and even if the robot only worked for 1 year, you would probably break even. But the robots are going to last more than 1 year so blaming minimum wage is just a cop out for something they plan to do anyways because all they care about is the bottom line. Banks got ATM, grocery stores got self check out, these things did not occur because wages went up.
1. You can't yell at a robot (well, you can, but the satisfaction of being listened to - even unwillingly - isn't there... not that I advocate yelling at employees but unfortunately it happens). OTOH at least if the customer assaults the robot, they won't be hit with an assault/battery charge, they'll just hurt themselves and get maybe a lesser charge like destruction of property.
2. Didn't that automated restaurant in China go back to humans?
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
You do realize that you've just argued that if "U.S. fast food industry" was "forced" to pay minimum wage of $15 - they would have to let go 1.3 million of their 1.6 million employees?
False. Fast food workers aren't the only people with jobs. Did you really just argue that all U.S. jobs are fast food?
And that's NOT including increased purchasing power OR higher growth due to positive publicity.
All growth comes from consumer purchasing power, as consumers pay wages. You're concentrating the total income into fewer hands by paying some hands more income on purchases; that means there is necessarily LESS PURCHASING POWER.
The biggest defect in thinking is people going, "Oh, but the wage worker receives that money, so he has more buying power, and thus there's *more* buying power and *more* money moving around!" That doesn't work because the wage worker receives that money in the same time frame.
In other words: this year, $12 trillion are spent; if we raise minimum wage, $12 trillion are *still* spent, but somebody is receiving a bigger chunk of that--and somebody else is getting a smaller chunk. The cost of products has to adjust to factor that increased wage cost in, so those products which are supported by people whose wages increased are now more expensive, and the purchase of those precludes the purchase of some other product. Whoever's job supported those lost purchases is now no longer supportable, and that person becomes the "somebody else getting a smaller chunk"--as in UNEMPLOYED.
The next year around, the minimum wage employees have more buying power due to their more income... but the total buying power of all the wage income is less. It's reduced by the products which were output by the lost jobs. The poorest get richer, others of the poorest get poorer, the middle-class gets poorer.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
False. Fast food workers aren't the only people with jobs. Did you really just argue that all U.S. jobs are fast food?
No.
That's what you argued when you decided to present a raise in operating costs of fast food industry as "1.3 million U.S. jobs lost".
You do realize you imagined those "1.3 million U.S. jobs lost" out of "21.66 billion dollars" you calculated as a part of "the total U.S. fast food industry revenue"?
Not shoe industry. Not lollipop industry. "Total U.S. fast food industry."
Which you've argued will lose 1.3 million jobs. Out of 1.6 million total jobs in said industry.
In other words: this year, $12 trillion are spent; if we raise minimum wage, $12 trillion are *still* spent, but somebody is receiving a bigger chunk of that--and somebody else is getting a smaller chunk. The cost of products has to adjust to factor that increased wage cost in, so those products which are supported by people whose wages increased are now more expensive, and the purchase of those precludes the purchase of some other product. Whoever's job supported those lost purchases is now no longer supportable, and that person becomes the "somebody else getting a smaller chunk"--as in UNEMPLOYED.
Blah-blah-blah all jobs are digging ditches with bare hands so the entire cost of product is pure manual labor blah-blah-blah.
Which isn't true even with handjobs.
You are ignoring the fact that manual labor is a tiny part of the overall product price - while you're busy trying to prove that people making more money will actually be making less.
Which is not only immensely stupid as it is basically the argument that rich people are poor.
It is, again, proven wrong by your very numbers.
Even in your imaginary scenario the supposed cost increase is about 11.34% - while the wages of 1.3 million NEARLY DOUBLE.
I.e. Cost of life (i.e. cost of products and services) increases by less than 12% - while income jumps up by 81%.
Plus it's an instant injection of money into economy cause those people are already living on payday loans and working several jobs just to make ends meet.
Try to imagine what happens when a person working three jobs suddenly manages to live on "only" two jobs.
Will they keep slaving for that extra dollar because greed - or will they go "Holy shit! I can now sleep 8 hours a day AND see my kids - while paying all the bills and making more money. Is this that fabled American dream?"
What if they quit that third job? Will the business simply close their doors cause there's no one to sweep the floors?
Or will they hang a sign saying "Floor sweeper wanted"?
When the industry is paying wages which are below the poverty line for a single parent with two kids, then that parent MUST work two jobs for them to survive.
When that same parent is paid ABOVE the poverty line for a family of five - he/she doesn't need that extra job.
