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.

Comments

Of course

[Brett Buck]

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.

Re:Of course

[rkordmaa]

If you do the totals you get the same answer regardless, self service cashiers work out even in countries with 2-3x smaller minimum wage. You still need some cashiers to overseer the mechanical slaves, deal with customers experiencing technophobia or buying booze and tobacco.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

CEO's response totally predictable from a Capital perspective, robots don't need sick days. However, if you understand how a monetary system is supposed to work, you need money to flow. Without income how is money supposed to flow? 15 dollars an hour should have happened 10 years ago instead people are brainwashed into thinking 10 dollars is a living wage in the great U.S.A and among others.

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, companies needing minimum wage laws as an incentive to pay any wage at all are the problem. The CEO making these claims after the minimum wage went up by one silly dollar should be reason enough to not want to do business with him.

If you pay minimum wage, you are saying that you would've paid less if it weren't illegal. You are saying that economy will fail if we abolish slave labour. People have been saying that for centuries, and guess what... They were wrong too.

In your country, it is normal to need two or three jobs, working 90 hours a week just to be able to pay the rent on a lousy apartment and feed the kids.

I am saying that in a civilised country, you don't have too.

Re: Of course

[AvitarX]

But this is exactly what we want.

Increased productivity through automation.

This is a nudge towards natural progress, bringing the future a few years earlier.

The remaining employees will be more productive, and appropriately rewarded with more money. Jack in the box will have more sales, likely in high margin items (upsales tend to be).

Hopefully taxpayers won't be subsidizing Jack in the box employees as much as they are paid more too.

Re:Of course

[fredrated]

They don't have to due business in the state, they can take their business elsewhere if they don't want to pay a livable wage.

Re:Of course

[jenningsthecat]

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.

This is *exactly* what you should expect when you allow corporations to socially engineer a solution that puts greed above society's well-being, in this case by anthropomorphizing, hallucinating intelligence and purpose in, and then outright conferring godhood upon, "the market". One hundred percent entirely magical thinking, and getting old and stale really fucking fast.

Re:Of course

[lucasnate1]

And in a free market, exactly what is supposed to happen when the price of food is higher than one's salary?

Re: Of course

[AvitarX]

Well, if they are producing more (increased sales) with less people, the first statement is true.

If the minimum wage bump leads to them making more, the second part of the statement is true.

I'm not going to bet on the veracity of the summary, but if it's true they'll have less people producing more and getting paid more (as claimed) then it's true.

Re:Of course

[lucasnate1]

Automating consumers - that's what advertising is about.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

The CEO making these claims after the minimum wage went up by one silly dollar

The minimum wage went up $1 on Jan 1st, but it will continue to rise a total of $5. Meanwhile, the cost of automation is coming down.

Expect to see most cashiers and order takers disappear from fast food joints, as they are replaced by kiosks.

This is a good thing, since the purpose of jobs is creating goods and services not "keeping people busy". We have a full employment economy, so these people can get new jobs where they do something useful.

Re:Of course

[slack_justyb]

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.

Re:Of course

[rsilvergun]

Automated killbots.

Re:Of course

[lucasnate1]

And if you dont show some initiative, you deserve to die, that is what the fanatic capitalist right says, am I correct?

Re: Of course

[PoopJuggler]

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.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

But this is exactly what we want.

Increased productivity through automation.

Of course, but most people don't see it that way. They tend to believe that all past productivity improvements are GOOD and the foundation of our prosperity, but all productivity improvements occurring now, or in the future, are BAD and are destroying jobs and pushing us into poverty.

This cognitive dissonance has been observed since the invention of the steam engine and automatic loom.

Re:Of course

[CQDX]

The question is then will it be the people that riot? Or will it be the fast food robots when they become sentient and realize flipping burgers for free really sucks?

Re: Of course

[hackwrench]

But if you can't survive off them you can't make it to a higher paying job.

Re: Of course

[hackwrench]

We had a nearly full employment economy, nearly, and now "employees" with very little consumption desire are coming in.

Re:Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

McDonald's would still be profitable with a $50/hr minimum wage.

Bullcrap.

Annual payroll expense per McDonald's restaurant: $602,000

Annual net profit per McDonald's restaurant: $153,900

Even a 25% increase in payroll would put them out of business. There is no way they could absorb a 300-400% increase, which is what you are claiming.

McDonald's cost vs profit

Re:Of course

[DogDude]

You apparently cannot understand hyperbole. Look it up. Think about it. You'll say fewer dumb things.

Re:Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

And in a free market, exactly what is supposed to happen when the price of food is higher than one's salary?

That tends to happen much more often when free markets are absent.

Re: Of course

[blackomegax]

I've never seen an emotional appeal fallacy, red herring, and straw man combined so efficiently. Kudos.

Re: Of course

[AvitarX]

There will be less people selling more = more productive

They will be paid more (minimum wage increase).

Whether or bit it's appropriate can be debated I suppose, but they will be more productive and better paid.

If minimum wage didn't go up, Jack in the box was going to wait until the tech dropped a little in price and have the remaining employees be more productive and not paid any extra.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The wage is only a symptom of the problem, and therefore fighting that symptom will not have the result you expect.

The problem is the debt based monetary system with governments rampantly stealing from the future by borrowing like crazy from private banks. In the end, these politicians make out like bandits, and the bankers own everything. In the meantime, currency is devalued, taxes skyrocket to pay the interest, public assets are sold into select private hands at discount prices, jobs disappear as businesses are forced to grow their profits exponentially or be destroyed by investors.

The system itself is broken and nobody in politics except Ron Paul ever talks about it, never mind getting around to actually fixing it. There are so many in power who are dependent on this system that they will never give it up willingly. Good luck tearing it from their hands. Collapse is inevitable.

Re:Of course

[Zaelath]

Where as in the US you pretend you can have a minimum wage below the poverty line then spend lots of tax dollars propping those people up with food stamps, etc, or just paying indirectly with theft and other criminal behaviour.

Regardless of the stupid FOX talking point crap in this thread, people aren't just going to die because you think they should try harder.

Re: Of course

[bondsbw]

If you pay minimum wage, you are saying that you would've paid less if it weren't illegal.

I would pay less taxes if it weren't illegal. I'd pay less for just about anything if given the chance.

Regardless, there's a point where you won't pay more. That's the real issue here. Doesn't matter if it's automated or manual, there is a point where it's just not worth it.

Society thinks people should have a minimum standard of living. Great! I agree. Then society should pay for it. Stop forcing employers of low-skill workers to bear the weight of wealth redistribution. Put it in the tax code, which is more directly under the control of society.

Re:Of course

[Mashiki]

A 25% increase in pay would bankrupt the restaurant. Food prices are *set* by the corporate office, not the franchisee. This is the reason why here in Ontario when the min. wage jumped to $14/hr businesses started laying off employees and cutting back on previously "good will gestures" such as bonus pay. The restaurant industry is cut-throat and operates on a profitability margin of 3-6%. That's far more then even a small gas bar, which has a profitability margin of 1-3%, they don't make their money from selling gas(which is also sold at a preset price, most stations make 0.02%-0.038% profit on fuel). They make their money on drinks/food/snacks/etc.

Re:Of course

[fahrbot-bot]

Automated killbots.

Killbots have a built-in limit of 999,999 kills each.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

Expect to see most cashiers and order takers disappear from fast food joints, as they are replaced by kiosks.

Expect more people to nuke fast food at home or work.
If there's no value added to going to a "restaurant", like human service, why go?

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden most fast food chains replaced human cashiers with machines. It's a much nicer user experience. Note that Sweden does not have a minimum wage; we do have unemployment benefits (80% of previous salary for a limited time) or social security (if your spouse is also not employed) and as such you can't pay nothing because the government would give unemployed people more than your salary would be. The other factor is unions; union jobs have pay scales (starting salaries; different scales for youth). McDonald's usually hires young students since the minimum wage they can pay is lower; and their workers are unionized because otherwise nobody would visit McDonald's...

Re:Of course

[arth1]

Food prices are *set* by the corporate office, not the franchisee.

This does not appear to be true. Whenever McDonald's has an advertising campaign for a dollar menu or lower prices, it is always followed up with "at participating restaurants". You won't find prices at mcdonalds.com, because they vary.

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]Furthermore, working the fast food counter is supposed to be a kid's summer job and off hours for college and pocket money or first car. It is not living wage work for adults. If fast food is your family's primary source of income then you have failed at life and see above about condoms.[/quote]

And those kids should be paid appropriately for doing a shitty job that adults by and large don't want to do.

Re:Of course

[arth1]

It was one hundred percent entirely predictable, and predicted to happen when the math made sense. Better we start dealing with some of this sooner rather thank sticking our heads in the sand.

We've dealt with this since the 1950s. Vending machines is nothing new, even ones that heat your food for you.
People don't go to vending machines for dinner - they want the human touch, and are willing to pay for it.

Re: Of course

[Zaelath]

Yeah, that's exactly the same tired, pointless argument I referred to. NO ONE CARES that you think they shouldn't exist, or that minimum wage is "supposed" to be a starter job, they will do whatever it takes to survive regardless of your politics.

Do you honestly think the rich keep welfare systems going out of the goodness of their heart, or because it's cheaper than rolling around in APCs between fortified encampments a'la South Africa?

Re: Of course

[arth1]

The robotic cashiers and burger flippers are pretty cool but try telling them to mop the floor and take out the trash!

They and their families also don't eat at burger places, so the overall number of paying customers will go down too.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

There will be less people selling more = more productive

They will be paid more (minimum wage increase).

Now multiply A with B. Unless the remaining workers are paid more than the sum of workers were paid before, it's a net loss for the working class. (And if they are paid more, automating is bad business.)

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:Of course

[ClickOnThis]

I'm not sure how much a 10% price increase would effect sales though.

I think you mean "affect", not "effect."

You can affect an effect, but you can't effect an affect, unless you're in the same business as Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro.

But then again...

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

However, if you understand how a monetary system is supposed to work, you need money to flow.

A monetary system is meant to support economic activity. It "works" by providing a reliable, trusted, and standardized means of exchange so that we don't need to barter physical goods all the time or work out complex currency transactions. It is not "supposed to work" in the way you mean. If all you need is money to flow, then just letting two computers bat it back and forth as quickly as they can would make us all fabulously wealthy.

What you need to lift everyone's standard of living is wealth creation. You don't create wealth by artificially supporting someone's wages, be it through direct government assistance (food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, etc) or indirect assistance like minimum wage. I'm not smart enough to know how to take an untrained - possibly untrainable - adult and make them into a generator of wealth, but I do know that your ideas about the velocity of money are not what you think they are. I'd start by improving and equalizing access to education, and putting into place an incentive structure for government safety nets which rewards the bureaucrats for getting people back on their own two feet.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

That'll create some jobs! Just wish away the bad ones!

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

The problem is that Ron Paul also talks about currency like it should be an investment rather than a means of exchange, and so it's hard to take him seriously.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

I'm not sure how to respond to your comment. We don't typically hit Wendy's as a night out on the town - we usually hit Wendy's when we are already out and want the convenience of a fast meal. The "human service" at Wendy's is generally the least-pleasant part of the whole experience.

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are man made things "artificial"? That makes no sense. Is a beaver dam or an anthill or a bird's nest "artificial"? What makes us any less "natural" than any other life form? Everything that exists, man made or not, is natural!

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Condoms are free. Their parents shouldn't have had children they could afford to educate properly to the level required to become self sufficient productive members of society.

Condoms aren't free. And self-sufficient productive members of society is an oxymoron. By the very definition, all those in society are reliant on others. Now, go out in the woods some where and live off hunter/gathering and/or farming, and you have some argument.

Furthermore, working the fast food counter is supposed to be a kid's summer job and off hours for college and pocket money or first car. It is not living wage work for adults.

Yes, because obviously fast food work is wholly seasonal workers. Meanwhile, in what world do you live in where fast food work pays enough in "off hours" for college or a first car? It's funny thtat you aren't it can't be a living wage "for adults" and then really start pushing the notion that it's enough money to do all sorts of other things where it's pretty ludicrous for.

If fast food is your family's primary source of income then you have failed at life and see above about condoms.

Whatever the honorable sir should mention upon the breathe of income upon another who does considerable time upon the actions to enrich a company but for which there is so little regard for the person who does these things, I say to you that one fails to understand what employment means and upon which actions people should be reasonably considered.

It is not my nor anyone else's problem nor responsibility to take care of people who can't be bothered to take care of themselves when perfectly capable and had every opportunity to do so.

So, no fast food then. Or most retail jobs. Or really lots of different work that is done. That solves that, then.

Re:Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

You added the "manager payroll" into a talk about raising minimum wage.

If the minimum wage is going to $50/hour, even the managers would be getting substantial raises.

A shift manager makes about $2/hour more than a burger flipper.

General managers at McDonalds average about $46k/yr, which is about $23 per hour. So their salaries would need to more than double.

Your claim that McD could afford to pay $50/hr is totally ridiculous. Why would you even say something so absurd?

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't earn it from your own hard labour, then you're not successful, you're a parasite. We have an entire economic/corporate heirarchy built on the concept that you get paid more the less actual work you do. Shareholders, managers, executives, CEOs, inheritors, landlords... All parasites.

Re:Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

A typical McDonalds does not employ ~30 full time people.

LET'S DO MATH!!!!

There are 14,146 McDonald's in America. McDonald's has 1.5 million employees. That is over 100 employees per restaurant.

Of course, some of them work in distribution, corporate administration, etc. and not at restaurants. Many of them are part time. But 30 full time equivalents per restaurants seems reasonable.

Now lets look at one restaurant that is open from 5am to midnight. The workers need to be there an hour before opening and an hour after closing. So that is 21 hours per day, for 7 days per week, or 147 hours per week. 30 full-time equivalents would be 1200 hours per week. 1200/147 = 8 workers in the restaurant at any time. That seems about right to me.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

If there's no value added to going to a "restaurant", like human service, why go?

Restaurants that have drive through windows typically get 50-70% of their business from people sitting in their cars and shouting into a microphone.

People do not go to fast food joints for "human interaction".

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Murica vs. The rest of the West

Ideologically, minimum wage in most Western nations *is* intended to be a liveable wage (usually measured in some shape or form against CPI or whatever measure governments find suitable). If a person is worth hiring for 40 hours a week then they're worth being paid enough to live semi-comfortably for their labour.

It's only in the United States of Freedom(tm) that people spew the screwed up notion that minimum wage is OK to put a person below the poverty line because it's only temporary and if they don't move up the pay heirarchy then they're terrible people who should probably starve/freeze anyway.

Re:Of course

[ljw1004]

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?

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

Clearly you don't understand what automation is capable of. For one, it can assemble and wrap a burger perfectly. It can grill 25 burgers at a time all cooked to order. It can make food much better than the human robots it will replace.

Re:Of course

[Xarius]

Guillotines, last time this happened in the west.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

A job is better than being replaced by automation. Keep artificially raising the cost of labor, and all you'll accomplish is hurting the people you're trying to help.

Re:Of course

[Z80a]

To not mention cranking the crank of the mechanical workers.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

When and where exactly was this golden age when rich people weren't rich?

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

It's amazing how the concept of a kitchen changes when you remove the need for it to be usable by humans. I doubt that kitchen would even have something you'd recognize as a floor. And machines don't throw trash in a trash can. Waste disposal is automated as well, neatly compacted for the robotic garbage truck to pick up.

Re:Of course

[Bartles]

I fall to see how ops argument and yours are mutually exclusive.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Of course

[dryeo]

Yet Tim Hortons could afford to hire people at $16-$20 an hour in Ft McMurray and other places with an actual shortage of labour and still serve $1 cups of coffee, t least until the economy crashed and resulted in a surplus of desperate workers. Hard to wade through the articles on the Tim Hortons owners who think running a franchise should pay millions but here's one article, https://www.yukon-news.com/new...

Re:Of course

[eneville]

If we take this headline to the extreme and replace every worker with a robot, then there would be no jobs to generate revenue, the economy would soon fail. Nice idea, but somewhere along the line you need to employ people to earn money to buy wares and pay taxes. I like the idea that a robot should also get a minimum wage.

Re: Of course

[religionofpeas]

I am saying that in a civilised country, you don't have too

No, you are saying that in a civilised country, that's how you'd like things to be. There is, however, no law of nature that says that there's enough economic output to give everybody a decent quality of life. Just because you're "civilised" doesn't change that.

Re:Of course

[Kjella]

And in a free market, exactly what is supposed to happen when the price of food is higher than one's salary?

If there really was people starving to death there'd be a famine declared and the UN, Red Cross etc. would bring emergency aid. But I guess that was mostly hyperbole?

Re: Of course

[edtice1559]

Condoms are not free. But if you recall, one of the mandates of the Patient Protection and Affordable care act was contraceptive coverage.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

When and where exactly was this golden age when rich people weren't rich?

According to both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders the "Golden Age" was the 1950s.

Back then, people had jobs for life, everyone could afford a house, no one was poor, and America was Great.

Of course, that is total bullcrap. Average job tenure is higher today than it was then. Home ownership rates are higher today, and houses are also significantly larger. Poverty was a much bigger problem then. Even white men are better off today, and minorities and women are far better off.

Most nostalgia is nonsense, especially about the past.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

Unless the remaining workers are paid more than the sum of workers were paid before, it's a net loss for the working class.

You are assuming, almost certainly incorrectly, that the replaced workers will not be able to find jobs elsewhere.

The cost savings from automation will be passed on to either consumers as lower prices, freeing up money to be spent on other things, or as higher wages for remaining employees, giving them more spending money, or as higher profits for shareholders, giving them more capital to invest in other businesses. All of these will lead to more jobs elsewhere in the economy, which is historically what has always happened when productivity improves.

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 18.9%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re: Of course

[Reverend Green]

Sub-living-wage employment is a drag on society. Those "businesses" survive only because the public subsidizes their labor costs - directly through welfare programs or indirectly through crime and social degradation. It is therefore a net economic benefit if those loss-making (before subsidy) businesses are eliminated from the market.

Re:Of course

[Reverend Green]

ALL workers are "wealth creators". The education/training canard is just a distraction. The question is: Shall workers retain enough of the fruits of their labors so that they may eat, live indoors, and otherwise "have a life"? Or shell workers be forced to accept a starvation wage, so that all the remaining fruits of their labor may flow into the pockets of capital owners?

Re: Of course

[Reverend Green]

We have a full employment economy

What a delightful fantasyland you inhabit...

Re:Of course

[rkordmaa]

All else being equal? Sure. But if there is a 10min queue at the cashier and no queue at self checkout? Stores adjust how many cashiers are working to always have a slight queue both to minimize labor costs and in the hopes that the customer makes a last minute impulse buy from small items and sweets placed near the cashier.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

But less than 1% of fast food joints have a drive-through.

More than 70% of McDonald's outlets have drive throughs.

40% of Starbucks have drive throughs.

Nearly 100% of Jack-in-the-Box outlets have drive throughs.

Some factoids:
Drive through customers tend to spend more than walk-in customers, especially on combo meals.

Drive through servers will speed up or delay orders to keep the queue 3-4 cars deep. With shorter wait queues, people order less. Longer wait queues, and people drive off and go somewhere else.

Re:Of course

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Of course

[umghhh]

You will not find a completely free market even in failed state. Go to Somalia to see how that works in hardly functioning one. There are limits and rules even there. The fact is that commies to which you refer only claimed suspension of market economy while what they did is heavy handed controls of everything including expression of one's mind. We still used money in allowed and also in not allowed ways (black market). I have never been to NK but I am sure with all their ideology it is only that - ideology and they use some sort of market system possibly even with (omg) money. Human societies developed many ways of fixing the problem of hungry people not being able to find means of earning the living. This goes from summary executions, trough charity, limits on residence in some areas to state sponsored welfare programs. I suppose besides summary execution some mix of state violence to prevent looting and overflowing of the area by beggars from elsewhere and welfare and charity is working in almost any country in this world. The q. here is: which of these methods should be sponsored by the state and in particular if the state can force businesses to provide minimum wage. I do not know the answer and I suspect it is different depending on the society and current conditions. Claiming however that minimum wage on its own destroy business is just not supported by facts.

Re: Of course

[Daemonik]

Society thinks people should have a minimum standard of living. Great! I agree. Then society should pay for it. Stop forcing employers of low-skill workers to bear the weight of wealth redistribution. Put it in the tax code, which is more directly under the control of society.

Then the oligarchs who want to scrape every cent out of the public's pockets pay for Senators to rewrite the tax code to redistribute it back into their pockets.

Re: Of course

[Daemonik]

We also had much much higher tax rates, because that generation understood that wars have to be paid for and letting your previous enemies fester in devastation is both counter to economic prosperity and a recipe for future strife. Domestic economic issues were more a factor of retooling from war production back to civilian production, with commiserate layoffs as wartime factories were shut down.

Re: Of course

[Daemonik]

Yeah.. and those automated compact food factories have no idea if they've been infested with roaches or rodents or if a bottle of industrial solvent is leaking into the milkshake machine.. progress!

Re:Of course

[Daemonik]

Reminds me of Costco vs SAMS.. Costco has a union, with benefits making $17+ an hour vs SAMs minimum wage part-timers told to make up the difference through welfare.

Re:Of course

[Daemonik]

Let's all first admit that "Capital" is a retarded animal.. if JitB's CEO is worried about profitability he can just announce JitBCoin's and Wall Street will go nuts shoving money at him.

Re:Of course

[wisnoskij]

This has far more to do with technological progress.
At the end of the day people hate food service workers. Many people hate tipping, and no one at all trusts them with our food.
Raising wages or not, a restaurant could charge more if it removed minimum wage workers and replaces them with robots.

They could raise prices 5-10% and due to tipping no longer being an issue, it evens outs.
Or people would just flat up pay more not to have to wonder if someone spit in their burger.

Re:Of course

[lucasnate1]

Sure thing, because having no public health just makes everybody less sick

Re:Of course

[lucasnate1]

Doesnt happen - this is the answer of a religious man wwho believes that his god will automagically prevent bad scenarios from happen.

Re: Of course

[Daemonik]

There will be more people without sufficient funds to buy Jack in the Box's products, so fewer sales, so less profit.

Prices will be expected to drop, since they're not paying all those pesky humans, so less profit.

If the CEO is willing to cut it's workforce for robots, where else are they cutting corners? Lost sales due to suspicion, less profits.

Re:Of course

[lucasnate1]

You can just progrran them to orgasm from flippin burgers, that way they will enjoy it even though it is tedious - just like we enjoy procreating.

Re: Of course

[Curunir_wolf]

And what creates wealth? Manufacturing and agriculture. Turning something useless into something useful. The majority of which the weathy West has offshored to China and other cheap labour nations.

Meanwhile the West just pushes money around in service and banking industries creating no wealth at all, just redistributing what's left into the hands of thoss that already control the system.

That's pretty much true, but that wealth (agricultural and manufactured products) are not much good if you can't trade them. You just end up with wheat you can't use or shoes no one will wear. From the first time civilizations began trading, lots of wealth was captured by those that enabled that trade. The middle east grew fat off the trade on the Silk Road, from goods moving to and from China and Europe.

That's still where a lot of wealth flows to today, but it uses a lot more abstraction.

Re: Of course

[Curunir_wolf]

Actually, companies needing minimum wage laws as an incentive to pay any wage at all are the problem. The CEO making these claims after the minimum wage went up by one silly dollar should be reason enough to not want to do business with him.

... as if I needed another reason to NOT go to Jack-in-the-Box. I'm still amazed the thing is still around, after making so many people sick.

