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Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense' To Replace Workers With Robots (grubstreet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Grub Street: Per Business Insider, Jack in the Box CEO Leonard Comma told an industry crowd that "it just makes sense" to swap cashiers for inanimate machines in the year 2018. Not because he thinks 2018 will be the year that fast food gets technologized so much as it's the year that Jack in the Box's home state of California increases the minimum wage to $11. In fact, wage bumps hit 18 states this year, with California on pace to become the first $15-wage state in coming years -- a prospect that terrifies industry executives. Jack in the Box has flirted with the idea of installing automated kiosks before. As early as 2009, it tested them out, and apparently found that they increase store efficiency and average check totals -- not bad at all if money's your bottom line. But according to Comma, the chain's executives balked because the upfront cost of converting from people to machines was still too great. What a difference a dollar an hour apparently makes: He told the crowd that with "the rising costs of labor," it's time to start thinking about automating restaurants.
Or, maybe it's the 10 years of advancing robotics and automation technology that has lowered the pricepoint to one that is acceptable. A decade is a long stretch for tech, and the price per performance is steadily dropping.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Never try to extort someone for more than the cost to have you killed.
Okay, I'm going to say it because everyone's going to make arguments that are overly complicated and the answer is actually quite simple. Other than 50+ year olds, pretty much you can take any modern register and turn it around to face customers instead and suddenly it is a self serve kiosk. Since 2006 to 2014 there's been massive leaps in the UI+hardware that you pretty much have registers that only require basic reading skills and the understanding of "touch based UI" to fully grasp. Cash registers pride themselves on things like minutes of training required for the average task, the end goal was to meet the needs of companies that literally need people fresh off the street being able to manage a till. This CEO talks about automation and it's clear he's suffering from IDTIMWYTIM. But whatever. The rise in minimum wage makes CEOs feel warm and fuzzy about doing something just like folks wearing black makes them feel warm and fuzzy that their countering gender inequality. We all know that they really aren't doing anything, but whatever. People like to point to useless gestures or baseless claims to justify a position that's always been happening with or without their input. At this point it happens so often that I'm pretty much convinced that the point of C-level staff in companies is pretty much gone. They exist at this point to sponge more money in their direction and that is all.
artificially raising the cost of labor beyond the market value
Dude, unless Crap-in-the-box can find some folks willing to work thirty cents an hour, it didn't matter what anyone did with wages, the writing is on the wall for pretty much all of us and no one with influence actually gives a flying fuck. But perhaps this will have the uptick that 80% of the world's population can finally die off and leave only the rich to suck each other's dicks. You know what happened when horse's were out matched tech wise? Better get used to saying neigh.
Except everything about your so-called "rule of business", whatever that means, is artificial. Everything above I-Takes-What-I-Wants-Or-I-Kill-You is artificial. There's nothing natural whatsoever about business. The minimum wage should be raised and automation taxed because those businesses are reaping the rewards of living in our nice society without returning anything. It's only because of those "artificial" things that society does (that you seem to hate) that even makes it possible for those scumbags to have a business in the first place.
then spend lots of tax dollars propping those people up with food stamps, etc, or just paying indirectly with theft and other criminal behaviour.
As opposed to the European way of making employees so expensive that you have 20% youth unemployment, who you then prop up with social programs, theft and other criminal behavior?
I'm not opposed to minimum wage (and frankly I wish we'd just tie it to inflation so we don't need to constantly adjust it). But lets not pretend that this will magically get people off of government assistance or eliminate crime.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is *exactly* what you should expect when you attempt to socially engineer a solution that violates the rules of business, in this case, artificially raising the cost of labor beyond the market value. One hundred percent entirely predictable, and predicted.
Sure, predictable, predicted. But go on and think through a bit further...
The GDP isn't lessened by switching to robots. As a civilization/society/country, we're not producing any less by this transition. If anything we have the ability to produce more. The only difference is how society's production is apportioned to everyone.
Some people believe that the right way to structure society is by using degrading low-paid jobs as a way to apportion a pittance to poor people. It sounds like you're in this camp. Is that because you believe there exists no other feasible way of apportioning, or because you think this is the best out of all feasible ways to apportion?
Raising the minimum wage is about ensuring that people are being paid well enough that they can afford room, board
Most people earning minimum wage are not doing it to pay for room and board. They are 2nd or 3rd earners in households that are, on average, above median income.
Raising the minimum wage does little to help the poor, since most minimum wage earners aren't poor, and most poor people don't earn the minimum wage.
A very small percentage of minimum wage earners really are sole earners for their household. But it is far better to help those people with targeted programs such as EITC.
Has increased productivity ever actually led to higher wages after inflation was considered?
Yes. Nearly every time. Incomes have stagnated since the 1990s, and especially since 2007, for exactly the opposite reason: stagnant productivity growth.
The problem in America is not "automation of jobs", but "lack of automation".
It hasn't in my lifetime, not even once... and I'm old.
How old? If you are 50, per capita income, after inflation, has nearly doubled in your lifetime. If you are not white and male, you likely did even better.
More importantly, incomes grew the fastest when productivity was increasing the fastest.
But there's a related question of whether the worker's productivity is actually greater than the cost of feeding and housing them. What happens when it isn't? In the first industrial revolution, the output of weavers using hand-operated looms dropped below the cost of providing them with food because the value of the thing that they were creating was significantly inflated by its scarcity, and that went away with mechanical looms. What should society do with people in this situation? Some you can retrain, but not all.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is not an "You think" or "I think". These are FACTS.
No-skill, minimum wage jobs are not, and NEVER WERE intended to be a lifetime "career".
That's not FEELINGS. That's FACT.
End of story.
It's like skipping school to go swimming in sewage treatment ponds. Then bitching because society doesn't subsidize your lifestyle.
It's not society's fault these people have either zero skills or zero ambition...
Hell, you have places like McDonalds where, yes, the initial pay SUCKS. But they provide you with opportunities to improve yourself in terms of employee value. Yet some dumbshits simply want to remain a fry cook for the rest of their lives. And you think they're somehow entitled not to be judged by society for being FAILURES?
Guess again child. Guess again.
Life is tough. Life is unfair.
You either rise by your own hand, or you fail. Nobody OWES you ANYTHING.
And be grateful for this bloated welfare state...Long ego, freedom meant that lazy people were free to STARVE to death (but for the charity of others).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And it wasn't earned by you either so demanding that it be stolen and given to you (in whole or in part) or to other people is theft. You're envious of how much money someone else has. You are not in the right here.
Why should gifts of any kind be taxed? The money was taxed when it was earned; no double-dipping! The legitimate answer (beyond "I'm envious of trust-fund babies and want their stuff") is "primogeniture is harmful to society". The tax code should strongly encourage the wealth from the grandfather to be split among many grandchildren, not concentrated into one. That still leaves the family wealthy, but most people are idiots, and thus most of those trust fund babies won't be leaving anything to their grandkids - spending is the best form of redistribution. Exceptions like the Rothschields are quite rare.
Taxing inheritance as income, but split over say 10 years, sort-of works, as the tax code is progressive. Saying the first $600k is tax-free but the rest is taxed works out about the same, which is the old system. Allowing millions to be tax free is a bit much.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.