That job then does not get lost - it becomes a job opening.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Which you've argued will lose 1.3 million jobs. Out of 1.6 million total jobs in said industry.
What if people buy exactly as many hamburgers, spending the additional few cents, which erodes their buying power to purchase some other commodity good? Then jobs at Amazon are lost.
Every good and service is in competition with every other good and service. You have the capability to buy 1,000 things and there are 10,000 things on the market; 9,000 things will lose out. There are millions of people, so the total pool of all consumer capability to buy is divided up among all of those things, which creates all jobs. If any one of these things becomes more expensive without the total money supply increasing (inflation), then someone else's job must go away, because less of something else is bought.
You continue to argue that a price increase in the fast food industry can ONLY reduce purchasing of fast food items. The argument is that the TOTAL AMOUNT OF PURCHASEABLE PRODUCTS decreases. The total IN THE ENTIRE POPULATION. That means something doesn't get bought, and somebody's job goes away.
I.e. Cost of life (i.e. cost of products and services) increases by less than 12% - while income jumps up by 81%.
This is an infinite money argument. You argue that somebody has more money, thus there is more capability to buy.
Your argument ignores that the TOTAL INCOME PER YEAR of all people working is *THE SAME*. It's not one penny more; just some specific person has more money because the cost of the products they're helping to produce are now higher. Some other people are incapable of buying as many products because THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY BUYS FEWER THINGS. This means someone else's job must go away, as something isn't bought, and whoever makes that something now can't be paid a wage.
The key flaw is all of these people are still getting and spending the same money in the same time. That is to say: someone is now getting $30,000 instead of $18,000; and they're getting that money over a year of work. They don't instantly have $12,000 additional to dump into the next guy's salary and create new jobs. If they did, then we would all be infinitely rich because we all have jobs and we put our money "back into the economy" and it comes back to us and, by the end of the week, the feedback loop makes us all billionaires.
This is a common flaw in thinking by people with narrow minds who can only observe individuals and not economies. Donald Trump is a huge example of this kind of horrendously-broken grasp on economics, although he's a good solid step up from most people I've seen argue about minimum wage.
When that same parent is paid ABOVE the poverty line for a family of five - he/she doesn't need that extra job. That job then does not get lost - it becomes a job opening.
When I say jobs are being eliminated, I mean jobs. If there are 500 jobs being worked by 200 people because most of them have second jobs, some of those second jobs are going away--pack your shit, folks, we're going away!
You are, again, using some broken rationalization to imagine up where the jobs might go. I am saying the economy becomes poorer and less-capable of supporting jobs; you are saying CERTAIN people become richer and so no longer need their job, so the job becomes someone else's job--and ignoring the fact that some subset of such jobs actually vanish out of existence.
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And hoodlum behavior is only going to be a problem until the owners get to deploy automated, armored, mobile area denial systems, using microwaves, lasers, infra-sound, or whatever. When this happens, they will not even need to bullshit us with the excuse "We are doing this because of minimum wages". Seriously, guys. If you were not doing it now with a $35K robot instead of a $15 minwage peon, you were going to do it five years from now with a $10K robot instead of a $5 minwage peon.
There is no way around it. A number of low skilled jobs will get replaced with a few medium skilled ones (designing, building and maintaining the robots) and a few low skilled ones (running them and dealing with extreme deviation customers)
As for society as a whole, it will either will have to focus on providing comfortable lifestyles for those who are superfluous, or decide that they are no worth bothering with, and tune the laws so that they are easy to put out of sight. And if you think that have-nots will small arms will scare violence professionals and engineers unfettered by laws, you are an idiot.
Last year, I did not give a fuck, as both me and my wife think we are going to be useful or wealthy for long enough (MIT grads, six digit jobs, comfortable, paid for home, etc...) Six days before my 50th birthday, my daughter was born, and now we are ecstatic, but scared shitless.
All of a sudden, "Fuck everyone, I got mine" is not longer a sound policy. Now I have to worry, should I try to guide her to Lego Technics or bogu and bokken... and for the first time in my life I feel that maybe I should have focused harder on making money instead of enjoying what I do for a living.
No good deed goes unpunished...
The real issue is "Living Wage". $15 an hour which is just starting to gain traction isn't even enough money to rent a family sized apartment in many cities. And $15 was a substantial amount over the current Federal minimum wage. When the minimum wage is hiked, the wages above it are also often hiked. The key is to get people closer to a Living Wage which is closer to $25/hour in some cities. As we've seen, the market failed to provide a living wage for a substantial portion of its citizens with more and more falling into the crevice of poverty.