Re:Of course

[Mashiki]

Yet Tim Hortons could afford to hire people at $16-$20 an hour in Ft McMurray and other places with an actual shortage of labour and still serve $1 cups of coffee, t least until the economy crashed and resulted in a surplus of desperate workers

No, you don't understand. Tim Hortons could afford to hire people at $16-22hr because the average person there was making 100k-250k as their starting wages, there was more disposable income, more people buying things at those stores. On top of that those Tim Hortons stores were CORP owned, not franchisee. The franchisees failed to make enough money and had to turn their business back to the corp.

If you were in Fort Mac and making $22/hr? You couldn't afford rent and food. $10k/mo for appt rentals was a thing at the time there.

Re: Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not my nor anyone else's problem nor responsibility to take care of people who can't be bothered to take care of themselves when perfectly capable and had every opportunity to do so.

Spoken like the true asshole you are.

Re:Of course

[Mashiki]

This does not appear to be true. Whenever McDonald's has an advertising campaign for a dollar menu or lower prices, it is always followed up with "at participating restaurants". You won't find prices at mcdonalds.com, because they vary.

That's because a franchisee can opt out of the "dollar menu" options if they're not making enough money. The idea of that menu is to draw in more people to buy more things at the regular price, and with luck offset the cost.

A big mac is the same price in London as in Toronto, as in Ottawa. But not the same price as in North Bay or Sudbury, though the same in North Bay and Sudbury.

Re: Of course

[Daemonik]

Well, if you work in an environment where your boss sees you as a liability and not an asset and pays you minimum wage because they can't legally pay you less, then I suppose you'd hate your job too.

As for tips, most sit down restaurants are worse than fast food because not only are they being paid under minimum wage (in exchange for those tips.. which aren't that much during lunch shifts or non-weekend shifts) people tend to treat the wait staff as more of their personal servants for that big $3 tip they intend to splurge on. Or the comedians who ask for all kinds of personal attention and then their "tip" is a handwritten note to find a better job on the bill.

Tips are not an incentive, they're a carrot on a stick that management waves around as a promise that despite their massively low wage, they might MAYBE make enough if they work really hard.

Here's a "tip" for you.. Americans do not value hard work. Oh, we'll wax nostalgic about it, but a guy digging ditches isn't making more than the average golfing CEO either. We only use that hard work line when it's someone else working for us.

Re:Of course

[DaMattster]

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.

You're incorrect. You fail to take into account certain demographics. There are a large number of the baby boomer generation that do not and cannot use computers well. These folks will simply stop patronizing fast food establishments that use this kind of automation. Computers can and do fail and when they do not work optimally, people become impatient. In the case of people ordering food from a kiosk, if that kiosk does not work 100% correctly, people will just get frustrated and leave. Since computer software is notoriously buggy with freezing and slowness, how long do you expect someone to wait to order food from a computer when the order taker might actually be a little bit faster? Being a hardware tech for computerized kiosks, I see problems with touchscreens, coupon readers, and bill collection units all the time. If I were forced to use one of those, I think after the second time it fucked up, I would be straight out the door.

Re: Of course

[MitchDev]

Inheriting millions is NOT "earning" anything... shuffling stocks to make more money is not "working" or "earning" anything.

Tax wealth (not just income) at 90% above 5 Million....

Re: Of course

[Hodr]

I can count on zero fingers the number of times I went to a fast food restaurant to interact with the folks working there. And that even counts when I had family working at one.

Re:Of course

[Hal_Porter]

There was an interesting report on Seattle's minimum wage which found that while employment for Seattle grew, employment for people affected by the minimum wage grew less fast.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

But now we have a report on exactly what has been happening in Seattle's labor market.

Seattle's labor market has thrived since the city became the first major metropolis in the country to pass a law setting its minimum wage on a path to $15 per hour.

The city's job-growth rate has been triple the national average, for example.

Much of that success, though, can be attributed to trends separate from the minimum-wage law itself, such as the growth of Seattle's tech sector and its construction boom, according to a new report that University of Washington researchers presented to the City Council on Monday.

I have no problem with any of that. Employment is up, unemployment is down. But those other factors entirely swamp the effects of a minimum wage change. The report also notes:

Pay for low-wage workers climbed more in real Seattle than in synthetic Seattle, while their employment rate and hours climbed slightly less.

That's the important finding here. Employment rates and hours climbed because the economy is booming. But they climbed less in areas where the minimum wage was raised than they did in areas where it was not. The difference between those two is the employment lost to the higher minimum wage.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/0...

In 2014, Seattle voted to gradually hike its minimum wage to $15 an hour, with the rate jumping from $11 to 13 last year. Yet on average, low-wage workers have made $125 per month less.

That's a key result of a new University of Washington study that found that the hourly wage hike could in fact be costing jobs. The study, released last week, examined low-wage employment within the city of Seattle from 2014 to 2016.

"What we found," study co-author Mark Long explained to CNBC's "On the Money" recently, "is that employees increased wages, which you'd expect given the mandate of the law, but they also cut hours and they cut jobs."

Long, a professor of public policy at the University of Washington, added that as a product of fewer hours and available jobs, "the net amount paid to low-wage workers declined instead of increased."

Which is exactly what you'd expect to happen. If the government pushes up the minimum wage businesses that are short of cash will cut hours to try to stay running. So it's quite possible that people on minimum wage will see their take how pay drop. Add in the fact that a lot of minimum wage work is in principle replaceable with automation.

E.g. McDonald's have demoed machines to replace cashiers - and the signs are the public prefer them.

So you could cut staff for a restaurant down to just the kitchen staff and a manager. Next step is a burger producing machines and having the management done remotely.

I.e. if you increased the minimum wage enough you could cut the number of people a McDonald's employees from half a dozen to less than one.

Not to mention that most people working in a non famous chain restaurant are illegals and aren't getting paid the minimum wage - those restaurants just employ illegals and pay the fine if caught. McDonald's has to at least have the pretence that it doesn't break the law. Then again it could push the 'employing illegals' stuff onto franchisees and then cancel the franchise if they are caught.

Re:Of course

[Hodr]

Show me one H1B visa holder working at a McDonalds. Just one.

Re:Of course

[Greyfox]

A good CEO might have an impact on a company's bottom line, but a bad one can be worse than useless. Given that there are a lot more bad ones than good ones, perhaps it would make more financial sense to replace the CEO with a robot. It wouldn't even have to be a very smart one.

Re:Of course

[mjwx]

If you do the totals you get the same answer regardless, self service cashiers work out even in countries with 2-3x smaller minimum wage. You still need some cashiers to overseer the mechanical slaves, deal with customers experiencing technophobia or buying booze and tobacco.

This, stores have replaced checkouts in every state with self service checkouts... if it were just about the minimum wage then they wouldn't have bothered in states with low minimum wage. The biggest issue with adoption are the customers, as you correctly pointed out.

Re:Of course

[mjwx]

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.

I think their point was the terrible way the US runs it's welfare programs. Using obfuscation programs like food stamps to demean recipient in order to please angry old conservatives only makes the whole thing more expensive to run.

BTW, the UK which is in Europe doesn't have the same youth unemployment problem as France, same with Germany (which is sucking up cheap labour as fast as it can). The Eurozone's youth unemployment statistics are skewed because of specific regions in France and Italy where there aren't enough jobs... and places in Eastern Europe where many young women don't really enter the workforce. France and Italy have the issue of there simply not being enough jobs.

Re: Of course

[bondsbw]

They already do this. That is a different problem and is not addressed by either method.

Re:Of course

[DigiShaman]

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

I agree 100% with this, but not for the reasons you're aware of. In the US we have a nation debt of over 20 TRILLION. If we tied the minimum wage of inflation, that would cause a recursive (feedback) loop. You see, automation and robotics inherently is a deflationary pressure on the economy, because it keeps humans out of picture as un/der employed. Now, the Feds have to "print" (it's all electronic), money to be redistributed back to those un/der employed so they can pump the money back into the ownership class of those that hold land, intellectual property, and automated technologies in perpetuity. The profits are then re-invested in further automation. Rinse, lather, repeat. There's a reason the disparity in wealth has grown exponentially for the top 1% and beyond.

These uber wealthy exasperate the problem worse by buying congress off. The strongest stench of corruption you can imagine!!!

Welcome to a new era, where neo-feudalism becomes not just an American, but a global phenomenon. Where a society of haves and have-nots becomes the norm. And yet again, proves that a middle-class is but an abortion in human history, doomed to never be repeated.

Re: Of course

[fluffernutter]

Productivity is pointless if it's not rewarding the society for being productive.

Re: Of course

[c6gunner]

He's an asshole because he doesn't want to give you free shit?

Talk about an entitlement mentality. What kind of parasite believes he's entitled to the fruits of other people's labour just as a consequence of being born?

Re: Of course

[Chas]

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).

Re:Of course

[fluffernutter]

Funny how when the people at the bottom make more, that has to filter up. But when the people at the top make more, it never filters down.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

I'm always a bit amused at "free market" types being in support of limited-liability corporations. Nothing, save perhaps IP law, is a larger example of government distortion of the free market.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

The UK has a minimum wage that scales with age. The "apprentice" minimum wage is below the US minimum wage. Even the highest level is equivalent to US $10/hour. And while low for Europe, youth unemployment is still high by US standards.

Germany is a bit of a special case, being somehow able to pull off both strong employment protections and full employment. Many people chalk it up to the youth apprenticeships that sort of exempt the youth from the normal employment protections - but this would illustrate my point, rather than refute it. Countries in Europe have needed to weaken their employment rules to improve employment prospects. This tradeoff is well-understood and is not controversial.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

I'm always polite, always say thank you, always give them a smile. I've worked retail and know what a shitty job it is.

But somehow being nice and empathetic does not magically turn them into people who are halfway competent at their jobs. The change still gets counted wrong and the order still gets screwed up. Working retail exposed me to plenty of morons, both customers and co-workers.

Re: Of course

[Cro Magnon]

More likely, automation will mean all the burgers are wrong in the same way. With humans, they are all wrong in different ways.

Re: Of course

[Immerman]

So then, if all these adults making minimum wage should apply themselves and get better jobs, then where exactly are all these unfilled better jobs searching for employees?

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

Agreed - selling a product for less than it costs to produce is a net loss of wealth - it's similar to the broken window fallacy. But minimum wage is still a subsidy - just not one that you pay through taxes.

Re: Of course

[kilfarsnar]

Condoms are free. Their parents shouldn't have had children they could afford to educate properly to the level required to become self sufficient productive members of society.

So, your suggestion is that they should travel back in time and retroactively not have the children they had? That's quite a practical solution you have there.

Furthermore, working the fast food counter is supposed to be a kid's summer job and off hours for college and pocket money or first car. It is not living wage work for adults. If fast food is your family's primary source of income then you have failed at life and see above about condoms.

The fact that adults are trying to support their families on these jobs should tell you something about the state of the economy and the opportunities available to people. But you'd rather judge and condemn than understand. Has every single adult fast-food worker failed at life? Really, every single one? I'd like to see your data.

It is not my nor anyone else's problem nor responsibility to take care of people who can't be bothered to take care of themselves when perfectly capable and had every opportunity to do so.

No, it's not your responsibility. But you've made some pretty broad assumptions in thinking they are perfectly capable or have had every opportunity. A relative lack of opportunity in the lower class it pretty easy to demonstrate. But again, you're interested in condemning them but not in helping them, based on your perception of their lives and choices, which you actually know nothing about.

Re:Of course

[Opportunist]

It's more what I expect (and get) from a company exec every time minimum wage is even talked about. He's scaring us, he's fearmongering, but in the end, oddly enough it will still be cheaper to employ humans.

This spiel has been going on since before the wage climbed above the 5 bucks.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

I can count on zero fingers the number of times I went to a fast food restaurant to interact with the folks working there. And that even counts when I had family working at one.

You've never said "hold the pickle", "heavy tomato" or "Coke, no ice"?

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

Really? Condoms are free? Wow, where do you live, where I live they cost like a buck or two.

It's not the condoms. It's more that people don't learn about them. That's what you get with "abstinence only" sex ed. Easy to tell, really, just look at where this bullshit is peddled like it kept anyone from fucking, then look at teen pregnancies. And then compare that to areas where teens are actually taught how to fuck without unwanted consequences.

Re: Of course

[kilfarsnar]

>they will do whatever it takes to survive regardless of your politics.

Including vote Liberal. That way they get all their lifetime welfare freebies, no questions asked. You and your disgusting ilk are more than happy to punish successful people to pay for the lazy and indolent.

Well, isn't that why rich people vote Republican; to get their lifetimes of tax cuts and elimination of regulations that cost them money to comply with? It seems that, rich or poor, everyone wants something from the government. And rich people are in a much better position to get it; no questions asked.

I'd also add that the people who work for minimum wage work hard for it. If they don't, they are easily replaceable. So your characterization of them and lazy and indolent is quite far off the mark. Perhaps you'd do better to direct your attention towards the very wealthy, if you want to identify the people taking the most advantage. Being wealthy in America is the best advantage of all. Money brings power, yet you focus on the least powerful. Funny.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

US agricultural output is at or near all-time highs.
US industrial output is at or near all-time highs.

Re: Of course

[GameboyRMH]

This. Sub-livable wages should not be legal for this reason first and foremost. Don't allow companies to use human labor as a conduit for corporate welfare.

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

"Earning" anything means jack shit. Do you think anyone could "earn" a couple millions a year? Explain to me what makes the "work" of someone like Paris Hilton "worth" about a million times more than the work of the average nurse and we can talk about "earning" money.

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

What something is intended to be means nothing. If you want to talk facts, great, because it is a FACT that for some people this IS the only job they can get.

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

I can't comment on the asshole, but he's an idiot by not realizing just how quickly it can become his problem.

You have the money, I have a gun, this was your head, now I have a money and you had a problem. If only briefly.

Re:Of course

[kilfarsnar]

Yep ... and it's true. Dullards & laxrs have no place in a post-modern society.

I don't know about that. You seem pretty unthinking, but you're still here posting.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

Restaurants that have drive through windows typically get 50-70% of their business from people sitting in their cars and shouting into a microphone.

People do not go to fast food joints for "human interaction".

That shouting into a microphone is human interaction. It allows you to order your coffee with extra sugar, get that hamburger without onions, ask whether there's eggs in the tartar sauce and ask for mayo for your fries. And when you drive up, they offer your doggie a biscuit too.

With a drive-through vending machine, all that human interaction is gone. It becomes take it or leave it. And many will, indeed, leave it.

Re: Of course

[MangoCats]

The parasites have more free time and resources to manipulate the system/rules/laws to their advantage.

Re:Of course

[kilfarsnar]

Minimum wage jobs are not careers is the issue you're failing to recognize with the left's talking point argument. They're entry jobs or part time jobs. They should never be in the conversation about a "living wage" because that's not the purpose of such jobs. Anyone that works for minimum wage for more than six months is doing something very wrong. Show some initiative and strive for more.

What you're failing to recognize is that the structure of the economy is such that there are not enough career track jobs for all of the people who could work them. And there are many people who do not have the faculties to handle complex, demanding jobs. Where do you get the idea of what the "purpose" of these jobs are? Is it ordained somewhere, or are you merely expressing your opinion?

Re: Of course

[GameboyRMH]

This is a good thing, since the purpose of jobs is creating goods and services not "keeping people busy".

Completely agree.

We have a full employment economy, so these people can get new jobs where they do something useful.

I disagree, but that's actually unimportant. There may be no profitable work for huge swaths of the population in this economy, even with the "gig economy" being used as a loophole to get around minimum wage laws. In turn spending, the lifeblood of the economy, will fall greatly. This economic disaster would finally make clear that this economy is not working for most people, and it's important that society tackles that issue as soon as possible. Sub-livable wages are a powerful tool for sweeping the problem under the rug.

Re:Of course

[Opportunist]

You might want to add that the main reason for those 20% is that you include Spain and Greece who have a generally insane unemployment rate (up to 40+ percent) due to their financial situation. Of course such a development hits those the most that have the lowest skill levels, which includes entrants. Youth unemployment is generally on par with the general unemployment levels of the countries.

Re: Of course

[MangoCats]

As long ago as 1999, $15/hr was a minimal living wage for "real" adults who pay for their own rent, transportation, insurance and food.

Most jobs contribute far more than $15/hr value to the employer's organization - if they don't, I'm all for finding solutions that make those "worthless" jobs go away and free up people to do something that is worth $15/hr or more.

Arguably, even semi-talented street busking (entertainment) in a reasonably heavy pedestrian traffic area is worth more than $15/hr. And, if everybody is employed at higher paying jobs, everybody who enjoys an entertainer can afford to toss them a buck every couple of days as they walk past.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

Agreed the problem is very complex and does not come down to a single cause - but there isn't really any controversy in saying that higher employment costs are correlated to unemployment. Any kind of subsidy or distortion of the market is going to have consequences somewhere else - no change is "free".

Re: Of course

[arth1]

It can grill 25 burgers at a time all cooked to order.

No, it cannot. Unless "to order" only consists of pre-determined choices, in which case it's not to order, but just a bigger menu.
If I ask for a Quarter Pounder with tartar sauce, or "please cut the burger in half", I get that from humans, even if it's an unusual choice.

Re: Of course

[MangoCats]

No-skill, minimum wage jobs are not, and NEVER WERE intended to be a lifetime "career".

So, when you survey the job market - 5 million unemployed, 4.5 million jobs open, and over half of the unemployed only match skills with minimum wage jobs, even though they have many higher valued skills and education... what's wrong with this picture?

Re: Of course

[c6gunner]

Most fast food joints have people working there who hate their jobs, and it clearly shows in the service you're getting.

I think that comes down more to the area we are talking about than the job in question. I've been in some cities where even waiters making good money on tips are rude and condescending. Meanwhile in my current city, the workers at every fast food joint including the local McDonalds are friendly, similing, say things like "thank you" and "have a nice day" ... just generally pleasant to interact with.

However, even though the local service is excellent, I would still prefer to place an automated order given the option. Maybe I'm just an antisocial grouch but I don't particularity feel the need for meaningless human interaction, regardless of how pleasant the other person may be. And with a machine I don't have to repeat my order 3 times, and then correct it again after I get the wrong items.

Re:Of course

[DigiShaman]

Yup. And the "free market" is anything but. If we truly had a free market, we wouldn't have so many regulations that are specifically created as a form of protection racket.

People clamor for more Gov. The Gov creates more problems in the form of a solution. People claim the Gov isn't doing enough, and double-down. Problems get exactly worse.

Pain is supposed to mean "don't do that". Unfortunately, the populous aren't interpreting the signals properly, if at all!

Re: Of course

[Farmer Tim]

Killbots? You realise this means the leader of the next US revolution will be Zapp Brannigan...

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

Pain is supposed to mean "don't do that". Unfortunately, the populous aren't interpreting the signals properly, if at all!

I like the analogy. It's like taking a bunch of pain pills to correct one pain, but then you need to take more pills to counter the side effects. And more pills to counter those side effects.

Re: Of course

[GameboyRMH]

Haha it is most delightful and whimsical! It's called "the real world from an ignorant rich person's perspective." In it, nobody mows their own lawns, they hire gardeners instead, and many even hire housekeepers! Happy gardeners and housekeepers singing "Zippidy doo-da, zippidy-ay! My oh my what a wonderful day!"

At least that's probably those noises they're grumbling while frowning. Yeah, pretty sure it is, just look at those employment numbers! They're doing so well! Especially if you consider the hidden economic value in all the cool technology they have now. Yes, post-'70s technology like smartphones and 3D printers and quadcopters are worth far more than their sticker price to those plucky workers, that's why it's OK that they're clearly making less money! They're getting paid in angry birds and aerial selfies, and how can you put a price on those? Truly a time of amazing opportunity!

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

I was thinking of France when I wrote the comment, and how countries like Germany and the UK have rules which exempt youth from the employment protections afforded to everyone else so that they are more employable. I actually think that could be a reasonable solution in the US - do a UK-style minimum wage that slides with age and experience. UK "apprentice" wage is lower than the US minimum wage, and it maxes out at around $10/hour. Germany has a youth apprenticeship program that solves both the "young people are too expensive" and the "young people have no skills" problems at the same time.

Re:Of course

[kilfarsnar]

Ah yes, another demoncrat throwing yet another temper tantrum.

"And if you dont show some initiative, you deserve to die, that is what the fanatic capitalist right says, am I correct?

According to 2nd Thessalonians in the bible if one does not work does not eat. You whiny commie demoncrat terrorists keep touting "What if someone is too disabled to work" Well here's the thing, there is no such thing as being "too disabled to work." Even if there truly were those that are too disabled to work, guess what, can't work falls under don't work so either work or die. Those that are "too disabled to work" are truly "too disabled to live"

LOL, you seem nice.

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God." Leviticus 23:22

"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11

"If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother." Deuteronomy 15:7

"Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near, so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin." Deuteronomy 15:9

"The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern." Proverbs 29:7

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:17-18

Quoting the Bible is fun, eh? It's almost as if you can find passages to justify any point of view, even for an uncaring prick like yourself.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

A. I've never seen 8 employees in a McDonald's at one time.

Sounds about right to me. One at the counter and two at the drive thru taking/filling orders, preparing all drinks, keeping the fryers going, and dealing with customer issues plus five in the back twiddling their thumbs and occasionally slapping together a burger without paying attention to what the order says to do. 3-5 employees goofing off in the back mostly out of sight of customers is standard in the industry.

Re:Of course

[91degrees]

Sounds good. We should increase the minimum wage further.

I guess those people who have aspiration of being a cashier will be a little upset and it's sad for them, but I assume most people are simply doing it because they need money. A minor inconvenience for them until they get a new job. But there will be more jobs, as automation increases, costs go down, and people have more to spend. And those jobs will be at least at the minimum wage.

If they don't, then that's even better. We can run society with only a small fraction engaged in required work, and switch to basic income. Have the robots fund a life of leisure for the rest of us.

Re:Of course

[pipingguy]

Hey I thought 'social engineering' meant stealing passwords!

Re: Of course

[religionofpeas]

If people are voluntarily paying millions to Paris Hilton, she's worth it.

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

We also had much much higher tax rates

No we didn't.

Federal tax receipts in 1955: 15.4% of GDP.
Federal tax receipts in 2015: 17.9% of GDP.

Citation: Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product

Re: Of course

[pipingguy]

Here are some 'somes'.

some
some
some
some
some

You need to add as necessary in your post.

Re: Of course

[kilfarsnar]

And what creates wealth? Manufacturing and agriculture. Turning something useless into something useful. The majority of which the weathy West has offshored to China and other cheap labour nations.

Meanwhile the West just pushes money around in service and banking industries creating no wealth at all, just redistributing what's left into the hands of thoss that already control the system.

It's almost as if the people at the top are not the ones creating the wealth and value. And yet, they are the ones reaping most of the rewards. All this talk about labor markets and levels of industriousness ignore the fact that Capitalism is designed in part to accumulate money at the top. The more money you have, the more ability you have to pay other people to create value for you while taking a cut of the value they create. So once can criticize the poor all they want, but the system still functions the same way.

Re: Of course

[Reverend Green]

Your reference link is some random bullshit blog entry? Next!

Re: Of course

[ShanghaiBill]

There are over 3 million fast food workers in America. If kiosks replace a third of them, that will be a million people, not 200,000, but the shift will likely occur over 5 or 10 years, and normal job growth can easily absorb that.

Last month the economy added 148,000 jobs.
In November, the economy added 252,000 jobs.

Additionally, about 25 million people change jobs in America each year.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

You are assuming, almost certainly incorrectly, that the replaced workers will not be able to find jobs elsewhere.

You seem to assume that they not only will, but will find jobs that pay at least as much as before.

My belief is that, after being laid off, these workers will, on average, not make as much or more money as before, because at least some of them will not get new jobs, and some of them will only get jobs with fewer hours.
If it were easy finding jobs that paid better, most would already be off doing those jobs.

Re: Of course

[Reverend Green]

But muh FACTS!!!!!1!!1!

Re:Of course

[arth1]

A big mac is the same price in London as in Toronto

Not according to the Big Mac Index.
In July 2017, in Britain, the average Big Mac price was USD 4.11, while in Canada, the average Big Mac price was USD 4.66.

Or to quote McDonalds itself: "As a franchisor McDonald's cannot prescribe pricing to franchisees who can set their own price structure as they see fit in their local market."

Re: Of course

[GameboyRMH]

No, you are saying that in a civilised country, that's how you'd like things to be. There is, however, no law of nature that says that there's enough economic output to give everybody a decent quality of life. Just because you're "civilised" doesn't change that.

In practice it's clear that there is quite enough economic output to give everyone a decent quality of life, it's just not well-distributed. So we have to decide what we're going to do if an (often idle) ownership class is hoarding most of the economic output, and a majority of hard-working people are struggling to make ends meet because they can't get enough of it.

Re: Of course

[erapert]

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.

Re:Of course

[erapert]

Did you see that post above about how a 25% increase in payroll would put them out of business?
Yeah, that mandatory thing about Obamacare that everyone on the right screamed bloody murder about?
It turns out that it was a serious issue with real consequences.

Re: Of course

[SCVonSteroids]

No, this is a case by case thing. Also I'm not 100% sure here but you cannot legally pay someone under minimum wage just because they have the potential to receive tips; as in your example of the restaurant employee.

At least in Canada; and I'll use Tim Horton's as an example; tips provide an incentive to work there versus any other minimum wage job because there's a potential to earn more at the end of the day through tips. There are cases however where the minimum wage was raised high enough where any tips are given directly to the company or outright refused on the spot, instead of being divided equally among employees. (I believe Alberta is like this)

Tips sure as hell are an incentive. What you're describing sounds illegal, but I'm no lawyer. Americans, or any decent human being for that matter, definitely value hard work and great service; I'm not sure where you get the idea that they don't. A few loud-mouthed assholes don't account for the general populous. Your example is also broken, since the guy digging ditches could be making millions if he approaches the problem with a solid business solution. Or were you talking about hand digging a ditch with a shovel? What part of the world do you live in again?

Re: Of course

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Barely more than half, but that's close enough to the truth. So your argument is that because they can't afford their own homes, it's not a problem that they can't afford their own homes?

But let's take a closer look at the demographics:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/0...

WHAAAT they're in their 30s and more than a quarter have kids!?!? What kind of upple-middle-class teenagers are these!?!?

Re: Of course

[GameboyRMH]

The remaining employees will be more productive, and appropriately rewarded with more money.

Will they? Over the last 30~40 years, ownership and upper management has been pocketing the money instead.

Re:Of course

[datavirtue]

We have known for a long time now how much it increases efficiency to take orders for food online. Consumers like it because they get to control the accuracy of the order and the experience. Normally the people standing at a register are rude and unengaged and it makes people feel like walking out. There is no need for people on a register. Despite all the potential gotchas of implementing, it will be a total win. However, people who have been left behind by technical progress often end up on the register and the least capable people in the restaurant are placed on register. Sadly, these people are to be left behind again.

Re:Of course

[datavirtue]

People do need to try harder...and push themselves. Our Doctor Spock mentality society recoils at this pronouncement but it is the truth.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

Of course it can. I'm talking about doneness of the meat. If you're talking g fast food, everything is a predetermined choice. You can only order what they have in the store.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

Why, how can you have a truly free market if you can't do whatever you want with impunity?

Re: Of course

[datavirtue]

Do not tax income. Why would you punish earning?

Re: Of course

[Immerman]

In other words, they don't actually exist, so no matter how hard those minimum wage employees work, they could only get a better job by replacing someone else, who would then have to work a minimum wage job,

Re:Of course

[datavirtue]

"people are brainwashed into thinking 10 dollars is a living wage"

This. The reason wages are so low is that people do not know enough to demand more. They are simple folk.

Re: Of course

[LifesABeach]

Western culture is approaching a change in the definition of Wealth. Humanity will still need a place where working with ones hands is still rewarding. In other words, weâ(TM)re gonna need some elbow room.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

Back when those weavers got replaced there were actual shortages of wealth. Lots of people had to die because there wasn't enough food to support the birth rate.

The situation has changed. There's plenty of wealth for everyone, particularly in western countries, especially in the US. The problems are only with distribution.

Workers who are displaced by machines should be retrained into new jobs or educated into fields that benefit society*, or if not possible, supported while their children are educated.

* those fields will increasingly be the arts and non-applied sciences as automation takes over critical jobs and we have more and more wealth to allocate to luxuries.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

Capital is inanimate. The problem is that we as a society have entrusted all our capital to idiots.

Re:Of course

[careysub]

Or to simplify the point further: it is impossible for workers to under-price robots and self-service in the long-run, or the medium-run, or increasingly now even the short-run.

There is no "dirt-cheap labor" solution to dealing with the increasing automation of work.

CEOs want dirt cheap labor and they want robots to eliminate it at the same time. They aren't offering a deal - keep wages low and we will leave the jobs intact. They have no intention of doing that, and there is no actual promise being made by "Jack in the Box CEO Leonard Comma" to not automate if wages are not raised. Like those Carrier jobs that went to Mexico six months after they announced they were being "saved" a press release is not a deal, it is not a contract, it is not even a promise. It means nothing.

Re: Of course

[LifesABeach]

I hear 5 finger discounting is a good reason to remove automated solutions. But then, why does one need a CEO, when a spread sheet program is free?

Re: Of course

[psmoot]

Never actually worked as an manager, executive, CEO, or landlord, have you? They definitely don't just sit no their butts, at least, not the decent ones.

Re: Of course

[ceoyoyo]

Yes. Just not recently.

https://rwer.wordpress.com/201...

Re: Of course

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"Most people earning minimum wage are not doing it to pay for room and board."

Citation needed.

I worked minimum wage when i moved out on my own, as do many other people. $800 pre tax per month is a shitty way to live. Luckily i was able to find rent for $325 at the time (late 90s). All the rest of the money went into food and a bus pass to get to and from the job. You are full of shit as normal and out of touch. That's what happens when you need to make a stupid comment on every single article.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

We forget that we've tried the free market experiment before, so we know the answers to these questions. In industrial revolution England it was apparently difficult to walk down the street without tripping over dead babies. It turns out that when pushed to desperation, mothers will kill a younger child to give an older one a better chance at survival.

Fortunately there are very, very few places in the world today that are actually under a free market. The conservatives on Slashdot like to call them hellholes.

Re: Of course

[Sumus Semper Una]

Killbots? You realise this means the leader of the next US revolution will be Zapp Brannigan...

You mean the US will have to be led by a vain, womanizing moron who's more obsessed with his public image than actually doing anything? A terrible fate indeed.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

It's odd how we get trapped into a certain way of thinking hey?

If we replaced every worker with a robot, if nothing changed, sure "income" might drop to zero. That would mean "revenue" might drop to zero too. But all those robots are still making everything we ever made before. What does that mean? It means the price of everything also drops to zero. Welcome to the Star Trek economy.

Realistically, none of those things will actually go to zero. Their value in real terms will drop precipitously, just as they have several times in the past. We'll probably fudge the numbers so we won't notice though.

Re:Of course

[StikyPad]

It doesn't really matter whether the cost differential comes from raising costs of labor ("artificial" or organic), or through falling technology prices -- at some point automation is going to be cost effective. Whether that's +/-1 year, 10 years, or 100 years is really inconsequential in the scheme of things -- moreso since we're making zero effort to plan for an economy that doesn't require people to work. It's not like "oh shit, we were about to implement our vision for a leisure society but goddamned Carl's Junior jumped the gun on us."

Re:Of course

[TheRaven64]

Back when those weavers got replaced there were actual shortages of wealth. Lots of people had to die because there wasn't enough food to support the birth rate.

That's not really true. This coincided with the agricultural revolution, which dramatically increased the food supply. There were all sorts of distribution problems, but there was more food than was needed. Things like the Irish Potato Famine were a bit later, but had causes that didn't relate to available food production ability.

Re:Of course

[Uberbah]

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?

Willful American Ignorance in action. Countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal (in particular) are slaves to the Euro, and unable to devalue their own currencies while deficit spending to stimulate their economies and unemployment. They've been forced into "austerity" to please central European bankers, which has lead to a steep downward spiral in the economies.

Which would still be the case if they slashed or even eliminated their minimum wages. You can't grow your economy out of a depression via poverty for the working class.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

As you point out, states have different rules. We don't have free day care in PA, and it sounds like that indeed is distorting the market in an unintended way.

Re: Of course

[tsqr]

So then, if all these adults making minimum wage should apply themselves and get better jobs, then where exactly are all these unfilled better jobs searching for employees?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• Workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.7 percent of all hourly paid workers.
• Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 10 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 2 percent of workers age 25 and older.
• Of those paid an hourly wage, never-married workers, who tend to be young, were more likely (5 percent) than married workers (1 percent) to earn the federal minimum wage or less.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

How can you have a free market when people aren't responsible for their actions?

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

France.

Or how about Germany's relaxation of employment rules for youth "apprentices" so that they are more attractive to employers. Or the UK scaling minimum wages with age, dipping below even the US for the youngest workers? What I am saying is not even remotely controversial.

Re: Of course

[Hylandr]

working the fast food counter is supposed to be a kid's summer job and off hours for college and pocket money or first car. It is not living wage work for adults.

Mod Parent up for this.

But down for this:

Condoms are free. Their parents shouldn't have had children they could afford to educate properly to the level required to become self sufficient productive members of society.

You can give a child all the things they need for success and do everything clinically or witch-Doctor-ish to set them on the right path to success. It's still the child's choice to apply the principles they have been introduced to and choose for themselves to succeed or not. Blaming an individuals life on their parent is a cop out of the highest order.

Re: Of course

[robkeeney]

Unfortunately, the skilled trades are no longer aspirational in these United States. In a society that’s convinced a four-year degree is the best path for the most people, a whole category of good jobs have been relegated to some sort of “vocational consolation prize.” Is it any wonder we have 1.3 trillion dollars in outstanding student loans? Is it really a surprise that vocational education has pretty much evaporated from high schools?(http://mikerowe.com/2016/02/stopignoringskillsgap/)

Why should we pay burger flippers a "living wage" when they could become plumbers or dry-wallers and earn a much better wage?

Re: Of course

[fluffernutter]

Normal job growth is only absorbing job losses if job growth *increases* by the amount of people losing their jobs beyond what it is today. If job growth stays around the same, then there is just a greater number of people looking for the same number of jobs and nothing is being absorbed.

Re: Of course

[AvitarX]

If they're getting laid off do to increased minimum wage, they will either be unemployed or make more.

They won't be able to find a job making less.

Re: Of course

[MitchDev]

True, after you earn it, it's wealth, so that works too

Re: Of course

[AvitarX]

The premise is that minimum wage increase will increase employee pay.

Specifically in the case of remaining minimum wage workers getting laid off due to a minimum wage increase the remaining ones will get more money.

If minimum wage stayed the same, in a couple years the self serve registers would become cheap enough anyway, and the remaining employees would not see a raise as their productivity increased.

But, when a minimum wage hike brings the change a couple years earlier, the remaining employees do see the wage hike.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

If they're getting laid off do to increased minimum wage, they will either be unemployed or make more.

They won't be able to find a job making less.

Your presumption is incorrect. If going from a 40 hr/week to a 25 hr/week, that would indeed mean making less.

Re: Of course

[Chas]

1: Not everyone needs to go to college and get a degree. There are numerous skilled jobs out there that require no college whatsoever.
2: Many of the no-skill, minimum wage jobs are slowly being phased out in favor of AUTOMATION.
3: Those no-skill, minimum wage jobs that remain are going to be the sort that are done on a temporary basis. Not something that requires a full-time position, nor something one could make a career out of.

I'm not sure where people lost the concept of making oneself more valuable on the job market.
But it's distorted the jobs market into something unsustainable long-term.

Re: Of course

[Chas]

"What something is intended to be means nothing."

The fuck it does.

Part of the problem today is that everything will bend to their benefit. Jobs, language, etc.

In the really real world, that just isn't true.

Re: Of course

[dasgoober]

Then it should be THEIR problem that the job doesn't pay a living wage - because it wasn't supposed to.
It shouldn't be the employer's fault.

Re:Of course

[unknown_user_name]

The costa of automation are dropping rapidly while their reliability, features and ease of use are improving dramatically. Partisan are using this to attack minimum wage hikes but it is technology and not minimum wage rates that are driving the change. It isn’t just minimum wage jobs that are in play. Pharmacist, lawyers, stockbrokers, supply chain managers, accountants and dozens of other professional positions that are being taken over by automation and that trend will only accelerate

Re: Of course

[cyber-vandal]

First man in space isn't too shabby.

Re: Of course

[freeze128]

Well, it's "Jack in the box", so I guess it would be "Grillbots".

Re: Of course

[cyber-vandal]

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? They should hurry up and die and reduce the surplus population.

Re: Of course

[freeze128]

"Massive corn clog in port 7!"

Re:Of course

[dev-in-seattle]

This replacement with automation is not about crossing a mystical line of wage cost, it's more about reducing uncertainty of human labor, and reducing costs of automation. It's just an excuse to do it now. Or let me put this another way, once jack in the box starts doing this, they'll also replace humans cashiers in places with much lower wages.

Re: Of course

[cyber-vandal]

Are you talking about limited liability corporations?

Re: Of course

[freeze128]

Dude, that was 25 years ago! There are plenty more places to get nasty stuff, like Norovirus. Try Chipotle or Taco Bell.

Re: Of course

[pnutjam]

I spend all day replacing myself with automation. I love it.

Re: Of course

[Uberbah]

GDP percentage is a non sequitur on the subject of individual tax rates - but you probably knew that before you posted.

Re: Of course

[Uberbah]

But minimum wage is still a subsidy - just not one that you pay through taxes.

Yes, if you're a shareholder missing out on some dividends because the employees no longer have to use food stamps. Not via higher prices, as those are always set to what the market will bear. If companies can increase prices without losing customers, they aren't going to wait for a hike in the minimum wage as an excuse to do so.

Re: Of course

[Your.Master]

That's not FEELINGS. That's FACT.

It's not a fact, that's just something you're repeating because it is convenient for your argument (ironically, because of feelings). Jobs, minimum wage or not, aren't intended for anything for the employee (barring maybe some government jobs, private sinecures, and charity work), they are intended for the employer's benefit because the employer gets to decide if the job exists; this is not a moral judgement, it's a fact.

If you truly want to say that these jobs are intended for kids in high school, then have a separate minimum wage for kid's summer jobs and for adults. There are actually places that do this. The net result is that this will fill with kids in high school first if those kids can do it, and if they still need more employees then the supply of high school students overall is too small, wage goes up, eventually it meets adult wage and adults get hired at a living wage. If it doesn't rise to the adult level anyway, well, nobody owes those adults a job and nobody owes those employers employees at less than a living wage.

It's not society's fault these people have either zero skills or zero ambition...

Life is tough. Life is unfair.

Here's where you contradict yourself. The first quote only makes any sense if you assume life is fair. The second quote outright says life is unfair. Which is it? Is it that shitty situations only happen to those who deserve it, or is it that life is unfair and sometimes a person has skills and ambition but are still stuck in a cyclical rut?

Re:Of course

[nasch]

If you are creating something that costs more to produce than it does to sell, you are actually destroying wealth.

That sounds more like transferring wealth from the company to its customers.

Re:Of course

[nasch]

It seems that if they demand more, they get replaced with robots.

Re:Of course

[Mashiki]

The moment when you don't realize there's more then one London. And the person you were replying to named all Canadian cities.

Re: Of course

[nasch]

Also I'm not 100% sure here but you cannot legally pay someone under minimum wage just because they have the potential to receive tips; as in your example of the restaurant employee.

In the US, there's a separate, much lower minimum wage for workers who are tipped.

Re: Of course

[nasch]

Other than asking questions, a decent automated system will allow just about any possible customization, and have a better chance of getting it right. And how often do people ask questions that can't be pre-empted by a well designed system? I would guess most of the questions are things like "does that come with fries?" and "how much extra for a large?"

Re: Of course

[Green Mountain Bot]

Tax receipts != tax rates

Re: Of course

[mattventura]

But that’s circular logic - whether or not it is worth it to hire someone for 40 hours a week depends entirely on what you’re paying them.

Re: Of course

[nasch]

You ask that as though those are things automation is not capable of.

Re: Of course

[c6gunner]

I realise that you're exemplifying blind ideology when you assume I'm defending anyone.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

Freedom!

Just in case you missed, I'm being sarcastic. Your point is one of the best one line indictments of American "free market" capitalism I've ever seen.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

I have to hang my head in shame. I did not detect your sarcasm. I'm from the East Coast and everything.

Re:Of course

[ceoyoyo]

Agricultural production had growth rates of around 0.6% / year in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The birth rate at the time would have produced unchecked population growth rather greater than that. The population did grow... to match the increased food production.

It wasn't famine, it was just life. Most people didn't have enough to eat. They were short, sickly, and most died as infants. Today we don't have those problems, because as a group, and mostly as individuals, we are all fabulously wealthy in comparison.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

You are doing that, but you are also expending resources to produce something of lesser value, so total wealth is reduced.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

You could take the minimum wage away from the shareholders, or you could tax the shareholders and then redistribute the wealth that way. Either way, the overall effect on the economy is the same - though there are of course pros and cons to each method.

Re: Of course

[robkeeney]

So mowing my lawn isn't worth doing? I'm not willing to pay anyone a living wage to do it (most especially myself) so I shouldn't pay a neighbor kid to do it? A 15 year-old sure doesn't need a living wage, but he'd definitely appreciate the extra cash I'd be willing to pay him to mow my lawn.

  You communists are the stupidest people on earth.

>

Meanwhile, have you seen any shortage of plumbers, drywallers, etc?

Yes, actually I have. I had the hardest time getting a plumber to install a sink recently.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

Exactly. I think you can make a pretty good argument for allowing passive investing, but it is hard to defend protecting active managers with limited liability if your goal is a free market with limited government regulation. It's the single largest government regulation we currently have.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

Earth is not a closed system - we have a constant input of energy. If I go to the store and spend $3 on oil and potatoes, then use them to make and sell $5 french fries, I've created $2 from thin air that I then get to keep and spend on something else. The money supply needs to keep up with this creation of wealth. Print too much and you cause runaway inflation. Print to little and you risk deflation, which is a disaster because once money is an investment unto itself people will simply hoard it and the economy takes a tumble. In other words, printing cash is not the way to create wealth - it is the response to the creation of wealth.

Re: Of course

[cayenne8]

Why should society tolerate anyone paying less than a living wage? If it's not worth paying someone a living wage to do, it's not worth doing, since it depends on the exploitation of the laborers.

Well, it is NOT worh paying a living wage for mowing my lawn, or babysitting the kids....those are neighborhood kids jobs, and they don't need living wage because kids jobs are for kids living at home being supported, this is side money...and experience jobs for working in the real world.

I put burger flippers in that same category.

There are plenty of jobs to there worth getting done, it is just that EVERY job is not worth paying a living wage.

This concept that every job should pay a living wage is very new....it does not work and it hasn't been a thing for most years up to recently.

No, not everyone deserves a trophy, and no, you cannot support a family on every job that is out there.

Re:Of course

[sexconker]

Where as in the US you pretend you can have a minimum wage below the poverty line then spend lots of tax dollars propping those people up with food stamps, etc, or just paying indirectly with theft and other criminal behaviour.

Regardless of the stupid FOX talking point crap in this thread, people aren't just going to die because you think they should try harder.

I agree with you completely.

Cut all welfare programs, including medicaid, medical, food stamps / EBT, WIC, etc., then remove the minimum wage, and the problem will sort itself out.

Re: Of course

[cayenne8]

"Earning" anything means jack shit. Do you think anyone could "earn" a couple millions a year? Explain to me what makes the "work" of someone like Paris Hilton "worth" about a million times more than the work of the average nurse and we can talk about "earning" money.

Well, there are a couple other variables out there too....two them would be "some people get lucky in life" and the other is "there's a sucker born every minute".

Think also about the pro football player...do they really do something that is worth millions of dollars a year?

On a societal level, not really....BUT, they did get lucky in the genetic gene pool AND well, there are people out there that pay that kind of money. You may think it is stupid, but it is a free country and you are free to be stupid enough to pay for and support the NFL or NBA...or whatever.

The same type analogy goes for Paris Hilton and other celebrities that are famous for nothing else but being famous.

Hey, if I could find a group of stupid people out there wiling to pay me for doing nothing but just having fun, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I certainly don't begrudge those that got lucky one way or another and hit the jackpot.

The thing is, to realize that isn't going to happen to most folks and you'd better get an education / skill to support you as a plan "B" in case you don't hit the jackpot.

Re: Of course

[sexconker]

Hawking hasn't contributed much of anything beyond Big Bang Theory cameos lately.

And I find his recent shit to be petty wankery geared toward letting him say "Aha, but if it's like this, then I was right!". Of course I'm no cosmologist or astrophysicist, and I regard much of what goes on in those fields today to be untestable wankery.

Regardless of my opinion, he's still working and collecting checks. And he's got enough bank to sit on when he decides to stop.

Perhaps the other AC literally meant that once you can't/won't work, you should die off. From a purely practical stance, that's the correct approach. And as someone who's toiling away, there are plenty of old fucks who I think should just die already. But I don't agree that such a thing should apply to all people once they retire. You gotta give people a chance to spend that money, otherwise what will they work toward?

Re: Of course

[arth1]

You ask that as though those are things automation is not capable of.

Automation is only capable of what a human has programmed it to do. If you ask a glorified vending machine to cut your burger in two because you don't have a knife in the car, or get a spoon instead of a straw for the milk shake, or serve the burger in a fish filet bun because you're allergic to sesame seeds, odds are it's not going to happen.

With automation you always get an 80/20 solution, because automation as it is right now cannot adapt on the fly, the way a human can.

Re: Of course

[greythax]

Am I the only one seeing the steam coming off this post? Evidently it was delieverd hot and fresh, directly from the posterior of a bull. I'm curious if you could put numbers to "Most" jobs, and the salaries of "primary" earners in a 2 or 3 earner household? I would like to know what you assume a "very small percentage" is.

FiveThirtyEight has some numbers. First of all, on behalf of the ~20% of minimum wage workers living on a single minimum wage income of 15,000 bucks or less (468,000 souls) allow me to say fuck you for trying to muddy their plight with your fever dream politics.

And secondly, since the median income is in the mid 50s these days, the first two lines (adding to 51%) blow your "on average, above median income" out of the water right there.

Try looking at more numbers and less opinion pieces. People's wellbeing are decided by debates like this, stop spreading fud.

Re:Of course

[micahraleigh]

Food stamps are here to appease angry old conservatives?

Tell me about this new understanding!

Seriously, manifold are the happiness surveys showing older people are the happiest in the world.

Re:Of course

[arth1]

Oh, I know there are multiple cities and towns named London. But I am also aware that if just saying "London" without a qualifier, the London should be assumed.

Re:Of course

[micahraleigh]

The whole premise of the "wealthy" buying politicians is false.

The wealthy pushed Cantor, Florida's Bush, and Rubio and they all fell on their face with the voters.

Re:Of course

[dj245]

A 25% increase in pay would bankrupt the restaurant. Food prices are *set* by the corporate office, not the franchisee. This is the reason why here in Ontario when the min. wage jumped to $14/hr businesses started laying off employees and cutting back on previously "good will gestures" such as bonus pay. The restaurant industry is cut-throat and operates on a profitability margin of 3-6%. That's far more then even a small gas bar, which has a profitability margin of 1-3%, they don't make their money from selling gas(which is also sold at a preset price, most stations make 0.02%-0.038% profit on fuel). They make their money on drinks/food/snacks/etc.

Why didn't all of the affected businesses raise prices?

If gas stations (even those immediately next to one another) are able to raise prices anytime their costs go up, any other business should be able to do so also.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

And how often do people ask questions that can't be pre-empted by a well designed system?

"can" != "will"

There are few limits to what a machine can do, but you're looking at the law of diminishing returns. Spending a hundred man years on programming it to handle 99% of requests isn't going to be cost effective, and would still leave out the 1%.

Humans are adaptive, and will work with you to understand what you want, and whether they can provide that. Doing so helps ensure that you come back to spend more money, and won't recommend to others that you go elsewhere.

Special requests happen all the time - they're unlikely to happen for any one order, but the sheer volume of orders mean they do occur regularly. And you can't tell ahead what they will be. You adapt on the fly. Which machines cannot.

Re: Of course

[arth1]

Tradesworkers are skilled meaning they work hard to learn their trades as apprentices, journeymen, and masters.

There are precious few guilds left, and the US does not have a protected profession for much if anything anymore. If you pick up a staple gun, nothing prevents you from calling yourself a carpenter.

Re: Of course

[zaporozhets968]

"Then society should pay for it. Stop forcing employers of low-skill workers to bear the weight of wealth redistribution." - that is actually exactly how minimum wage works. Minimum wage increase -> Employer increases prices to compensate -> Customer who benefit from minimum wage labor pay for it. See, it's even better than you thought. Those who benefit from low wages bear most of the weight.

Re:Of course

[eneville]

What you're saying in the extreme is that things will be free because there are zero costs, but that's not true, you'll still have to pay rates, taxes and materials. Problem is, most of the country will be unemployed so you'll not have a customer, even if things are free for them as they're too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads because, like you, they'll have no income. Zero customers, zero income.

Re: Of course

[nasch]

If you ask a glorified vending machine to cut your burger in two

That one is probably not going to happen. Hold the pickles, no ice, extra mustard, spoon + straw, etc. are all perfectly feasible. Different kind of bun - that is certainly possible; as you say it's a matter of whether it's programmed in.

I'd guess general distaste at dealing with a machine is going to be a bigger deterrent than not having that special option someone asks for. And that's for the people who prefer ordering from a human. Plenty of others would prefer an automated system for better accuracy, or just because they don't like talking to strangers.

Re:Of course

[ArmoredDragon]

Where as in the US you pretend you can have a minimum wage below the poverty line then spend lots of tax dollars propping those people up with food stamps, etc, or just paying indirectly with theft and other criminal behaviour.

And the reason poverty keeps rising is because we keep moving the goalpost. I lived in poverty until 2 years ago and I still had my own car and food on my table, and I still saved money. Being in poverty really wasn't a big deal, you just can't decide to live beyond your means, which is true on any income level. Having a higher income doesn't mean you won't ever live paycheck to paycheck. Living beyond your means is what makes you live paycheck to paycheck. This is exactly why I've always chosen to live between 50% and 60% below my means, meanwhile my investments are growing at an insanely high rate, especially with the cannabis ETFs I own.

Being poor is making me rich.

Re:Of course

[ArmoredDragon]

If we always tied it to inflation, it would be about $4.75 an hour right now. That fact alone is ALL the proof you need that we are in fact pricing laborers out of the market, which means we have to find alternative means of production, including automation.

Re:Of course

[Jhon]

"We've dealt with this since the 1950s. Vending machines is nothing new, even ones that heat your food for you. People don't go to vending machines for dinner - they want the human touch, and are willing to pay for it."

I go to Red Lobster (or whatever your slightly upper scale chain restaurant of choice is) or non-chain equivalent for the "human touch".

McDonalds, BK, Taco Bell, etc are effectively vending machines as far as the public is concerned. Most of us who visit them want quick, fast food with little to no "human touch". People usually hit these places for "to go" food.

Re: Of course

[Jhon]

Go back to sleep, Lazarus Long... Finish your notebook later.

Re:Of course

[toadlife]

Even a 25% increase in payroll would put them out of business.

Nonsense. Payroll is only minority portion of their total overhead. A 25% increase in payroll would raising total overhead costs by around 10%. They would simply raise the price of their products to cover the additional overhead and easily maintain their profit margins.

I worked at McDonald's when minimum wage was $5.25 and saw their internal cost sheets, which included calculated labor costs. A typical food item cost more in product than labor to make. At that time, the slice of cheese on a cheeseburger was $0.20, which was about three times the labor cost.

$50 an hour would be a challenge.

Re:Of course

[ArmoredDragon]

Free market has nothing to do with that. Free market just means there are no artificial price restrictions on the part of the government, in other words, prices are set by the forces of supply and demand.

It does not mean no regulation Regulation is actually completely necessary for capitalism to work, otherwise people could potentially scam you in some ways that are legal without regulation, which is bad if you're trying to encourage market stability and investment. The stipulation is that regulation can't be so burdensome that it discourages growth and doesn't pick any favorites.

Re: Of course

[Curunir_wolf]

Dude, that was 25 years ago! There are plenty more places to get nasty stuff, like Norovirus. Try Chipotle or Taco Bell.

Chipotle was targeted because they started talking about using only non-GMO food.

And that e-coli people got infected with was way worse than Norovirus. And it had nothing to do with the food sources - it happened because of the way Jack in the Box handled the food after they had it in the restaurant...

Re:Of course

[DigiShaman]

Davos: it's the place where leftists and globalists alike mingle. I'll grant you that the GOP has been sucking the cock of the wealthy elite, but no less so of those in the Democrat Party. Open your eyes

Re: Of course

[TJHook3r]

People go to fast food places DESPITE the human interaction

Re: Of course

[HornWumpus]

Spent it all on hookers and blow. That's my story anyhow, prove it.

Have you ever heard of unintended consequences?

Re: Of course

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit. There is plenty of market liquidity without day traders.

Re: Of course

[Chas]

No. They should show a bit of initiative and try to improve their lots in life by something OTHER than government-mandated handouts.

Re: Of course

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit!

In 1938 minimum wage was 25 cents. Adjusted for inflation that's $4.35, in 2015 dollars.

Cite: http://money.cnn.com/interacti...

Re: Of course

[Geekbot]

I used to think this too. Then I saw how bad off kids are that are in poverty. Those kids aren't going to make it. And that group is growing, not shrinking. Middle class is a generation from gone. Middle class kids getting by because their parents helped them out with a car and down payment and college. Each generation less able to help their kids get started. You know what gave all those parents a boost way back? Government programs after WWII.
There just aren't enough jobs for everyone to survive on the pay for those jobs. That right there is a recipe for revolution. You'd be surprised how close we are. About 6 million people in the incarceration/probation system. That's not a huge percentage but you'd be surprised what desperate people can do when they get a seed to grow around.

Re: Of course

[david_thornley]

There's two types of value for a particular job.

One is replacement value - if I let this guy go, or he quits, what do I have to pay to replace him? For a minimum wage, the answer is minimum wage.

Another is actual value - if I let this guy go, and don't replace him, how much money don't I get?

Raise the minimum wage, and management will go along as long as the minimum wage is less than actual value, and the worker will get paid more. The net effect empirically seems to be that most workers keep their jobs and have more money, and the increased economic activity provides enough additional jobs to make up for the ones lost.

Re: Of course

[Geekbot]

Because those things require skill and training. They very likely aren't smart enough for those jobs. Or maybe there aren't opportunities in their area. Do you honestly want that lady that couldn't give you the correct change or the guy who couldn't read to hold the mustard on your burger to be in charge of the plumbing in your house?

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

Because they had and have a family to support, because they were swindled out of their money, because they were run over by a drunk driver...

For every example you could find to blame them themselves, I can easily find an example of someone who simply got dealt the wrong hand by life. Not everyone who is suffering deserved it. Do you deserve dying just because some asshole breaks into your home and shoots your face off? You clearly had it coming, after all you had that nice stereo.

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

So I guess you have a job to offer that does pay a living wage they could instead do?

Re:Of course

[Opportunist]

Well, solves... that program has its own flaws. You can't employ young people in Germany like you would grown ups. You can't have them work overtime, you can't have them work past 10pm (which really is a problem in tourism related fields) and you only have them about half the time because the other half they're in school, and you have little say on when they're working and when they're in school.

And still you have to pay them. Not a full wage, mind you, but it's far from what you could press out of someone who gets forced to work by their unemployment program.

Plus, the quality of our youth simply and plainly sucks. Anyone with half a brain tries to avoid the apprenticeship programs and instead tries to get into higher education schools that allow you to study at a university. What's left for apprenticeship is atrocious. You get kids aged 15 who can barely read or write.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

I phrased that poorly - I should have wrote "attempts to solve".

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

A "free market" includes so much more than a lack of price controls. For instance, it requires free movement of labor, goods, and capital. It requires equivalent knowledge about the transaction by the buyer and seller. It's also a completely abstract idea that does not exist in the real world - certainly not at scale. In the real world, sure, we've found through trial and error that a government can be very good at "setting the rules" and maintaining the conditions for something approaching an ideal free market. Using regulation, you can make the market either more or less free depending on your desired outcome. My comment addresses the point that "free market" advocates conveniently skip over, which is that by creating an artificial entity that shields individual owners from the consequences of their actions, they have created the single largest intervention in the free market ever conceived - though I've seen it argued that IP laws have an even greater effect. Either way, people who fancy themselves against government regulation rarely seem to pick the two biggest regulations that we have today.

Re: Of course

[CaptainDork]

Less than, greater than instead of brackets, Just trying to help.

Re: Of course

[CaptainDork]

You forgot sports figures, actors and actresses and frontmen.

Re: Of course

[liquid_schwartz]

Most of Europe does not have 20% youth unemployment and also much less crime than the US.

The Europeans smugness on crime will go away once you have imported enough minorities to look like the US. The US demographics on crime are *not* evenly spread among the various groups. For example US blacks murder at ~7x the rate of the general population.

Citation:

http://narrative-collapse.com/...

Re:Of course

[liquid_schwartz]

According to 2nd Thessalonians in the bible if one does not work does not eat. You whiny commie demoncrat terrorists keep touting "What if someone is too disabled to work" Well here's the thing, there is no such thing as being "too disabled to work." Even if there truly were those that are too disabled to work, guess what, can't work falls under don't work so either work or die. Those that are "too disabled to work" are truly "too disabled to live"

LOL, you seem nice.

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God." Leviticus 23:22

"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11

"If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother." Deuteronomy 15:7

"Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near, so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin." Deuteronomy 15:9

"The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern." Proverbs 29:7

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:17-18

Quoting the Bible is fun, eh? It's almost as if you can find passages to justify any point of view, even for an uncaring prick like yourself.

I think both are correct. Everyone should work but they should also have opportunities. Leaving grain in the fields provides opportunity. Getting out there and picking it requires work. Personally, I think it's a great compromise and wish we had more combinations of opportunity plus effort. Most people I know who oppose welfare oppose the aspect where you get something for nothing.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

Me too. I make a lot of money replacing my job with automation. Lots of happy customers.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

No, the net affect is that some jobs at the bottom of the pay scale are eliminated or hours are reduced, and others have to work harder to make up the slack. If it's not economically viable to raise prices, then the business goes under.

Re:Of course

[eddeye]

Annual payroll expense per McDonald's restaurant: $602,000

Annual net profit per McDonald's restaurant: $153,900

Even a 25% increase in payroll would put them out of business. There is no way they could absorb a 300-400% increase, which is what you are claiming.

Not so fast. A 25% wage increase would make them unprofitable under their current structure. But structures are dynamic, there's no reason they would go out of business. Consider:

• What portion of their expenses are wages vs other costs? According to this, the industry norm is wages comprise 25% of revenue. So 25% wage increase can be offset by a 6.25% reduction in the rest of the expenses.
• For instance, perhaps they are carrying excess inventory that can be cut. Perhaps they can make due with fewer workers (other than lunch/dinner rush, most periods are slow for fast food workers). Perhaps they can cut back on their advertising budget. There are many adjustments to be made.
• You're ignoring the biggest adjustment of all - price. They could fully cover a 25% wage increase with a 6.25% price increase. That's an extra 31 cents on a $5 value meal. Not going to drive customers away.

While a 300% wage increase would have significant impacts, there's plenty of room for a modest increase without upsetting the business.

Re: Of course

[SaBumNim]

The question isnâ(TM)t what youâ(TM)re willing to pay, it is what the market is willing to bear. So, if you offer a non-living wage to mow your lawn, and no 15 year old shows up to do it, then either you best get to mowing it yourself, or, you raise your offer.

Re: Of course

[SaBumNim]

You can *say* the automation is here because of the wage laws, but automation was coming anyway. Automation gets cheaper every year and human labor does not, so accelerating the time value where those two functions intersect isnâ(TM)t meaningful.

Re: Of course

[Chas]

No, it's that shitty situations happen to everyone.
It's incumbent on THEM to lift THEMSELVES out.
Having the government mandate that their employers give them a hand-out simply disincentivizes people from actually trying to better their own situation.

Because, when given an ACTUAL choice, most people are lazy and will just take the hand-out.

Re: Of course

[bondsbw]

Those who benefit from low wages bear most of the weight.

Thus every dollar spent on increasing minimum wage translates into less than a dollar of positive effect. Not a good investment.

Costs can't always be passed to the consumer. If people won't pay double for a burger, the cost can't go up that much. So the business has to figure out other ways to decrease the cost of business, and part of the equation may require reduction in profits.

If you don't have much profit, such a change could force you to go into the red either way. Companies in the red go out of business.

Yet businesses who don't hire low-skill workers aren't affected. Said another way: businesses can stop hiring low-skill workers and have less impact. In other words, they buy robots and hire developers whose wages haven't been affected.

No. Minimum wage is certainly NOT a way for all of society to pay for this social need.

Re: Of course

[Reverend Green]

Almost all workers are capable of producing far more than they require to live. For this vast majority, it is sufficient to restrain the capitalist property owners from robbing them. While should a company - a legal fiction created by the state - be allowed to book a *profit* when its labor costs are being subsidized by society?

Allow workers to keep more of the fruits of their own labor. If the propertied classes have neither the Christian magnanimity nor the political good sense to cooperate? Seize and redistribute the means of production.

Re: Of course

[Immerman]

Yes. If you'd rather leave your lawn unmowed than pay somebody a fair wage, then by all means let the grass and weeds grow high. If you get tired of that, then pay somebody enough that they can make a living tending lawns. Or hire some kid, who you're almost certainly paying under the table anyway.

The minimum wage was never intended to deal with kids working a few hours for pocket money - it was intended to make sure that anyone willing to work a full time job can support themselves, rather than depending on handouts to make ends meet.

Re: Of course

[Immerman]

Also, there's a world of difference between an occasional "share the wealth" deal with neighborhood kids, and building a business on other people's labor. Burger flippers aren't friendly neighborhood exchanges, they're working to make money for a business with a keen eye on the bottom line. If someone's working to line your pockets, then they should be able to get ahead as well by doing so.

If paying them enough to make that possible means you can't sell burgers profitably, then your business is a parasite upon the labor market, and has no ethical right to exist. Let the budget burger joints shrivel up, and put that human labor to more profitable endeavors. If there's no such opportunities, well, nobody said kids should be entitled to make money - let them learn early that they need to be able to offer something of value to be able to make money, while they still have the time and opportunities to develop such skills easily.

Re:Of course

[Mashiki]

But I am also aware that if just saying "London" without a qualifier, the London should be assumed.

Only when you're trying to save face and all the other cities named were Canadian.

Re: Of course

[cyber-vandal]

Like pointing a gun in your face and demanding your money Scrooge?

Re: Of course

[imperious_rex]

How your comment got modded to "Insightful" is beyond me. The sheer financial ignorance you display is breathtaking. As an investor/shareholder, my goal is to have my money work for me in the form of assets that produce passive income as well as grow in value. It's a safe bet that your grandparents' investments are helping to finance their retirement and your parents are investing to help support their future retirement. Instead of spewing tired old communist garbage, educate yourself about personal finance and how business works.

Re: Of course

[TimothyHollins]

If it's the first time you pick it up, I'd pick up safety glasses first, lest you want to call yourself a one-eyed carpenter.

Re: Of course

[Opportunist]

So everyone to his place, don't question your caste, if you're born into poverty, don't even try to better yourself.

You are aware that this flies right in the face of the whole declaration of human rights, right?

What someone or something is intended to be means nothing. What you make of it means everything.

Re: Of course

[TimothyHollins]

You do realize what 'mean' represents, right?

99 guys making $1 per hour + 1 guy making $1,000,000 per hour gives a mean of $10,000.99.

The mean says nothing about the "death spiral".

Re: Of course

[TimothyHollins]

I'd consider that a small step up.

Re: Of course

[No Longer an AC]

I think your own experiences have skewed you perception of the kind of fast food places people see outside of your local city.

Almost every fast food place seems to have a drive-thru in much of the US* - maybe not in NYC but certainly in many parts of the US where land is cheaper.

I couldn't quickly find a percentage of restaurants with drive-thrus but a couple of sources say fast food restaurants get about 60-70% of their sales from drive-thrus.

For every fast food chain, about 60%-70% of the sales they have come from their drive thru services.

https://www.fastfoodmenuprices...

Approximately 70 percent of McDonald's’ U.S. sales now come from drive-thru windows.

http://news.mcdonalds.com/Corp...

That would be quite a feat if they managed to get 70% of sales from drive-thrus when only 1% even have drive-thrus.

* I suspect this may be part of the difference here. I imagine Europe has fewer drive-thrus but also probably fewer fast food places in general.

Re: Of course

[kilfarsnar]

"Rich people" pay 85% of the tax burden. Half of the country pays 0%.

Keep spinning lies though.

You sir are a master of irony. Spinning lies indeed.

Re: Of course

[kilfarsnar]

Well, isn't that why rich people vote Republican; to get their lifetimes of tax cuts and elimination of regulations that cost them money to comply with?

You act like it is a blessing and give out from the Govt to let people KEEP more of their own hard earned money, rather than give it to the govt???

You do realize that that money belongs to the PEOPLE first, not the Govt.

Taxes are given to the govt, but the money belongs first to the people, letting them keep more of their own is they way it should be.

As far as regulations coming down...that too is usually a good thing, as that the more govt stays out of business, the more business can thrive and guess what, more business means more jobs for the populace.

And is it wrong for the more wealthy to get a bit more break on their taxes? Well, considering that half the populace pays no net federal taxes, its no surprise that if you don't pay fucking taxes, you don't get a break on them.

In the cases you listed, the more wealthy are NOT getting anything from the govt, they are having the govt TAKE LESS...that is not the same as giving.

I was merely challenging the idea that the poor vote Democrat so they can get free stuff (essentially the GP's point), by pointing out that rich people also vote to get what they want from government. And it has been shown that wealthy special interests are much better at getting what they want from government. So the idea that the lower class is somehow mooching off the success of the wealthy, and using government to do it, is not accurate.

To your point about money, it does not belong to the people. It belongs to the Federal Reserve; says so right on the note. We are just borrowing it.

Re: Of course

[erapert]

Are you hungry sick and homeless? Do you go volunteer to feed those who are or are you just virtue signalling on the internet?

He's pointing out the fact that others much less fortunate than the rich, suffer needlessly. All because the rich refuse to give back to the society that built them up

Here in the West even our poor people are fat. The cause of being poor is a refusal to work.
If you meant globally then, again, I ask what you've done in Africa or India or South America to feed the hungry and cure the sick.

The rich have blood on their hands, because they have the ability to do something (pay a living wage, like a normal person), but refuse to do so, to the point that their own workers can't make ends meet.

How retarded do you have to be to not realize that you're not earning a living from your agreed upon salary and just go find a better job and place to live? No, this is a straw man that you've set up. People aren't starving to death in the streets because they just can't earn enough because da rich whitey keepin' them down.

The rich should have "their" money taken from them.

And there it is. You're straight up calling for theft. You are evil. You are what's wrong with the world.
But to make matters worse you call yourself moral and try to lay claim to righteousness!

I wish you socialists would start something. I can't wait. It'll either end with right wing death squads in a holocaust to make all others pale in comparison or it'll end in mass starvation and the destruction of Western Civilization that will make the collapse of Rome look like a small camp fire. Either way the world may finally have some peace for a time from you self-righteous assholes.

Re: Of course

[david_thornley]

I'm going by what little I've seen in real life. You seem to be going from a particular simple theory.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

No, I'm simply going by what happens in reality.

Re: Of course

[Bartles]

https://www.seattletimes.com/b... https://www.frbsf.org/economic... https://www.mathematica-mpr.co...

Re:Of course

[drsquare]

The problem is, can touch screens buy burgers?

Re: Of course

[antdah]

We have more recent examples than that. And we all know how that turned out.

Re:Of course

[whitroth]

Waiting to see how you feel when your job is replaced by computerization.

I'd say it just makes sense then NOT TO PATRONIZE Jack in the Box. Why should the CEO earn money, and not the folks who live where the restaurants are? And if you don't give them jobs... who the hell is going to buy what you sell? We won;t even mention the local hostility to your business.

Result: franchises go out of business.

Re:Of course

[atrex]

Humans created technology to make their lives easier. Technology will one day provide for every basic human need and eliminate the need for anyone to do anything that they don't want to do. However, the road leading up to this point has many pitfalls and potholes. But, just because it's going to be a bit of a rough ride doesn't mean it's a road that shouldn't be traveled.

One of the first pitfalls is that low skilled labor jobs are going to be eliminated by automation. Next, medium skilled labor jobs are going to be made easier by technology and end up requiring fewer medium skilled workers until they are eliminated too. Eventually, even highly skilled jobs are going to be taken over or made much easier by AI and even highly skilled workers will end up displaced.

First though, we have to deal with the displaced low skilled labor. What can we do for those people? Well, we train them to handle other jobs and make sure that they aren't dumped out on the street with no health care or money for food while they're doing it. It will require a short term investment, but it will provide long term gains.

The solar industry is booming, so, with a properly designed panel how much technical expertise does it take to install one? The baby boomer generation is retiring, so how about we train people to provide basic services for the elderly like cooking and cleaning?

Re:Of course

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Actually, they'd get my business for doing this as long as the kiosk does not screw up the order.

Re: Of course

[Marxist Hacker 42]

https://youtu.be/hkFpsILh3pc

Welders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters....

Re: Of course

[johnh677]

It is not cost of labor as much as new tax law encourages this automation. Companies get to write off these capital expenses rather than amortorize them. As long as they had to depreciate capital assets, it was not justifiable to incur the expense. Now they can take the full amount off income, with carry forward and carry back.

Re:Of course

[micahraleigh]

I agree. I was simply saying money often does not lead to success in politics.

Re: Of course

[Talderas]

Remember kids, don't eat the side of the burger that lacks char. The machine doesn't cook that part so it's raw and shouldn't be eaten.

Re: Of course

[Highdude702]

The fact that adults are trying to support their families on these jobs should tell you something about the state of the economy and the opportunities available to people.

Have you not seen most people that work fast food, or just about any minimum wage job? They don't apply their self to anything, they do a horribly shit job and make like you're inconveniencing them when you want what you actually ordered.

--Highdude702

Re:Of course

[ArmoredDragon]

A "free market" includes so much more than a lack of price controls. For instance, it requires free movement of labor, goods, and capital.

Duh...and these are all a part of that...it's like you just said "For instance, this cow has bones in it" as if just mentioning the cow wasn't good enough. Restricting movement IS a form of price control, tariffs being an obvious example.

It's also a completely abstract idea that does not exist in the real world

It's a social behavior that has been observed and was given a name long, long before capitalism was given one (and capitalism existed a few thousand years before Karl Marx coined it and began using it as a derogatory word, and THAT is when economic ideologies began.)

There's nothing abstract about that; you'd be better off arguing that economics doesn't exist in the real world. Nobody just "invented" the concept, and like all social behaviors with a name, a free market is amoral and without ideology, and yes, it most certainly exists in the real world. Sure, nobody agrees about just how free a market should be to be considered free, but nobody can agree on pizza toppings either.

which is that by creating an artificial entity that shields individual owners from the consequences of their actions

Suppose you run a pizzeria, and you hire a delivery guy who has a 5 year spotless driving record. One day on a delivery, he misses a stop sign and kills somebody. Because he was working for you, you are liable for 100% of it, your insurance doesn't cover enough, you get a judgement against you, and the homestead exemption doesn't protect enough of your house's equity, so you lose that, along with your business.

Guess what? This happens. That is what an LLC is meant to protect you from; a lender can only claim your business assets. However, it does NOT protect you from willfully breaking the law.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

Suppose you run a pizzeria

You were doing a good job until this point. It's a fine defense of limited liability, but it does not make limited liability part of a "free market". As you say, free markets existed long before there was a name (though I still argue that they have never been "ideal" free markets, which are an abstract idea). Limited liability certainly did not exist until very recently in human history - well after people "invented" the free market idea. Whether you feel it is justified or not, it is a massive change with tremendous impact and is not the natural or default state of a market. I mean, the natural state is to organize a posse and burn down the store that killed your loved one :)

Re: Of course

[Immerman]

If a $1 increase in the minimum wage makes it worth it to automate, then they would do so within a year or two anyway - the price of automation has been in freefall for many years, and no end is in sight.

Re: Of course

[Chas]

The fuck it does.

You don't like working a shit job for shit money, improve yourself and get a better fucking job that pays more.

Why is the mere SUGGESTION of a meritocracy so scary to you people?

Re: Of course

[Chas]

No. They improve themselves to improve their own lives.

Meritocracy instead of kleptocracy.

Re:Of course

[CQCoder]

I would add this was coming either way. It was simply a matter of time. All they have done is accelerate it. The bottom line is, as history has proven time and time again, bottom rung jobs are going to get automated. Flipping burgers isn't a career choice.

Re:Of course

[CQCoder]

Your logic is a bit flawed. Once they do the initial investment to get it rolling - which no doubt the minimum wage being jacked up helped, but it was coming anyway - the overall cost declines. There's always an investment hump with these things, but NOW we can buy 10x more and get a discount......suddenly it at least breaks even on the low min wage states. And you know it's going to get raised there too, sooner or later. All about strategic planning.

Re: Of course

[Uberbah]

You're talking UBE? That would be great, but the other advantage to increasing the minimum wage is raising the floor of wages overall. If Mary can quit her $15 an hour job working in an unairconditioned factory because sweeping floors at 7-11 pays just as much, the factory will be forced to raise wages. If Bob can quit his high-stress sales job that averages $19 an hour because the now air conditioned factory pays just as much, the company he works for will be forced to pay more, etc. The benefits trickle up.

Re: Of course

[cyber-vandal]

Mugging people with money is a lot easier than trying to study while working two jobs to just cover living expenses.

Re: Of course

[shutdown -p now]

In many of those cases, it was actually earned by us. It's not like that money magically materialized in the pockets of all those people - ultimately, someone, somewhere, made a product or service (or, more likely, a small part of it - but still made it with their own labor) that someone else needed. All those people that OP listed are just rentiers who cash in on that transaction, because the economy is structured in a way that allows them to collect economic rent from all wealth generated by people who actually work.

Re: Of course

[shutdown -p now]

He's an asshole because he doesn't care about the suffering of other people. It's this thing that we call "empathy", that's generally (except for nuts like the Randians) considered a prerequisite to function well in society.

Re: Of course

[MightyYar]

Right, but we can't pretend there is no side effect... Mary can enjoy her new job at 7-11, but she displaced the moron that used to have the job and now he's out of work entirely. Raising minimum wage is correlated to unemployment... I'm not saying that as someone opposed to minimum wage, but we need to be realistic about its effects.

Re:Of course

[Uberbah]

Countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal (in particular) are slaves to the Euro, and unable to devalue their own currencies while deficit spending to stimulate their economies and unemployment. They've been forced into "austerity" to please central European bankers, which has lead to a steep downward spiral in the economies.

France.

France is in the same model boat as Greece and Ireland, theirs just doesn't have as many holes in it.

Or how about Germany's relaxation of employment rules for youth "apprentices" so that they are more attractive to employers.

Germany is in a different capitalist universe compared to the rest of the world. This is the country where labor is strong enough that workers are demanding not job cuts in response to automation, but for a 28 hour work week with no reduction in overall compensation.

Or the UK scaling minimum wages with age

The UK, like the United States, has been under the thumb of a bipartisan neoliberal party since the late 70's. Both Tories and Labor have spent decades throwing the working class under the bus, and that wont change unless Corbin or someone like him is elected prime minister.

What I am saying is not even remotely controversial.

It is for anyone following economics from Keynes on left. These countries have high unemployment because they have no control over the currency the use, and have been forced into accepting "austerity" which inherently leads to depressed economies. Not because they have a livable minimum wage. But lets go ahead and say that minimum wages are going to be reduced or eliminated across the EU. You aren't going to see consumer prices fall by the same margin, which means poverty and joblessness will only increase as people can no longer participate in the economy.

Raising minimum wage is correlated to unemployment.

It sure is - it reduces it. Pay people more money and they have more money to spend, most of which will go into the local economy. This means more business, not less, for any business you are in or invested in. The only "reductions" in jobs come from people quitting their second or third because their full-time position can start paying the rent and putting food on the table by itself.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

It sure is - it reduces it.

Wishing don't make it so. Please point to anything even remotely scholarly indicating that this is the case.

What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

Re:What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[AHuxley]

If a city, state, nation, province wants to demand a much higher wage for all jobs then business have a few ways of thinking about that:
1. Accept less profit and have less money to invest in upgrades, the business.
2. Pay the workers the new wage but only need the hours of work that add up to the old wage per person working. Dont hire new workers.
2.5 Look into what can be done with touch screens to save some wages.
3. Buy a robot.
4. Buy more robots.

Re:What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[Kjella]

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.

Which is probably why this is a red herring to stop workers from demanding higher wages rather the robots being ready. I expect the time between a robot is a $20/hr equivalent boondoggle because of all the customer frustration / stoppages / maintenance / babysitting / quality assurance etc. and a $5/hr burger making monster is actually going to be quite short. They want to get to the latter no matter if the workers are paid $7.25 or $10 or $11 or $15 bucks an hour. But if you can keep workers from charging more because they think it'll save them from the robots...

Re: What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[Calydor]

If inflation is at an all-time low there's still inflation.

Re: What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[Maxo-Texas]

2% a year. More like 5% in food tho. Many food products are up 25% or more in the last 5 years.

Re:What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[AHuxley]

AC then you don't attract and keep the best executives.

Re:What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[AHuxley]

AC the smart people who use robots will be able to keep their wage costs lower. Prices will go down for the robot users and they will attract new consumers looking for better prices.
Increase prices will not work if business can set their own prices and pass on robot wage savings by not having the same human wages as competitors.

Re:What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[CanadianMacFan]

One of the grocery stores I go to stopped taking cash at the self-serve checkouts last summer. There were so many people that couldn't read the signs that they had to "upgrade" the software so that you have to answer a question at the start of the transaction saying that you won't be using cash. This means that you can't just start scanning your groceries like before. Even now people still click on "Yes" that they understand that they can't use cash and then try to pay using cash at the end.

For anything simple self-checkouts could make things faster but once you start doing anything different from the menu then some people are going to slow the system down. I'm thinking things like swapping onion rings for fries in a combo or changing an English muffin for a bagel in a sandwich.

Besides, the CEO is missing the primary reason for the people taking the orders. While he thinks it is to input orders into the system, it isn't. It may be a large part of their job, the main reason for their being their is to sell you the upgrades that are mostly profit. A little statement asking you if you want to upsize your meal isn't going to be as good as a person.

Re: What a difference a dollar an hour makes

[ShanghaiBill]

If inflation is at an all-time low there's still inflation.

Low inflation is better than no inflation. The sweet spot is about 2%, which is low enough for price stability, but high enough to discourage people from just sitting on cash, rather than spending or investing.

Who maintains them?

[NadNad]

Didn't we have an article a few months ago that the replacement of low-wage fast food cashiers with kiosks meant instead having to hire higher-wage support personnel for said kiosks?

Re:Who maintains them?

[Sigvatr]

Still cheaper than hiring a team of greasy teenagers.

Re:Who maintains them?

[AHuxley]

The robots come from a factory with a set time before they need work done again.

Re:Who maintains them?

[vlad30]

And more correct on the order and I don't have to repeat myself

Re:Who maintains them?

[fahrbot-bot]

Still cheaper than hiring a team of greasy teenagers.

But wringing out their hair saves on cooking oil.

What doesn't make sense

[John.Banister]

is that word, "restaurant." Did they call that giant vending machine for cars a dealership?

Re:What doesn't make sense

[zhiwenchong]

The Automat concept has been around for a long time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:What doesn't make sense

[John.Banister]

If Jack in the Box is still paying people to bus the tables, like the automats did, I'm willing to call it a restaurant. If they have no inside space for customers, it's a vending machine. Really though, I can't see them having inside space and restrooms without a few employees, because they would attract the same crime related problems that keep cities from having the wheel chair type public toilets. If they only have one employee, it'll have to be a security guard who also mops and buses tables, but that's not a friendly face for food business. I think the way it works is to forego the walk-in business and be a drive-through-only food vending kiosk. Probably it will provide discounts and extra customization for customers who pre-order & pre-pay via smartphone and then let an app track their proximity to the kiosk so as to maximize throughput.

Re:What doesn't make sense

[freeze128]

"Dealership" indeed! It doesn't even float!

Re: Mc Burgers

[Anonymous Coward]

Cooking a steak and french fries are actually two of the easiest things to automate. Automated fry machines already exist.

Re:You know what those robots will be?

[rkordmaa]

In China McDonalds has these order placing touch screens and they don't look like that, and generally in china things are dirty and run down. If even chinese can manage west should have no problems.

The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Baron_Yam]

If robots are available, less expensive, and acceptable to consumers... the CEO who DOESN'T replace their workers with them is a CEO presiding over a failing company. Because while they're not doing it, others are, and have greater profit margins to work with.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[hjf]

Yeah but low-wage workers don't just disappear. They go into social aid programs, and instead of the CEO paying them a salary for doing menial work, it's YOU paying for their food stamps.

Re: The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[AvitarX]

Corporations need to be able to deduct their expenses though, or it'd be pretty much impossible.

I work at a company that does about 1.5 million a year, we generally profit +- 50k/year (small business in a saturated and relatively efficient market).

Paying even a low tax on the full 1.5 million would pretty much make the business impossible (and I'm sure many others too).

You'd basically be destroying high investment low margin businesses.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Baron_Yam]

Absolutely. But the economic version of natural selection still applies... if he doesn't do it, his company will tank and another will take over. So the choice is, "Do we push this problem onto the taxpayer or do we go bankrupt while someone else pushes it onto the taxpayer?"

Seems like an easy choice.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[The Evil Atheist]

Sure, but replacing the workers is only half of the equation. Different CEOs can do different things with the workers that were replaced, such as firing them, or take advantage of their experience and get them working/self-training on better stuff.

The true fool is the CEO who thinks replace-and-fire is the whole of the strategy and a magical solution.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Baron_Yam]

> or take advantage of their experience and get them working/self-training on better stuff.

That's mostly a pipe-dream. If you're replacing 9 of 10 employees per location with an automation system, are you going to add 900% more locations to take advantage of the freed-up labour? Chances are if you had the money to expand like that, you'd already have done it.

>The true fool is the CEO who thinks replace-and-fire is the whole of the strategy and a magical solution.

If your company doesn't have massive market growth potential, there's little point in keeping around a human made redundant by a machine. Especially the low-skilled labour, which can be picked up in any market whenever you may decide you need it.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[The Evil Atheist]

If, as a CEO, you can't see opportunities in your own company, then you are a fool. If you already place limits on the opportunities in a hypothetical scenario, what are the chances you'll be any good as CEO in recognizing real opportunities?

Especially the low-skilled labour.

Funny how you say that AFTER I suggested, among one of the actions, is to train them with better skills to move them into higher skilled roles. CEOs tend to forget that humans have brains and can be trained with new skills. Loosing organizational knowledge is a hidden cost that CEOs tend to blind to.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[DogDude]

That's simplistic, ignorant, and wrong. A CEO works for the owners of the company, and the owner's of the company decide what the company's priorities are. Every company's top priority is not the short-term bottom line. That's false.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[gettin2old]

Or more likely a CEO that gets fired by the shareholders/board of directors so they can bring someone in who will replace them.

Machines are getting cheaper. You better have skills that put you as far down the obsolescence line as possible.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[MatthiasF]

The cost to return on replacing a lot of workers with robots probably pales in comparison to the cost of replacing the CEO with an AI.

.....just saying. Maybe AI automation should start from the top down.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Kohath]

Yeah, but unemployment is at 4% and expected to fall even lower. And there are help wanted signs up all over. And economists are worried about labor shortages as baby boomers age out of the workforce with fewer people to replace them.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ClickOnThis]

Absolutely. But the economic version of natural selection still applies... if he doesn't do it, his company will tank and another will take over. So the choice is, "Do we push this problem onto the taxpayer or do we go bankrupt while someone else pushes it onto the taxpayer?"

Seems like an easy choice.

Yup. And the owners of many companies made the first choice. How 'bout we tax them for the burden they put on us?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/h...
https://www.thenation.com/arti...
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.commercialappeal.co...

Many more where those came from.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[bill_mcgonigle]

it's YOU paying for their food stamps

Which is why they can afford to not demand higher wages. Without food stamps they wouldn't take any jobs that allowed for survival in conjunction with food stamps.

Labor is subject to the laws of supply and demand, just like everything else.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[DrusTheAxe]

You assume foodstamps aren't the next to go

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[TheInternetGuy]

The CEO who thinks differently will soon be replaced by AI.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[umghhh]

It is sadly so. Yet there is no way that CEO of a company should care about that. Not in their capacity of CEO. As a human being yes but making profit while following the law is what they are supposed to do. The part of making profits may include not behaving like an arse but it is never main part of it.
Yes I think too that the robotics will change our societies in violent and not always good ways. Some will find occupation elsewhere. Some like me will not because they cannot talk nice to people and be with all their skills just discarded.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[thegarbz]

Yeah but low-wage workers don't just disappear. They go into social aid programs

Except that stores which have automated such have shown that the robots don't display workers but rather simply increase throughput causing the staff to simply move from facing the customer to working the kitchen.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Maxo-Texas]

I have a friend who has 30 years experience who hasn't even gotten one call back for an interview. With 7 years til retirement, he's too old. 7 years is longer than most young people will stay at a job these days.

The labor shortages are as real as they are portrayed to be.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[AmiMoJo]

Human companies won't tank, they will just pay their CEO and shareholders a little less.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[TheDarkMaster]

I would instead fire the CEO. Think how much burguer flippers I can hire with the CEO salary?

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ScentCone]

How 'bout we tax them for the burden they put on us?

What? Let's say you run a landscaping company. And because you have good equipment, you need only a certain number of workers to get your contract work done. Should we levy a tax on your landscape company for not hiring more people you don't need, because you're using modern equipment instead of push mowers?

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[swb]

I don't think CEOs really work for the "owners" of the company. That seems to be a naive and rosy textbook example of how a share-based company works, not a how most of them really work.

You might argue the CEOs work for the board, but usually they are the chairmen of the board, too, and have a lot of influence on the board. Through the overlapping corporate officer board memberships, they're prone to having a lot of influence over the compensation committees, allowing for very generous pay packages.

They seem most responsive to "the market", the amorphous entity that can influence stock prices, but only when their stock performance seems to deviate from guidance or expected outcomes.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[RobinH]

At a higher level, that just means more people went to those restaurants (more likely than people just eating more... we already eat a lot) so fewer people going to the competitors, which means the competitors that didn't automate either go out of business or lay off workers, or automate.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[SirGarlon]

No. Without speaking for GP, I don't believe in tampering with tax rates to reward or punish particular behaviors. I do believe in charging all companies equal tax rates on their profits so we can have public infrastructure and a social safety net. What it looks like is the social safety net needs to expand as low-wage workers are displaced. The question of our time is, who should pay for that? I submit it should be the people who can afford it -- the shareholders of companies that are the most profitable (I am looking at you, Apple and Google, and your offshore tax havens).

Re: The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[silas_moeckel]

Assuming the companies doing this work cannot be offshored etc the price will just about double to account for the tax rate. If that drives the volume down companies will shrink or go under.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[hjf]

Well. Remember, in America you don't get paid vacations or maternity leave.
So why would an employer GIVE you paid vactions if they can... you know, ... NOT?

Seems like an easy choice. And it's a choice companies like Walmart do in a regular basis. In your first years, you will get NO VACATIONS.

I'm all for the deregulation of most things (since most regulations are windows for corruption). But some things you NEED to be regulated. You can only play "race to the bottom" for so long. Remember that a company getting a few extra billion a year will just put them in the bank, or offshore. People getting a few extra billion a year will spend it. Trickle-down economics never works.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Kohath]

I have a friend who has 30 years experience who hasn't even gotten one call back for an interview. With 7 years til retirement, he's too old. 7 years is longer than most young people will stay at a job these days.

What does that have to do with entry level fast food jobs?

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Cro Magnon]

Well, if this 30 years experience guy can't find a decent job, he'll have to get an indecent one in fast-food. As a bonus, some stupid teen won't be able to buy an X-box because this old geezer stole his job.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ShanghaiBill]

How 'bout we tax them for the burden they put on us?

Taxing companies for hiring low wage workers will just discourage them from doing so, and push even more unskilled people out of the labor force.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ShanghaiBill]

Without food stamps they wouldn't take any jobs

Without food stamps, poor people would face a choice of working longer hours or starving. The bargaining position of desperate people is weaker, not stronger.

Labor is subject to the laws of supply and demand, just like everything else.

Nope. As more people are employed, they earn and spend money, generating demand for even more jobs to satisfy the increased demand for goods and services. Employment begets more employment. Unemployment begets more unemployment. This is the reason for the "business cycle", and is the OPPOSITE of supply and demand.

The belief that there is only a fixed number of jobs to fill is known as the Lump of Labor Fallacy, and is one of the most common misconceptions about how economies work.

Re: The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ShanghaiBill]

You'd basically be destroying high investment low margin businesses.

They would just have to change how they do business.

Today a farmer sells wheat to the granary, which sells it to the miller, which sells flour to the baker, who sells bread to the grocery store.

But if they are prohibited from deducting expenses, there are two ways to adapt:

Solution 1: Sell "services" rather than buying products. So the farmer would retain ownership, but pay the granary to store and transport grain, pay the miller to grind it into flour, pay the baker to make it into bread, and then pay the grocery store a consignment to sell it.

Solution 2: Vertical integration. A single company would own the farm, silo, mill, bakery, and grocery store. So each product would only be sold once to the end consumer, and all other transactions would be intra-company and thus untaxed.

Of course either of these solutions is economic insanity, which is why we allow businesses to deduct expenses.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[k6mfw]

I submit it should be the people who can afford it -- the shareholders of companies that are the most profitable (I am looking at you, Apple and Google, and your offshore tax havens).

reminds me this mention from “The Know-It-Alls” a panel discussion shown on CSPAN2, https://www.c-span.org/video/?...
“So you have seen the technology -- houses are gone up and work for goggle and work for Facebook and whatever come into these neighborhoods buy houses, and the people get pushed out from those houses are the people that are now the contract workers that help support Facebook and Google and these are not just advertising people that you spoke of but the people that work in the cafeteria the people that drive the dry cleaning cars that bring cleaning to people so they can work 15, 20 hours a day and none of them are Apple or Facebook employees.”

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ClickOnThis]

What? Let's say you run a landscaping company. And because you have good equipment, you need only a certain number of workers to get your contract work done. Should we levy a tax on your landscape company for not hiring more people you don't need, because you're using modern equipment instead of push mowers?

If I pay my employees so little that they need government assistance to survive, then I'd say yes.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[gatfirls]

U6....

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ScentCone]

You're changing the topic to avoid confronting your silliness. We're talking about a company that needs fewer people because they have better tools. So I'll ask the same question, and you should try to answer it honestly instead of being slippery about it. Should we tax companies who don't employ more people than they need? Yes or no.

And if you say yes, then ... how many more people than a company needs should be considered the number they SHOULD be paying for, even if they have nothing for them to do, so that those employees don't have to go find different work? Should all employers keep 100% more staff than they need in order to avoid your tax penalty? 200%? Be specific.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Baron_Yam]

>some things you NEED to be regulated.

I agree, but as this board is mostly American, arguing that here will get you ignored or derided as a communist.

I was only speaking to how a company will behave in the existing environment. It is indeed up to society to decide what they want that environment to look like.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ClickOnThis]

No, you are changing the topic. The thread was discussing companies that "push this problem onto the taxpayer". The problem being the need for people to rely on government assistance to survive.

Over and out.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[sexconker]

Check and mate.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ScentCone]

The thread was discussing companies that "push this problem onto the taxpayer".

Right. The thread is talking about replacing workers with kiosks. Thus, hiring fewer workers. And you think they should be taxed because they don't want to hire people they don't need. So, again, how many people they don't need should they none the less keep on the payroll so that you'll feel they're not pushing a problem somewhere else? Be specific.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ScentCone]

The government ALSO loses even more money from the lack of workers not earning a wage (which is taxed), compounding the issue.

The kind of labor we're talking about, here (landscapers, burger-cashiers) DO NOT PAY INCOME TAXES. Nearly half of the people in the country pay no income taxes, including people who make a lot more than minimum wage.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[lgw]

For the most part, you don't tax a corporation, you tax its customers (who the tax is passed on to industry-wide), which is usually a regressive tax. Taxing "the shareholders" would mostly be a tax on the retired, who, to be fair, are on average more wealthy than youth), but that's not what corporate taxes usually accomplish.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[lgw]

Corporations will do nothing of the sort - they'll pass the tax along to their customers. Nicely regressive taxation, on average. Anyway, CEOs on average get paid a trivial amount of the overall revenue of a corporation - it's nothing but envy to talk about CEO salary. And most shareholders are retirees so good luck cutting their retirement income without back-filling that from taxes.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[lgw]

When McDs replaced cashiers with kiosks they were not, in fact, fired, but moved to kitchen work or other customer service. Non-hypothetical.

Sure, that's not always possible, but in the case of kiosks in fast-food restaurants is clearly is.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[lgw]

You might argue the CEOs work for the board, but usually they are the chairmen of the board, too, and have a lot of influence on the board.

That's only true for founders. And the board does represent the shareholders, and can be replaced by vote of shareholders - this almost never happens, because the board will fire the CEO first. I've seen this happen at 3 different companies I was working for at the time - piss off the shareholders and a CEO can definitely be fired.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[lgw]

I would instead fire the CEO. Think how much burguer flippers I can hire with the CEO salary?

133 burger flippers. Wow, that sure helped the economy. 317 burger flippers if you include his stock exercise (assuming full-time burger flippers making $10/hr - so maybe 2x that many part-time.)

Did you mean to suggest anything beyond your own envy?

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[j-beda]

The government ALSO loses even more money from the lack of workers not earning a wage (which is taxed), compounding the issue.

The kind of labor we're talking about, here (landscapers, burger-cashiers) DO NOT PAY INCOME TAXES. Nearly half of the people in the country pay no income taxes, including people who make a lot more than minimum wage.

You have obviously never worked a minimum wage job if you think legally employed landscapers and burger-cashiers do not pay income taxes. While it is true that many low wage earners effectively pay no "federal income tax" directly, they do generate funding of federal programs through the employers' payroll taxes, as well as state and local income taxes and sales taxes, and also Social Security and Medicare taxes (FICA). Lay them off, and that income for all those local, state, and federal social programs drops significantly.

https://mises.org/blog/myth-ha...

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[Hognoxious]

Corporations will do nothing of the sort - they'll pass the tax along to their customers.

If the market would bear a higher price surely they'd already be charging it?

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ScentCone]

While it is true that many low wage earners effectively pay no "federal income tax"

Not only do they not PAY it, they generally get credits out of the tax code that results in paying negative income taxes. They get "refunds" on taxes they do not pay. Those, of course, are just dollars transferred directly from other taxpayers.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[j-beda]

While it is true that many low wage earners effectively pay no "federal income tax"

I see what you did there - clipping the part where I said "but they pay lots of other things, like into social security and stuff" - funding some of the things people complain about.

Not only do they not PAY it, they generally get credits out of the tax code that results in paying negative income taxes. They get "refunds" on taxes they do not pay. Those, of course, are just dollars transferred directly from other taxpayers.

So that would be an argument for trying to prevent them from losing their jobs and becoming even more of a "burden" on society, no?

Isn't that what we are talking about?

As an aside, and in order to show my cred as a pinko commie, I heard this the other day from some comedian on the radio: "Ever notice how entitlements for rich people are called 'incentives', and incentives for poor people are called 'entitlements'?" I did a google search of it, and couldn't find who to attribute it to, so maybe it came to me an some drug induced fever dream...

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[lgw]

Competition is the major factor in pricing for most things (fashion excluded, but they charge what they want anyway), and when everyone's costs go up, everyone's prices go up.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[ScentCone]

Low-income people don't even come CLOSE to paying transfer taxes (like SS, etc) in the amount they receive. All other federal expenditures come out of income taxes, which they don't pay.

And yes, we call them "incentives" when we're trying to use the tool of tax policy to cause someone with a pile of money to spend it in government-favored ways. Choosing to take away somewhat less of their money in exchange for them spending it in certain ways isn't even remotely the same thing as simply giving people money. Please don't pretend you don't understand the difference.

Re:The CEO who thinks differently is a fool

[j-beda]

Low-income people don't even come CLOSE to paying transfer taxes (like SS, etc) in the amount they receive. All other federal expenditures come out of income taxes, which they don't pay.

Right. We are arguing on the same side - excellent. We should design systems that encourage employers to employ more people, even as other forces such as technology advances encourage them to not employ as many. All in the interests of having more people able to pay a larger share of our shared social costs.

Just a variation on the old saying

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Never try to extort someone for more than the cost to have you killed.

Re:Just a variation on the old saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a Ferengi rule of acquisition.

You know what else makes sense?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Replacing fast food with home-cooked meals.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You know what else makes sense? Replacing fast food with home-cooked meals.

Try that in a rented single room with no cooking facilities.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[Baron_Yam]

I did it for a while with a microwave and a hot plate. OK, technically the hot plate was probably against fire code, but I did it.

A small microwave isn't that expensive compared to the savings from avoiding a year's worth of fast food, and a hot plate is even less. I can easily cook something for myself at 1/10th the cost of a McD's meal that is also (much) better for me.

It takes a bit of effort to grocery shop and a bit of effort to cook, but by all means, if you enjoy staying poor and somewhat malnourished, keep blowing your money at restaurants.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Try that in a rented single room with no cooking facilities.

Please. For well less than $100 you can get a countertop induction unit -- it heats the pot directly so no real risk of fire -- and about the same gets you a set of perfectly serviceable pots/pans/utensils. Something like that certainly wouldn't be the roughest part of your existence if you're really living in a rented single room.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[Anonymous Coward]

For $1.39 you can get a Sausage McMuffin. Tastes fine. 400 calories with a decent amount of protein. Doesn't take you any time to cook or clean. No need to go to the store (possibly by bus) to buy groceries.

Cooking is a fun luxury that doesn't make sense for the working poor. Fucking rice and beans can't compete economically against a McDouble.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[thegarbz]

No it doesn't. Sit down restaurants make sense to replace with home cooked meals as there's no difference in time. Fastfood serves a very different purpose than a home cooked meal.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[SuricouRaven]

A lot of people these days are time-poor. We work an eight hour day, and spend the rest of the day too bleh from work to want to make any effort. Time spent cooking is time not spent doing things we actually enjoy. This is why the microwave meal is so popular: Stick it in, turn dial, instant dinner with no effort at all. Sure, it probably tastes like cardboard - but you don't eat it for the taste, you eat it for fuel so you can get back to recreation.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[havana9]

One couòd also eat salads, cheese, ham, canned fish that could be eaten cold. And anyway an electromechanical microwave is really cheap, and buying at a grocery store is cheaper. Near my office there's a mall and we have bought for the office a tiny fridge and a microwave, so normally we buy sometging at the mall, even fresh, daily made foods and heat them. It actually costs less than going to the fast food.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[Chrisq]

Replacing fast food with home-cooked meals.

As soon as they have a robot that can cook them.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[religionofpeas]

Fucking rice and beans can't compete economically against a McDouble.

A 1-lb bag of dried pinto beans costs $1.80, and provides almost 3000 kcal.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[Maxo-Texas]

It's really easy to customize microwave meals.

Add some frozen shrimp, a little cream, or butter, some extra frozen vegetables, one of several kinds of oils, one of a dozen seasonings (curry powder will do wonder for many tv dinners). And so on.

You get the low cost, higher k-cal and quality.

Re: You know what else makes sense?

[mapkinase]

and making days last 27 hours.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[Khashishi]

It's also probably LESS healthy that fast food.

Re:You know what else makes sense?

[david_thornley]

I knew a woman who was getting a business going, and worked maybe 16 hours/day. She ate all her meals at restaurants. (Then she was bought out, and we ate at her place a couple of times before she moved away, and she turned out to be a pretty good cook.)

Re:Minimum wage kills jobs.

[lucasnate1]

If they can save money they will be motivated to eliminate it. At some point you will have either workers working for nearly nothing or machines. In both cases, people cant put food on the table.

Bullshit

[rsilvergun]

you could pay them .99 cents/hr and the machine would still be a better deal. The reason it's happening now is cheap, reliable microcontrollers and big, high res touch screens are finally widely available. Software is also a lot better. Most of these run some kind of unix (android/linux/etc). They'll have uptime measured in decades.

10 years ago these systems were too unreliable to replace humans. They ran XP and crashed all the time. Business is all about reliability, repeatably, and low risk. A living wage didn't doom the jobs, better tech did.

Re:Bullshit

[umghhh]

I agree with all but better sw - the sw is as crapy as it used to be. In some cases the toys just look more shiny.

Re:Bullshit

[Hodr]

Where I live there are two regional fast food chains that have been using touch screen ordering kiosks to place all non-drive through orders for more than a decade. I have never seen any that were unreliable, and they (and most other kiosks) did not use XP, they used Windows CE.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye I'm hoping the fucking robots will put all the items I ordered in the to go bag, because the retards at Panera always seem to miss the one thing my wife has got to have, and I don't hear the fucking end of it.

Not just price

[rsilvergun]

reliability. That's why everyone ignores. Open source means cheap, super reliable software. Tech advancements means the same for hardware. LCDs last for decades now. You can run these off a $20 64 gig compact flash and unlike a hard drive they last decades. Modern touch screens just work, they don't need to be recalibrated as the display ages. And the screens don't fade in a few years as long as you keep 'em out of direct sunlight.

They had these kiosks in the 90s and early 2000s. 80% of the time they were dumped to a BSOD or a command prompt because the software crashed or the hardware failed.

Re:Not just price

[SuperKendall]

They were also super slow and unresponsive - I remember going to an Arby's long ago that had touch screens for ordering, they were really horrible. But they could be redone now and they would work well.

I'm just wondering

[MeNeXT]

How many meals will these new cashiers purchase.

Re:I'm just wondering

[barc0001]

I know it goes contrary to the narrative, but the McDs around here that have introduced automated kiosks haven't laid anyone off. Instead they've switched their whole ordering process to use a "pick up counter" approach complete with a call board, and as a result they're able to handle higher volume in conjunction with the automatic ordering kiosks. More volume = more people needed behind the counter to prep and move the food = more revenue. Store owners are happy, staff are happy because they're not taking orders manually at the counter for the most part, and the customers are happy because they see exactly what they want on the board as they order it.

repeat after me

[schematix]

A touch screen ordering kiosk IS NOT a robot! Very different animal and an order of magnitude easier to implement that the food preparation side. I'm all for this technology though. It'll do wonders for food consistency and order accuracy. The food prep side is not trivial from a mechanical perspective and is likely another decade or two away from real implementation. To do it efficiently requires a lot of special purpose equipment. The kitchens will also need to be laid out differently to allow the proper flow of raw ingredients to finished product. Cleaning all those moving parts isn't trivial either. Not to mention the flexibility to add new menu items and adapt existing equipment. And if even a simple part breaks... well who's going to make the food?

Re:repeat after me

[drinkypoo]

The food prep side is not trivial from a mechanical perspective and is likely another decade or two away from real implementation.

If it takes a decade I'll be shocked. The technology has long existed, it simply hasn't been cost effective. The difference isn't that we couldn't do it before, it's that it wasn't cheap.

The kitchens will also need to be laid out differently to allow the proper flow of raw ingredients to finished product.

That depends on how they're designed now. A Wendy's with a central grill layout is eminently automatable, because all of the stuff is already in order. The walk-in is at the back of the restaurant. As you move towards the front, you reach the places where foods are stored, like the line coolers (fridges) or the fry slacking rack. The places where those foods are cooked are towards the front from there; the coolers are at the back of the line, the slack rack is next to the fryers. (The pressure cooker for chicken patties is in between.) Beverages are at the front of the house, so they can be added to meals at the end of their progression from back to front. You wouldn't need to make any architectural changes to automate such a store.

Not to mention the flexibility to add new menu items and adapt existing equipment.

That's already not a thing. New menu items already have to be prepared with the existing equipment in order to succeed in a fast food franchise environment. They don't want to be buying new equipment every time a menu item is released. All of the fiddly food prep stuff is done by the manufacturer, and frozen food blobs show up at the restaurant to be nuked or dropped into the fryer.

And if even a simple part breaks... well who's going to make the food?

At first, restaurants will hire a full time part-replacement monkey at minimum wage. The robots will tell them which parts need to be replaced, and their computer will play them a little video on how to do it. Later, the robots will be designed to maintain themselves. They will be designed with trivially-replaceable modules which can be extracted by another robot. The robot will pull a module and install another one, then literally put the old one into a box and ship it off to be repaired. When the new module shows up, it will be taken out of the shipping package (which will probably be a hard case) and inserted into the stores for the next time it is needed.

You've never worked in a restaurant then

[rsilvergun]

outside of $100 a plate high end restaurants it's all very, very regimented and repeatable. Got to any cheaper restaurant and you'll find the core of the menu is slabs of meat. That's because any fool can cook it acceptably. And if a fool can do it, so can a machine.

A $30 a plate place would need a few specialized robots and a few dozen programmers to run the chain (and they'll all be chains, since any restaurant with these resources will put the mom & pops out of business). And a $20/plate place? They won't even need the special robots.

A few of these chains might keep one guy around for a bit of custom stuff to spice up the menu. Maybe too. And that guy'll never make more than minimum wage. Heck, he might not even make that if we keep up with this 'gig economy' thing. Because put even 70% of the cooks out of work and the 1% will have so much leverage they can pay subsistence wages. Just like they do in massively overpopulated countries like India & China...

Re:You've never worked in a restaurant then

[AvitarX]

Doesn't the fact that wages have been going up in China invalidate your premise that China is an example of wages never going up?

What goes around comes around...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Once we've all been automated out of work...who's going to buy the burgers?

Reminds me of this oft-quoted aphorism, about a UAW official being shown some early auto-plant automation:

Henry Ford II: Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues?
Walter Reuther: Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?

(Apparently it wasn't really Henry Ford II. But Ruther confirmed the exchange occurred, with a high Ford official and words roughly equivalent.)

Re:What goes around comes around...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?

Plot twist: the robots are the cars.

Re:What goes around comes around...

[shanen]

That comment is about the best Slashdot can do for insight these years? Obvious response is that the self-driving cars don't need no stinkin' human buyers OR human drivers.

We need to rethink the entire economy in terms of human time. We also need to adjust the rules in favor of companies that employ CUSTOMERS so they don't need anything like food stamps to prevent starvation. Another way to word that is the rules should penalize companies that put profits ahead of everything else.

Oh wait. I forgot capitalism is dead. All we have now is corporate cancerism. I've said it too often, but there is no gawd but profit.

Cautionary Tale

[NotOverHere]

Literally the first thing that sprang into mind when reading the headline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... If you can't afford to pay your workers, who can afford you product when you are near the bottom rung of services..... Long Live Jack-in-the-box. Meat the new Jack-in-the-box

Doesn't terrify anyone

[SuperKendall]

a prospect that terrifies industry executives.

I odin't know why you have to paint such an emotional response on this, when to the upper level it's all just numbers. If minimum wage is too high to staff a location, they can simply close down and move elsewhere where labor is cheaper, or as the article notes switch to using automation. Even if they can't move and just have to close, it's just another factor on a spreadsheet and does not "terrify" anyone.

If anyone should be worried it would be teenagers or seniors, minimum wage laws are driving low-requirement jobs away in droves that they would otherwise be able to seek.

Re:Doesn't terrify anyone

[drsquare]

Fast food outlets don't have the luxury of locating where they like, they have to be where the customers are.

Re:Let's write a CEO AI and replace CEOs with robo

[Tulsa_Time]

Those Robot CEOs would come to the same conclusion.

Maybe it'd be an improvement.

[trudyscousin]

Could the robots make tacos that look like tacos?

That's a common fallacy

[rsilvergun]

the theory goes that if the rich don't pay people there will be no one to buy things. It ignores what it means to be truly rich. Like, member of the Aristocracy kind of rich. You control all of civilizations wealth. You don't need people to buy things to get more money because you already have all the money. Everybody is falling over themselves to do your bidding because if they don't they starve to death. And the few who rebel get beaten down by your knights (or militarized police if you want to modernize it).

What I'm saying is, don't kid yourself. The rich don't need us. On the other hand, we don't need them either.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[slyborg]

The OP was pointing out that rich people tend not to spend a lot of time at McDonald's. So if you eliminate the wage tier that does go to McDonald's, the business collapses, automation or no automation because you can't turn thousands of fast-food restaurants into gourmet dining establishments for the wealthy.

Even in the Roman Empire, which was essentially dependent on literal slave labor, 30%-40% of the population were enslaved, and this in a literal plutocracy. So look on the bright side, even in the dream system for the wealthy, you have a better than even chance that you aren't a slave...

Re:That's a common fallacy

[yes-but-no]

There will be a black-sheep among poor who will do that work for an extra bone. Only way the group will win if they stand united. Humans, that too low intelligent ones, are poor at standing together. The cheater in a group always exists.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[barc0001]

That only worked in feudal days because everyone lived hand to mouth and 90%+ of the population were out in farms, out of touch with each other. Those farms are automated to a ridiculous degree now and don't need anywhere near the same amount of labor. And let's not even get into how the peasants back then had no second amendment. If push comes to shove, it will get ugly.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

"The rich don't need us. On the other hand, we don't need them either."

My wife and I clear over a quarter million every year. We would often order pizza from a local shop here in California where they started to charge a 5$ delivery fee to compensate for increases in labor costs. Previously we would tip 5 - 7$ to the driver, but we started to move towards 3 - 5$ after the change. Further we started taking an interest in frozen pizza. They have some lovely options these days. This shop has a diverse menu of Italian food offerings, and we often would frequent them up to three times a week. Now they would be lucky to receive an order three times a month.

It isn't that we need the money really. We go out to eat often and pay far more for less of a meal. We have cut down heavily on fast food, and instead make our own meals. It isn't only healthier, but it also doesn't exacerbate the devaluation of the dollar. I really hope that this increase in minimum wage results in the loss of jobs, and ultimately damages the economy of California forcing the incompetent government of this state to slow their roll.

We are bored with social justice garbage, LGBTAEIOUandsometimesY politics, pity parties for trespassers to the country, climate conjecture, the anti-fascist fascist youth and pretty much all of the liberal agenda that targets useful, well meaning, idiots. Minimum wage jobs are for students who can truly do ANYTHING with their lives they set out to do and for the uneducated peasants we couldn't care less about who's time isn't even worth ten dollars an hour scrubbing the toilets of their betters.

If you fail to get a job out of college it is because you either studied something idiotic like social justice or you lack the ambition required to persevere. So many of the people I knew in college failed to continue to look for a job when it took more than a few weeks.

As a country I feel we are better off investing in education and encouraging people to better themselves rather than pandering to ambition-less layabouts who's greatest achievement will be when their carbon footprint zeros and they feed and fertilize far more useful life.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[Maxo-Texas]

Or, as in brazil 1,000 times a year they kidnap you, your kids, your spouse. Sometimes they kill you.

Or as in france revolution, the russian revolution, the chinese revolution, ....

It really serves the interests of the wealthy to make sure the masses or happy if they don't want to lose everything and also spend years in a labor camp.

Monico is only safe as long as democracy lasts. Once democracy is done, Monico is a fat plum waiting to be plucked by someone's army.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[Maxo-Texas]

While I stay away from guns myself (I have grandkids*), the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates there are roughly 5 million to 10 million AR-15 rifles owned in the United States.

It only takes one to kill 50 people in under 5 minutes. It is in the wealthy people's self interest. I personally think they plan on plundering the U.S. and then leaving. Or they are daft idiots who've lost contact with reality. Hard to say which one is correct. Maybe both.

---
*guns are a big risk to kids. guns bought to protect kids often end up killing them.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[yes-but-no]

Rich don't have to leave (leave where? to xyz.. and the situation there is also similar); What rich does is enabling free flow of junk-food/alcohol/drugs/big-screen-TV (for sports watching); so the majority is kept in low awareness. Yes right for gun ownership is to protect such run-away democracy; but the point is normally most ppl don't fight if they are fed and their senses are fed (lot of high calorie food with alcohol and big screen TV). Also anyone who shows signs of violence is put in prison (I guess US has the highest prison usage/industry)

Re:That's a common fallacy

[pipingguy]

"On the other hand, we don't need them either."

Wait - I thought they were tasty, based on an old slogan I saw somewhere!

Re:That's a common fallacy

[Khashishi]

The rich do need the poor. Who is going to clean their hotel room, pick up golf balls from the driving range, shake their drinks, dry clean their suits? Sure, automation can potentially do that, but the rich won't feel rich unless they can watch a servant squirm for a tip.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[david_thornley]

In other words, you're a couple of cheap bastards, refusing to tip the standard amount. You're also assholes, hoping that any thing that inconveniences you turns out to damage the economy.

Encouraging education? Have you noticed what tuition has done relative to minimum wage? Approximately nobody's working their way through college anymore.

Re:That's a common fallacy

[Maxo-Texas]

Backing over children is a tragic problem. It looks like it might be more common (about four children per 100,000) but that may include injuries (in which case it would be less common).

An average 1,297 children die (two children per 100,000) because of guns each year. And 5,790 are treated for injuries

http://www.kidsandcars.org/how...

OTH, a lot more people own cars (70%) than own guns (42%). If more people owned guns, more children would die because of guns assuming the rate remained the same.

Re:The Walmart Effect

[DogDude]

Exactly. Modern America. It's a shitty place to be not-rich.

This is something I've wondered for years

[rsilvergun]

I've heard we can't raise minimum wage because doing so would be devastating to our economy. But then I hear that only teenagers and bored old people work for minimum wage.

So which is it? Are minimum wage employees the bedrock of our economy or a completely superfluous bunch of kids and seniors. They can't be both.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

It can be both, because universities are degree mills pumping out people with useless degrees. Those people will never work in a job higher then minimum wage because there's no demand for someone who has a masters in "feminist dance theory" or the "history of harry potter and it's impact on french culture."

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

So what you're saying it it ISN'T both and it's in fact becoming the bedrock of our society.

The number of teenagers actually working in fast food is almost nil these days. When my sister was a regional manager for a chain of McD's several years ago, teenagers(14-18) only counted for 5% of their workforce, her friend who took over her job says it's around 3.5% now. That's across a swath of university towns, small cities and so on. You're more likely to find someone in their 30's because that's all they can get, or an old retiree there working just because they like to work or because they need the extra money to make ends meet.

On top of that "service industry" which are PT for the last decade have outpaced growth in FT jobs. More people in their late 20's and 30's are more likely to hold 3 PT jobs to make ends meet then a single FT job, again because there's no work for their lack of a skillset.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[DaveV1.0]

because universities are degree mills pumping out people with useless degrees.

No. Universities are not degree mills and they do not determine who gets what kind of degree. People are going to university and, following the advise of their guidance councilors and parents, are getting degrees to "do what you love" and then finding out that what they love pays shit. Often, people will go out and get an advanced degree, because what they love will eventually require them to have an advanced degree, and then find out they can only get an entry level job, which only required a bachelor's, which doesn't pay enough to pay off the $120K in loans they took out to get their PhD.

You are blaming the universities for the decisions of the students.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

You are blaming the universities for the decisions of the students.

No. I'm blaming students for making shit decisions. I'm also blaming universities for pushing the "a degree makes you more valuable." That's how you get degree mills.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[DaveV1.0]

A degree does make one more valuable. But, the wrong degree done wrong can also hurt one. And, it isn't really the universities that are pushing that line. It is parents, high school guidance councilors, and the media.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

Correction. A degree did make one more valuable, that trend has been shifting for years. And I'm not sure where you are in the world, but universities in Canada and the US have been pushing that line for decades.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

Might be something to think about when people are screaming the idea that working in fast-food is a starter job, not expected to pay well, something people move on from, don't think about it...

Except it is, and was. Except when there are no FT jobs, that "starter job" becomes a "mainstream job." Now round this out with the economic policies of say the Liberal Party(Ontario) and Federal(Canada) which punish industries from opening up, but heavily support service industries. Now what do you have? A whole pile of service industry jobs that are low paying, and people taking multiple PT jobs to cover a single FT job.

You just said they have 3 jobs. Try to be consistent. That way you can actually start thinking about the problem rather than superficially declaring something based on no real knowledge of it.

That *is* consistent. I realize you think you're smart or something, but you have no actual grasp of the economics in places where the government is hostile to industry. Again that Liberal Party politics drove the price of electricity through the roof, implemented barriers for companies to open if they were industry(factory, automobiles, consumer goods, etc), implemented tax plans that were hostile to those same industries. Now think really hard why you'd open a business in say Ontario, when you can do the same in New York, or Michigan, pay 1/3 the cost or less for electricity and the tax rate is *less* then what you'd pay in Ontario. Even with the business tax rate where it was before Trump's tax cuts.

Have you figured this out yet?

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

Oh wait, wait, you're too busy chasing your strawman to look in the reality of higher education fraud, but have to cloak it with disingenuous complaints.

No, I pointed out a fact. You just don't happen to understand just how broken the university system currently is. That of course isn't my problem, but why don't you go take a look around and get back to everyone.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[Mashiki]

What about people with non fictitious degrees?

Why not ask why those degrees actually exist in the first place, and you can get a masters in them.

Re:This is something I've wondered for years

[DaveV1.0]

I'm in the U.s. but when I was in school, it was parents and high school guidance councilors pushing it and they were getting it from the news reports that degree==high paying job.

And, I concede that a degree did make one more valuable back in the day but that bump has been shrinking for years due to degree inflation.

Re:Minimum wage kills jobs.

[AvitarX]

Obviously the second option.

10 wages that require a massive taxpayer subsidy to even look vaguely like a livable wage is worse than 3 livable subsidy free wages and extra money to a highly skilled person (the robot).

The 3 people with a modest disposable income will do more for the economy than the 8 subsidized workers too.

Re:Mc Burgers

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't seen the Moley Kitchen yet then, I take it?

Re:What a difference a dollar an hour apparently m

[AvitarX]

These machines are only replacing cashiers.

That's 1-3 people (depending on time of day) not 5.

I'd average it at 2 (which is honestly high I'd suspect), so you're 2.5x the amount saved.

Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense'

[JustNiz]

It also "just makes sense" to replace most CEOs with someone paid much less. Funny how that doesn't seem to be happening though, no matter how logical it might be.

Re:Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense'

[ShanghaiBill]

Funny how that doesn't seem to be happening though, no matter how logical it might be.

You could start a company with a very low paid CEO and then seek investors. You don't even need to worry about what to make, since you could just leave that up to the CEO. Since it is such an obviously good idea, capitalists will beat a path to your door. Good luck.

Re:Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense'

[JustNiz]

> You could start a company with a very low paid CEO and then seek investors.

Plenty of small companies start that way and become successful.

A modest proposal

[ClickOnThis]

Make robots pay taxes.

That is all. Discuss.

Re:A modest proposal

[mark-t]

There's no need. For every worker they replace with a machine, efficiency is improved by such a degree that they ultimately have to hire more workers in the end just to keep up with the increased volume of business they are now able to do.

Re:A modest proposal

[SuricouRaven]

That can happen, in some industries. It does not happen in all. The coal mining industry, for example - improved technology there boosted per-worker productivity massively over a few decades, and it now hires a fraction of the workforce it once did.

Re:A modest proposal

[religionofpeas]

You already pay sales tax on every widget that the robot produces. A personal tax for a robot makes no sense, because the robot has no income to take it from.

Also, define "robot" . Does my spreadsheet need to pay taxes, or my tractor ?

Re:A modest proposal

[Calydor]

Just how much more food do you reckon people will start eating due to an increase in efficiency at McDonald's?

Re:A modest proposal

[mark-t]

In the case of something like McDonalds, what happens is that automated kiosks, for instance, is that it allows them to service more customers per hour, to such a point that the existing staff minus the people that the kiosks effectively replaced would not actually be able to keep up, which would provide no net benefit to the business if the company did nothing else. An interim solution is to actually keep the staff on that they would otherwise replace (or in some cases temporarily hire even more people) so they can better handle the increase in volume of work per unit of time, although such additional staff are usually only part time, specifically for handling the times of the day when the demands are at their peak. In the long run what they do to permanently address the matter is they actually open additional restaurants, also with automated kiosks, to take some of that pressure off of the existing ones, and allow all of their restaurants to function at the higher efficiency without putting undue pressure on the support staff that is needed to keep up with that demand. Opening additional restaurants also means hiring for higher paid positions such as managers for these restaurants.

How is this different?

[zoid.com]

How is this different than an ATM? It serves the same function of replacing a person with a kiosk.

This is a guy with a big styrofoam ball

[Tony Isaac]

...for a head! Maybe he IS actually a robot!

Re:This is a guy with a big styrofoam ball

[freeze128]

I'm thinking he's the father of DeadMau5.

worker co-ops

[Presto Vivace]

It just makes sense to form co-ops so that WE control the means of production https://medium.com/@PrestoViva...

Re:worker co-ops

[DaveV1.0]

I look forward to seeing your co-op fast food restaurant and your co-op chip manufacturer.

Re:worker co-ops

[ShanghaiBill]

It just makes sense to form co-ops so that WE control the means of production

I used to live in Berkeley, which had several co-op grocery stores. Their prices were much higher than Safeway, and about double the prices at Walmart. Eventually, they all went out of business, when even the old gray-haired hippies stopped shopping there.

Let's be real

[cordovaCon83]

Usually when I walk into a fast food restaurant there is exactly one person working the register. If business picks up, a manager will open a second register. Assuming the restaurant is open twelve hours a day for walk-in business, the gross cost of labor is ~48k at 11/hr before payroll taxes for having a cashier up front. Oh, wait, we would still need that cashier up front to assist customers. Whether it's helping the user navigate the UI, or correcting bad orders (customer meant to hit no pickles, not extra pickles), or simply greeting customers, running orders to tables, bussing tables, dealing with jammed cash kiosks, etc. So really the worker was never eliminated - they just became more efficient at their job. I'm sure the business owner (not the corporation! The franchise isn't giving away free kiosks!) would see a return on his investment in a kiosk... Eventually. And don't try to tell me that these kiosks are bullet-proof. The McDonald's down the street from me has one, and it's been down for months now. I guess they can't afford the maintenance cost.

Re:Let's be real

[DaveV1.0]

Your experience is anecdotal and it ignores the cashier in the drive through, the fact the manager can assist the customers if there are only kiosks, and the fact that having a single cashier up front is not an option in many places due to volume. Also, how fast is the service at that McDonald's? Do you have to wait in line for the cashier? When do you go in, at off times or during the rush?

Re:Let's be real

[cordovaCon83]

I'd argue that anecdotal evidence is acceptable in this case since the CEO is in effect saying that it makes sense to replace cashiers with kiosks in all his franchises - it may be a bum deal especially for his low volume franchises. The McDonald's that I speak of in the anecdote, however, is high-volume since it is the only McDonald's in town and they keep their service times low by bottle-necking the order-placing process. They do always keep two drive-thru cashiers though. And don't expect the manager to permanently replace any one employee - their job is to perform administrative duties and to assist the team during rush and you're definitely not gonna get some of them to ever take out the trash or mop up a spilt drink. Anecdotal though my argument may be, my argument stands - it may make sense in some restaurants but not all of them and there's a good chance that the franchise owners have already put thought into it and decided that the franchise is just trying to sell them something that it's hard for them to afford.

Re:Let's be real

[DaveV1.0]

I'd argue that anecdotal evidence is acceptable in this case

And, you would be wrong.

Re:Let's be real

[cordovaCon83]

Well I can't argue with that kind of logic.

Works in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia has had decent minimum wage for a long time, McDonalds have added ordering machines, and they are hiring more staff than ever before.

A minimum wage you can live on is not the problem.

PR Bullshit

[locater16]

Can you spot the PR bullshit in this statement?

No, it's the not the part where replacing people with machines is cheaper and more efficient. Of course it's more efficient, and will get cheaper every year. Indeed it's the cheap shot at the minimum wage rising that's bullshit. They were going to replace cashiers anyway, whether it rose or not. Watch them do it in states with rock bottom minimum wage. But hey, if you can try to repeal minimum wage laws while deflecting potential bad PR from firing people then that's just a double win.

Re:PR Bullshit

[DaveV1.0]

Watch them do it in states with rock bottom minimum wage.

No, they will do it in states and cities with high minimum wage. If they ever do it in states with rock bottom minimum wage, it will be last because that is where the savings are least.

Do you even understand how business works?

Re:PR Bullshit

[Uberbah]

Do you even understand how business works?

Do you? It doesn't matter if workers are paid 25 dollars or 25 cents an hour, capitalists want to maximize automation to minimize labor costs.

Re:PR Bullshit

[Uberbah]

Everywhere they have raised the minimum wage, wages and hours worked have gone down.

Wages go down when wages go up - come again? And of course hours go down, because people can get by on one job working 40 hours a week, instead of working three jobs at 70+ hours a week to keep a roof over their heads.

Re:PR Bullshit

[Uberbah]

When labor prices go up, this is what happens. It's not PR bullshit, it's hard cold reality.

More like warm, stinky Libertarian BS. You'd pay the same price for a Jack burger in Australia as you would in the U.S., even though their minimum wage is more than twice what is here. Hell, in Germany workers are reacting to improvements in automation by demanding a 28 hour work week without cutting wages. You may want to start a White House petition to put the country on the regime change list.

Re:PR Bullshit

[DaveV1.0]

No, capitalists want to minimize total cost of production without decreasing quality to a point where it will impact sales. If a machine can do the same job as a person but costs twice as much as the cost of employing the person, then the company will continue to employ the person. The only reason automation hasn't replaced fast food workers to date is that the cost of the machine was more than the cost of the person. It is as simple as that. When employing the person costs more than having the machine, the employee will be replaced by a machine. It is why there is IVR instead of a human operator on the phone. It is why there are ATMs at banks instead of more tellers.

I can't tell if you are communist or a poe/troll. You really have no idea of business motivations and you seem to believe that capitalists believe automation is always better, which is demonstrably false.

Did you lose your job as a McDonald's cashier to a kiosk or something? Was your job automated out of existence? Is that what your problem is?

Re:PR Bullshit

[SlaveToTheGrind]

You'd pay the same price for a Jack burger in Australia as you would in the U.S., even though their minimum wage is more than twice what is here.

This tired meme has been debunked for a long time. Teenagers in Australia need not be paid the full minimum wage. Ergo, Australian fast food restaurants largely employ teenagers.

There's no such thing as the magic money tree, and there is no free lunch.

Re:PR Bullshit

[Uberbah]

Teenagers in Australia need not be paid the full minimum wage.

The vast majority of workers are not teenagers.

Ergo, Australian fast food restaurants largely employ teenagers.

Did you read your own link? The closest it comes to such a thing is "And if you've ever wondered why so many people in fast-food outlets are under 18, now you know: it's a cost-cutting measure."

This tired meme has been debunked for a long time.

Try again.

Re:PR Bullshit

[Uberbah]

Let's go forth to battle for the rights of working class morons who we openly call deplorable!

Dunno, go ask your right-wing candidate that lost the most winnable election in history.

Re:PR Bullshit

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Pulling up old threads trying to get the last word? That's pretty lame even for you.

I note you're just picking around the edges and didn't (because you can't) argue with the bottom-line fact that the minimum wage scale in Australia isn't even close to what you originally said it was. That collapses your entire argument. If you genuinely think Australian businesses aren't taking advantage of that significantly reduced wage scale for teenagers to significantly reduce their labor costs, then it's clear you have not the smallest shred of intellectual honesty.

Now get back to your nice, safe echo chamber -- I understand facts can be uncomfortable.

Re:A robot can make a burger.....

[Tailhook]

which very few can afford.

Who cares? If they hadn't made bad decisions they wouldn't be burger flipping disposables, right? Why are you suddenly all worked up about their fate?

You flood their unskilled occupations with immigrant labor and when they complain about it you say; well they should have made better decisions and they wouldn't be in that position. You set up frictionless imports from Asia and watch their unskilled jobs evacuate the country and when the unskilled workers complain about it you say; well they should have made better decisions and they wouldn't be in that position. You outlaw their jobs with regulations and when they complain about it you say: well they should have made better decisions and they wouldn't be in that position.

But let some CEO replace them with kiosks because your Santa Claus wage laws make those numbers line up and all the sudden your little heart breaks! The poor souls.. Aww. That's just unfair!

It can and is both

[SuperKendall]

So which is it? Are minimum wage employees the bedrock of our economy or a completely superfluous bunch of kids and seniors. They can't be both.

It is absolutely both. If younger people cannot gain work experience, if older people cannot supplement social security, the whole system is devastated - the earrings potential alone that is lost to the younger generation is staggering.

But beyond that you are ignoring the cost increases that have to pass through businesses always running close to margin - namely restaurants. Any increase will almost always get passed along which means poor people are the worst screwed by the whole thing - they lose jobs they could have worked for some money, but then they cannot even afford to eat. I'm pretty sure you don't mean to screw poor people over, right? You'd be against that I assume?

Re:It can and is both

[Freischutz]

So which is it? Are minimum wage employees the bedrock of our economy or a completely superfluous bunch of kids and seniors. They can't be both.

It is absolutely both. If younger people cannot gain work experience, if older people cannot supplement social security, the whole system is devastated - the earrings potential alone that is lost to the younger generation is staggering.

But beyond that you are ignoring the cost increases that have to pass through businesses always running close to margin - namely restaurants. Any increase will almost always get passed along which means poor people are the worst screwed by the whole thing - they lose jobs they could have worked for some money, but then they cannot even afford to eat. I'm pretty sure you don't mean to screw poor people over, right? You'd be against that I assume?

The thing is that wages have stagnated in the US for 30-40 years. Wages cannot stagnate forever while prices increase, low skilled jobs are progressively eliminated, for profit schools are allowed to cheat people out of massive mounts of money in return for a degree that is basically crap and 90% of the nation's wealth rests in the offshore bank accounts of the richest 10% who into the bargain have now been largely exempted from paying taxes on what revenues they didn't already dodge taxes on courtesy of the collection of mad clowns that call itself: 'Congress'.

Back in the day Henry Ford had an idea

[Wizardess]

Remember Henry Ford? Yes, him, the inventor of the automobile for the masses. (By no means the inventor of the automobile, of course.)

Henry had a silly idea, which arguably made his automobile a success. He paid his workers sufficiently well that they could afford one of the products they manufactured. For a success any business must have a potential customer base large enough to keep the company going. There is something to be said for keeping lowly, inefficient, organic, and unreliable human beings on the payroll. If there is no customer base the whole mercantile house of cards collapses. If all the fast food stores mechanize, especially the low end stores, how does that affect their customer base? Have they thought far enough ahead to factor this in or the Wall Street demands for every 3 months profit increase blocking vision of a fairly dismal future for us and for these companies?

{^_^}

Re:Back in the day Henry Ford had an idea

[TheDarkMaster]

The new guys (the new entrepreneurs) are too stupid to think about where consumers come from. They think that consumers emerge from the "vacuum" and that they are inexhaustible.

Re:Back in the day Henry Ford had an idea

[sdinfoserv]

Prior to Ford, automobiles were each fabricated by hand in place. Ford's contribution to manufacturing was the introduction of mass production via the assembly line and mass produced parts. Instead of assemblers going from vehicle to vehicle, the car would be brought to the assembly station where pre-made, identical parts would be added. These innovations decreased assembly time and cost. Other cheap (cost saving) ideas included collecting lunch bags from employees and using those as door insulation rather than buying insulating / building material.
The other component to Fords mass produced vehicle was cultural - Americans wanted adventure and the automobile provided escape into the "back woods". This spurred the notion of "leisure time".

Re:Back in the day Henry Ford had an idea

[DaveV1.0]

He paid his workers sufficiently well that they could afford one of the products they manufactured.

Two problems with this.

1. Henry Ford's employees were skilled workers. Fast food workers are not.
2. Fast food workers are paid enough to afford the food they make. But, like in the auto industry, it is becoming cheaper to use robots rather than workers. Robots are used extensively in making automobiles and there are still auto workers, just not as many as there would have been before and automobiles cost less than they would otherwise. Likewise, robots will eventually be used extensively in fast food and there will still be fast food workers, just not as many and the jobs will require more skill and probably be a bit better paid. Meanwhile, the cost of fast food will not increase as fast and effective become cheaper.

Re:Back in the day Henry Ford had an idea

[david_thornley]

Henry Ford's employees were skilled workers.

Ford also used the assembly line, which means that each worker has a limited function that he performs over and over again. He had to have some more or less skilled people, but most people can learn to tighten a row of screws pretty well, and do not thereby become skilled.

I guess we'll see

[bobstreo]

How many CEO's and managers are left after AI's can do their job. Think of the cost savings to the shareholders.

My only other observation is self service checkouts in supermarkets.

  I avoid them like the plague if I have more than 5 ot 6 items, because after that, it's not faster, or more convenient than a cashier. Supermarkets will need to come up with something way better than what they have now, or pay me to do my own checkout.

Re:I guess we'll see

[drinkypoo]

I avoid them like the plague if I have more than 5 ot 6 items, because after that, it's not faster, or more convenient than a cashier.

Safeway fixed that problem by getting shittier cashiers. A few years back they offered everyone with any kind of seniority (and thus decent pay) an early retirement bonus if they would just go away. Most of them took it, because they could see the place was going down the tubes. Now the odds are good that the fish counter will have something spoiled on it, and going through self checkout is faster than going through the line with the incompetents they hired to replace their experienced personnel.

Expect every other chain to follow suit, eventually.

Re:I guess we'll see

[93,000]

Sam's club in the US has it, but you do it from your phone. You scan the items as you put them in your cart, and hit the 'checkout' button when you want to pay (using a credit card you've already entered into the app). On your way out the door someone scans a barcode on your phone and does a quick verification that what's in your cart matches what's on the receipt. Very slick system, and you get 3% cash back or something like that for using it.

Re:I guess we'll see

[geoscodin]

I use the self-checkout at the supermarket every time. I am faster than many cashiers and I bag my groceries more efficiently. I don't put the milk on top of my eggs, or a bottle of cinnamon in a bag by itself. What does slow me down, is the people who don't know how to work the scanners. They swipe slowly and then stop to see what happened. Then they accidentally swipe the same item when they try to put it in the bag and have to wait for help to remove it. Meanwhile, I've swiped, bagged, applied coupons, and paid for an entire cart of groceries and am happily on my way to my car.

Re:I guess we'll see

[d0rp]

Supermarkets will need to come up with something way better than what they have now, or pay me to do my own checkout.

They've had the idea for years, possibly decades at this point. The idea was to have every single item in the store contain an RFID tag. You walk around the store, put items in your cart, and a scanner similar to a metal detector at the exit simply reads everything in your cart on the way out and charges your credit card for it.

I'm not entirely sure why they haven't implemented this yet, but I suspect it's related to the logistics of tagging everything with an RFID (they'd likely want to have that done by the manufacturer) and the reliably of the system (it probably doesn't work as accurately as they would like, yet)

What could possibly could wrong?

[DivineKnight]

Hmm

Links, there were supposed to be links...

[TheInternetGuy]

Links, there were supposed to be links and urls and stuff. https://futurism.com/experts-a... I predict that Slashdot post will be replaced by AI yesterday.

few things

[Anonymous Coward]

1. We should tie the minimum wage to a maximum wage for executives; this will actually force trickle down economics.
2. Automate fast food; I'm so tired of my orders getting fucked up

Re:few things

[david_thornley]

Automate fast food; I'm so tired of my orders getting fucked up

Back when I ordered pizza now and then, I liked green olives on my pizza, and absolutely hated green peppers. When I ordered pizzas over the phone, no matter how hard I emphasized olives they could screw it up and make my pizza inedible. When a local pizza chain started a web order system, they always got it right.

Re:Mc Burgers

[SuricouRaven]

Why not?

It's a simple enough matter to point a camera at a steak. Hire that chef to cook fifty of them beneath the camera and you can develop a crude but effective 'is it done yet?' model by evaluating color.

Who will buy your product

[mocm]

if you keep paying people less and less and replace them with robots? All your profit maximizing won't help you, if there isn't anyone to pay for
your products. That is why trickle down does not work. When rich people always get richer, that implies that the money stream goes from poor
too rich. How will that turn around if you give more money to the rich?

Re:Who will buy your product

[DaveV1.0]

Fast food employees make up a minuscule amount of fast food customers. Your argument fails on that.

This is not trickle down. Trickle down is an economic theory that making things easier on the rich means the rich spend more money and thus everyone benefits. It has been shown to not work in the real world due to human greed. This is basic business economics: use the least expensive method of production that does not lower quality to an unacceptable level. The thing is, this will probably improve quality while lowering expenses.

You are acting like the government controls the companies. Apparently, you were raised to believe you live in a communist society, but you don't. You live in a democratic capitalist society.

Easy to see why people get stuck and don't see

[kamaaina]

I know a kid who makes about $12 an hour, I told him if he does some Mail in rebates I have from Fry's he can have the rebates when they came in. I think he thought an hour of cutting UPC and filling out forms would was not worth the ~ $50 worth of rebates.

Whereas his younger brother was willing, but not sure he would have gotten it right.

Sigh

[ledow]

Dunno about you guys but my local McDonald's did this a few years ago, as have many others.

Massive touchscreens in the foyer, tap and order from the whole menu, then just wait for the guy to bring it out. Hell, it even tells you how many orders are in front of you, etc. and you can make every tiny change imaginable to the ingredients.

Sure, they still have kitchen staff (we're not suggesting automating the kitchens, right? That's just a food-safety nightmare waiting to happen and how do they clean themselves?). But they have JUST kitchen staff, who get a list, put the food on the tray and deal with the cooker alerts etc.

It's much faster and more efficient than any McDonald's I've ever used, you can order while ten people are dithering over what to have, you can even assign a seat and have it brought over to you. And, at the end of the day, it's the same food.

I've said for years that restaurants should do this - even posh ones. Tying up waiting staff with orders, corrections, menus, allergy queries etc. is daft when people are quite capable of doing all that themselves - sometimes before they've even sat down. And then BOTH of you have a cast-iron receipt of what was ordered and how. So long as the food delivered tallies, what does it matter?

"So what's in the sea bass?" "Press ingredients, ma'am".
"Can we split this bill?" "Press split bill, sir."
"Do you have any pork left?" "Only what the menu will let you select, sir".

If Jack-in-the-box have already trialled this I can't understand why they haven't been fitting it to all new stores and starting doing it for refurbishments. There's literally no reason not to, even if you don't replace ALL the staff immediately.

Re:Sigh

[DaveV1.0]

we're not suggesting automating the kitchens, right? That's just a food-safety nightmare waiting to happen and how do they clean themselves?

Actually, that is exactly what eventually happen.
No, it is not a food safety nightmare waiting to happen. Robots already prepare food at much larger scale in factories.
They don't have to clean themselves. Instead of having four to eight employees and a manager each shift, there will be a manager and maybe one or two employees who will keep the robots stocked with ingredients and keep them clean and maintained.

Re:Sigh

[93,000]

And as someone with allergies (celiac), it's 100x easier for me to click 'no bun' than to have the conversation where the 17 year old stops everything and says with a dumbass smirk 'Wait, you don't want a bun? So, just, like, the meat?', and then gets a manager who shows them where to click 'no bun.'

Re:Sigh

[PPH]

we're not suggesting automating the kitchens, right?

Why not?

That's just a food-safety nightmare waiting to happen and how do they clean themselves?

You can shove the business end of a food prep robot into a dishwasher. You can't do that with a short order cook with a case of hep-C.

Re:Sigh

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

I stopped in at a White Castle (Oh, I loves it so much) in Columbus, OH about a year ago that was kiosk-only ordering. Man, let me tell you that it was GREAT! You could customize every single burger or item to any degree you wanted with no problem. I couldn't imagine needing to replicate the same order with a person behind a counter. This burger with extra onions and pickles, this burger with bacon, this burger with this cheese and that burger with that cheese. It would be a lot of "hold on sir, what did you say again??".

That's the same reason that I only order Taco Bell through their app. Endless customization and no need to try to communicate those endless customizations to another human being.

Frankly, automation will be eliminating plenty of jobs in the future no matter how much we argue about the merits. Sometimes it will be a better experience for the customer and sometimes it will be a poorer experience. My experience with fast food ordering automation says that it will be a much better experience for the customer.

Re:Sigh

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

Agree. the other major benefit to mcdonalds self order kiosks is the two for one breakfast coupons just need to be scanned, not handed over! so you can use the same coupon again and again till it expires. And you can even make your own barcodes, or copy them from some barcode sharing site.

Sure its a loophole but its an amazing one when i am running late and dont have time to make a breakfast sandwich at home!

I love computer automation, there is always hacks you can do to them. Far more fulfilling than social engineering or strong arming employees to me personally. Computers don't give a fuck when you scam them!

Re:Sigh

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

There's a McDonald's with those kiosks just down the street from where I work. The biggest problem I had with it is that some items are not to be found on the menu screen you expect them to be on and there's no way to search for an item by name. It's almost like they did no consumer testing of their UI.

Try to order a bacon cheeseburger, it's not on the burgers menu!

Re:Mc Burgers

[Isaac-Lew]

Even better, an infrared thermometer (I have one): https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=n...

I don't understand the problem here.

[cshark]

1. We know that fast food workers are under paid, forced to work in unfair working conditions, and that fast food workers are commonly exploited.

2. We know that there are and have been sanitary issues with fast food that comes directly from the element of having exploited human labor creating the product. It's an ongoing joke that you might get your burger or pizza spit in, or worse.

3. Writing software that powers robots that replaces these workers increases the speed of production, creates a more uniform product and eliminates both the worker exploitation and sanitary issues associated with fast food production while providing jobs to coders and engineers.

So what's the issue?

Re:I don't understand the problem here.

[DaveV1.0]

1. We know that fast food workers are under paid, forced to work in unfair working conditions, and that fast food workers are commonly exploited.

No, they are not underpaid. Workers are paid according to the value of their work. Fast food work is simply, unskilled labor and as such is paid a minimum wage because, at that level, workers are basically commodities and one is just as good as another.

No, they are not forces to work in unfair working conditions. No one is forcing them to work in the conditions, unless you include themselves by being unskilled or unable to get a better position due to being a drug addict or convict. I worked in fast food as a kid and it wasn't that bad.

No, fast food workers aren't commonly exploited. They are paid a fair wage for the kind of work they do.

You seem to have bought into the idea that someone should be paid by their need and not by the work they do. While that may be how communism works, we are in a capitalistic society and people are paid by the worth of the work they do. Importantly, one of the reasons the "Fight for 15" was doomed to fail was that they want the national minimum wage to be $15,00 per hour because some workers in high cost of living areas need that. However, that is more than the average wage in the small town where my family lives. A high school sophomore living in a small rural town and working at a fast food restaurant neither needs nor deserves $15.00 per hour.

Re:I don't understand the problem here.

[cshark]

Man, I can't win on these. One minute I'm a libertarian, the next I'm a dirty communist.

Everyone's worked minimum wage jobs, Dave. I worked at Taco Bell just after high school, and then in college, I worked as a barista. If I was advocating for a higher minimum wage, why would I also be advocating for software/hardware combinations that eliminate labor? There is exploitation happening, at least in the US when it comes to lower skilled labor. There have been court cases involving allegations of low skilled workers being locked in rooms until they comply. This isn't imaginary, it happens. And we all suffer for it. What I'm saying though, ultimately, is that jobs like mine are more important, and it would be nice to buy a burger without having to worry about the hair and booger content.

Re:I don't understand the problem here.

[DaveV1.0]

There is exploitation happening, at least in the US when it comes to lower skilled labor. There have been court cases involving allegations of low skilled workers being locked in rooms until they comply. This isn't imaginary, it happens.

Your fallacies are spotlighting and cherry picking. You are treating an exceptional event as the norm. Also, the event your reference involved illegal aliens working for minimum wage and it was there status as illegal aliens that made it possible for the event you describe.

Also, I was correcting factual errors in your post.

Robots compete with chinese labor at $2200 a year

[Maxo-Texas]

There is no minimum wage low enough to prevent automation once the machines are reliable.

The minimum wage comments are just a cover for the fact Jack in the Box was going to automate anyway.

One robot maintenance worker making $80k will replace 60 employees making $18k to $22k per year. Prices will not be lowered. The $1.2 million in salary won't enter the local economy and won't be circulating in the local economy available to purchase jack in the box hamburgers.

It's not really JB's fault. It's going to happen everywhere. JB just doesn't see the tragedy of the commons which is coming.

38% of jobs are estimated to go away in under 20 years. New jobs won't be created fast enough.

Can't cut into that profit margin

[Aurien]

God forbid anything cut into that $500,000,000 profit margin. How else would they be able to pay the CEO $20,000,000 a year?

Re:Can't cut into that profit margin

[DaveV1.0]

The smart business decision is to go with the lower cost option. When robots cost less than humans, the work will go to robots. This is why the "Fight for 15" will blow up in their faces. They will lose their jobs to robots who don't complain, don't call in sick, rarely fail to show up for their shift, and won't get caught spitting in food, pissing on food, or insulting customers.

Not in the U.S.

[Solandri]

Or most of the OECD for that matter. The "Aristocracy" rich mostly exists in developing countries where they control the vast majority of the wealth. In those countries they're big fish in little ponds, and maintain their status not only by being rich, but by preventing others from becoming rich. The economy of these countries mostly consists of (by volume) the rich selling and buying to/from each other. The GDP per capita in these countries typically stagnates at around $15,000/yr or below.

The U.S., EU, etc. grew past this stage around the 1900s. Henry Ford accidentally stumbled upon this when he discovered that paying his workers above the prevailing wage actually resulted in more business for himself (because his workers could afford to buy the cars he was producing). That's what happens when you (1) put a worker in a productive job, and (2) pay them a fair wage for the productivity they're generating. Basically, when pay your workers less than a fair wage, you make money for yourself, but you stunt the economy. When you pay your workers a fair wage, you spend more money, but the economy blossoms. Usually more than enough to offset the extra money you spent paying your workers.

A market economy *wants* everyone to be as productive as they can, because the feedback effect of that maximizes average income. GDP per capita in these countries is typically $30,000/yr or higher because the vast majority of the population is contributing a meaningful amount of productivity to the economy. Consequently, the vast majority of the rich in these countries are rich from selling things to the middle class (who by population and aggregate income are much bigger than the richest 1%*). If the average income of the middle class decreases in these countries, it ends up hurting the rich too.

* IRS tax stats show that the top 1% only makes about 20% of the income in the U.S. So if they began buying and selling only amongst themselves and replacing everyone else with robots, that would result in about an 80% pay cut for themselves. The bulk of the country's income (73%) is in the $30k-$500k per year wage range, and it's in the best interest of the 1%ers in the U.S. to insure those people continue to have jobs.

Re:Not in the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you are mixing income and wealth. The Federal Reserve in 2016 estimated the top 1% in the US controlled 38.6% of the wealth and the bottom 90% 22.8%. If jobs are cut, you can be pretty sure the net intent and effect will be to further concentrate wealth. Do you really think it is in the best interest of a energy company exec to make sure miners are employed if it is more profitable to use automation, same for Jack-In-The-Box.

Oh, and on income, the bottom 90% earn less than 50% of the nations income so you seem to also be mixing up percents, adding percentages that are not part of th same whole

Re:Not in the U.S.

[HyperQuantum]

If the average income of the middle class decreases in these countries, it ends up hurting the rich too.

Unless the rich can compensate for that in other ways, like successfully lobbying for lower taxes on the rich.

Re:Not in the U.S.

[david_thornley]

Until the rich and their paid lawmakers are up against the wall when the revolution comes, either through voting the lawmakers out and demanding high taxes on the rich, or more primitive means. Revolutions usually suck for all concerned, particularly for the losers, but people will be pushed only so far.

Robots are an improvement

[bradley13]

The McDonalds where I live have introduced automated kiosks for ordering. You can also still go to the counter and order from a person.

After only 2-3 tries, I have to say: ordering from the kiosks is better. It's faster, and there are no more misunderstandings. You get a number, wait for it to show at the pickup counter, and you're done. The whole operation becomes more efficient, lines are shorter, customers are happier. What's not to like?

If a couple of jobs went lost, well, that's pretty much the story of unskilled employment throughout history. Increases in efficiency through mechanization have been happening for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, jobs have been created for the people who manufacture and maintain the kiosks. If there's a moral to the story, it is: don't be unskilled.

Love it

[M0j0_j0j0]

I love all these automated cashiers, i get a lot of free stuff, you see from the moment you are the sole participant in the process you can make mistakes, and they will all be legit because, you know, you are not a cashier.

Re:Love it

[DaveV1.0]

When you are caught swapping tags, that is not an accident. It is deliberate, which is theft, and you know they are filming the transactions and keeping track of shrinkage.

Re:Love it

[M0j0_j0j0]

Then don't swap tags, that is obviously fraud , here is one for free, buy six pack items, and scan the single item.

Re:Love it

[DaveV1.0]

Assuming the single item has different UPC than the six-pack item, it is still obviously fraud.

Re:Love it

[M0j0_j0j0]

No, it is a mistake, you are not liable to know the exact procedure of which one to scan, you are the customer not the employee, you might not even notice that you scanned the single item by mistake, it is actually something that can happen to a human cashier. The point here is that the employee has the obligation to do the right job and pay attention to mistakes, you don't.

Re:Love it

[DaveV1.0]

Now you are lying because you just said to do it deliberately therefore it is not a mistake it is a deliberate act. Also, individual item UPCs are either covered by packaging or all the items in the pack have the same UPC as the pack, see six packs of beer.

You are basically admitting you are a thief who tries to hide behind claimed ignorance. And, actually, you do have an obligation to try not to make mistakes because you are a customer. And, again, what you are describing is not a mistake but rather a deliberate act.

Re:Love it

[M0j0_j0j0]

What the fuck, are you like 4 years old? Can't you understand that deliberate or not, it is an acceptable mistake? Who can say that it was deliberate or not? Robot cashiers try to shift the responsability to the customer, when that is on the business owner, and i do hope fraud happens in roves.

No, UPC are not always covered for pack, and no they dont have the same UPC has the pack if they are sold seperatly, fucking moron are you a retail specialist as well?

He's right.

[Qbertino]

No news here.

A good thing about robots

[sa1lnr]

Is, that they won't buy or eat burgers.

buger bots

[ohgary]

Of course it makes sense. They are cheaper, they dont bitch, they done come in late (or not at all). A low wage person is making $15K a year, a single year and most robots pay for themelves

Re:The Walmart Effect

[drinkypoo]

Exactly. Modern America. It's a shitty place to be not-rich.

It's also a shitty place to be rich if you're not a recluse, since you have to go out and deal with the repercussions of shitting all over it. Most of America's wealthy must be working on the dragon model, sleeping in a cave on a big pile of gold.

Let’s See...

[sudon't]

Let’s see how many burgers robots buy.

Re:Let’s See...

[DaveV1.0]

Irrelevant. Most of fast food customers are not fast food workers and therein lies your fallacy.

Automation may be the wedge

[fyngyrz]

The only difference is how society's production is apportioned to everyone.

Where "everyone" really means a little for most, and a lot for the rich.

This is why incomes at the lower tiers are barely subsistence level (and if you consider medical care and decent shelter as included in the definition of subsistence level, then it isn't even that.)

The imbalance is striking, but continuous social engineering has brought the masses around to the mindset that this is generally an okay state of affairs. To change it will require some other major social change as a catalyst.

Pervasive automation might serve, as it is very likely to rather suddenly alter the prospects of a very large number of people in a very short span of time. Getting them to accept that alteration may not be easy, or even possible.

It does make sense

[ArsenneLupin]

Indeed, robots, even disgruntled ones, won't jack into the box...

Not necessarily

[fyngyrz]

Until something happens where they need tradesman to survive because you know rich people don't really have a shit ton of skills. In the end, they still need the plebes to raise the crops, feed/slaughter the animals and maintain the infrastructure.

What part of "the rich will be the first to be able to afford and emplace comprehensive automation" did you fail to understand before you wrote that?

What they will need - and what they will have - is automation that can both do the jobs at hand, and produce more automation, and repair the automation in place.

The only relevant observation here is that the poor don't really need the rich; the rich, however, will have automated defenses, and so what the poor need or don't need may not be particularly on point.

Re:Not necessarily

[jittles]

Until something happens where they need tradesman to survive because you know rich people don't really have a shit ton of skills. In the end, they still need the plebes to raise the crops, feed/slaughter the animals and maintain the infrastructure.

What part of "the rich will be the first to be able to afford and emplace comprehensive automation" did you fail to understand before you wrote that?

What they will need - and what they will have - is automation that can both do the jobs at hand, and produce more automation, and repair the automation in place.

The only relevant observation here is that the poor don't really need the rich; the rich, however, will have automated defenses, and so what the poor need or don't need may not be particularly on point.

And if there are 7 billion starving people outside the gates of their automated defenses? They will run out of ammunition eventually.

Re:Not necessarily

[ShanghaiBill]

They will run out of ammunition eventually.

I can buy a 100 round box of 5.56mm ammo for $40. I am sure it is way cheaper in larger volumes.

If they used robotic snipers that could reliably place clean headshots, they would only need one bullet per rioter.

So 7 billion rounds would cost less than $2.8B. For the 1%, that is pocket change.

Or

[raind]

They could replace the ceo with say Alexa, instant savings!

CEOs

[humptheElephant]

A better idea is to replace the CEO with a robot, think of the huge savings.

Re:CEOs

[DaveV1.0]

Create one and I will make it happen. But, it needs to be able to think creatively to recognize a good idea. I will wait while you do this.

Re:CEOs

[fluffernutter]

Excuse me?? "Let's put in machines as soon as they are cheaper than humans" is thinking creatively?

Re:CEOs

[Cro Magnon]

Create one and I will make it happen. But, it needs to be able to think creatively to recognize a good idea. I will wait while you do this.

Why do you have the bar so much higher for the robot than for the CEO?

Re:CEOs

[DaveV1.0]

Your fallacy is cherry picking. Recognizing that the menu expansion of the last decade has created a problem and trimming it is a creative thing. When someone brings an idea for a new product, being able to recognize it is a good idea is a creative thing.

CEOs may be overpaid but that doesn't mean they don't do anything.

Shortsighted

[sdinfoserv]

Heaven forbid should he consider paying his slaves $11/hr. I think he should remember that JITB is hardly a life necessary business and his workers are part of his customer base, that is till their fired/replaced.
And secondly, if they made glop that was actually edible, and people chose it for quality and taste, JITB could raise the price of a sandwich by a few cents and happily cover the increased labor costs.

I said it when I heard of the "Fight for 15"

[DaveV1.0]

The only reason fast food places use employees is that paying humans minimum wage is cheaper than the total cost of ownership of robots that can do the job. Raise the minimum wage and it will make more sense to buy the robots and replace most of the staff with kiosks and robots. It is the return of the automat with robotic food preparation. In fact, it would be cheaper and easier to offer standard fare in an automat style, then computers could monitor sales and stock the automat accordingly as well as monitor for popular variants to add to the automat. Drive through could be done the same way. It would reduce shrinkage too.

labor saving

[nten]

The whole point of labor saving devices is to save labor. We shouldn't tax technology that eliminates jobs. Or force businesses to pay more for labor than the market dictates. We should just make sure everyone is taken care of well and tax evenly to cover it. Let us reap the benefits of our labor saving devices. All those cashiers and truck drivers will soon be free to create funny YouTube videos all day while drinking beer and kicking their legs up. That is fine by me. When we automate my job I have some ideas for some metal art I'd like to try. We don't all have to work to eat, but we do all have to eat. So we have to persuade those that do work to feed those who don't.

Companies don't like teenagers

[rsilvergun]

Because they don't have to come to work, making them very unreliable. Ever been to a Walmart and wondered why they hired someone in their 70s to cashier instead of a young person who could do it 3x as fast? It's because of that 70 year old doesn't show up to work they don't eat.

Re:Companies don't like teenagers

[Mashiki]

Ever been to a Walmart and wondered why they hired someone in their 70s to cashier instead of a young person who could do it 3x as fast? It's because of that 70 year old doesn't show up to work they don't eat.

I don't know what walmarts you goto where that 70yr old is working cash. At every walmart in Canada and the US I've been to, they're hired specifically as greeters, or low traffic cashier positions like outdoors(when open), sporting goods, sometimes bakery. Funny thing though, if you think those young people are working at 3x the speed? I can tell you that walmart's own data doesn't show that. They recently started a thing called "line rushing" where an associate would scan the items in your cart while waiting for a cashier. The scanner is taken to the cashier or automated cashier totaled up and you simply pay. Those "old folks" could clear upwards of 300 people in a 6hr shift, the young kids? Most could barely hit 30. The optimum they were aiming for is 80/shift per-person.

"the European way"

[demon driver]

As opposed to the European way of making employees so expensive that you have 20% youth unemployment

There is no homogeneous "Europe" with a unified "way", there are no fixed Europe-wide labor costs and there is no meaningful Europe-wide unemployment rate figure.

Most importantly, the tendency is that unemployment in Europe is higher where wages are lower.

And as in every other part of the world, increasing unemployment comes from industry needing less human labor to produce what gets produced. And replacing people by machines is usually just a matter of time, making labor less expensive can only delay the process. When the machine becomes cheaper than the worker, the machine will substitute the worker.

Re:"the European way"

[MightyYar]

Most importantly, the tendency is that unemployment in Europe is higher where wages are lower.

If you include Eastern Europe, you have to admit there is still a hangover from decades of under-investment during the time behind the iron curtain. I didn't think it was controversial to point out that higher employment costs correlates to higher unemployment.

Re:"the European way"

[demon driver]

Most importantly, the tendency is that unemployment in Europe is higher where wages are lower.

If you include Eastern Europe, you have to admit there is still a hangover from decades of under-investment during the time behind the iron curtain.

It's not only those countries, and it's not as if even they would suffer from high unemployment rates simply or primarily because they used to be "behind the iron curtain" long ago, either. There's Southern Europe, too; Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece. (And just as a side note, if you were thinking of the Balkan states: former Yugoslavia was never "behind the iron curtain".)

I didn't think it was controversial to point out that higher employment costs correlates to higher unemployment.

It is, and it doesn't, and it gets even worse when causality is implied in the assumption of correlation.

As we're already looking at Europe: Germany is one recent example of a country where unemployment drops since the introduction of minimum wages 2015 and a general increase in actual wages. And Britain has doubled its minimum wage since 2000, with no observable effect on unemployment (the linked article elaborates further on the subject, too).

Re:"the European way"

[MightyYar]

It's worth noting that Germany exempts youth from the normal minimum wage jobs through it's (seemingly effective) apprenticeship program. So that government seems to agree with me. Similarly, the UK has a lower minimum wage for young people than for older people. At the low end of the scale, it is actually lower than in the US. This would also seem to support my argument.

Re: "the European way"

[MightyYar]

The fact that the UK slides the scale based on age at all is my point, not the absolute numbers. I just thought it was interesting as I was looking up the numbers.

Re:The Walmart Effect

[fluffernutter]

Oh don't worry, the rich will maintain the places they want to go. They simply won't go to the places where they can see the repercussions.

Productivity

[fluffernutter]

What is the point of having a society that produces more and more things if the bulk of that society falls behind in terms of quality of living. I think there is a general assumption that a society with high productivity will be generally wealthy, but we have already seen that it won't be true as long as the wealthy are given first pick over the spoils.

One step closer to utopia!

[bill.pev]

I wonder how many people who eat at Jack in the box make minimum wage? Perhaps they should start working on robots to consume their product as well: I'm sure a robot would be faster, and cleaner at consuming Jack in the Box product. I envision a 24/7 lights-out Jack in the box automatically making and consuming product at an incredible rate without any human involvement at all. They could even consume the packaging. How awesome would that be?

UBI

[Nick]

The same concerns were said about the Industrial Revolution. That was the equivalent of robots back then, and things turned out fine. The newspeak you see in the article is just a smokescreen to protect ultra-high profit margins. Yes, some people will lose their jobs. The solution here is to tax the robots and stop putting billions into non-functioning F-35s, useless wars that murdered a million Iraqis, supporting the genocide in Yemen, etc. This could easily pay for a Universal Basic Income that will allow for people to attain education and learn real skills or tinkering and innovating in their garages and coming up with the next best thing without having to forgo that because they need to hang onto their $9/hr slave wage to get by instead. Yes, for every system there will always be a few shitheads that game it or try to, it is unavoidable no matter what. It would be no different than what we have today, in fact likely even less; you give a person UBI and an opportunity to learn something valuable, they are more likely to succeed than to give them a slave wage at a meaningless job.

Re:UBI

[d0rp]

I recently tried to explain the concept of UBI to my father (he's in his 70s) and his response was "sounds like socialism". I'm not sure if UBI is the solution to the impending automation revolution, because as you said we survived the industrial revolution with out it, but likely we'll have to do something.

(Ironically, my father is a retired an electrical engineer who worked for many years on automated systems)

Re:UBI

[Hognoxious]

The same concerns were said about the Industrial Revolution. That was the equivalent of robots back then, and things turned out fine.

I'm not even sure your premise is true. Large parts of cities were dangerous unhealthy slums that only really started to improve around the time of WW1. I doubt anyone there considered them to be "fine".

Even if it was, the world now isn't the world then. In the 1800s there weren't seven billion people living on it, for starters.

Good, but need to develop food robots

[WindBourne]

Seriously, I would keep cashier's and focus on things like shakes, drinks, fries, simple foods like burger, chicken, etc.

Likewise, I'm amazed that pizza is not fully automated yet. That is one that would allow a start to quickly take out papa John's and dominoes.

Re:Good, but need to develop food robots

[f00zbll]

as a foodie, we'd need a pretty advanced robot to roll a very thin NY style pizza dough. Those little details matter to the final texture of a great slice of pizza. Given most people are fine with the big chain pizza, they won't care. From an engineering perspective, we still don't have the hardware equivalent to an expert pair of hands that have made thousands of pies. Those fingers know exactly where to push and how hard.

Rollers can produce a thin dough, but honestly it's not the same texture. When I use a roller to flatten the dough, the texture is different than using traditional technique. When you use the old fashion technique, the glutten fibers are pulled and produces a crisp pie.

There's always going to be a need for great pizza made by real chefs that know the craft. For a food court where you don't care and just need calories, robots are fine.

Re:Good, but need to develop food robots

[WindBourne]

actually, doing any of the crust styles should be easy. For example, you could roll it, but simply spinning it on a spindle that moves up and down would work. And then in terms of working the dough with fingers, how is that any different from those message chairs?

BUT, Handcrafted, i.e. experts, will in general, have a future. So, dominos can actually be taken out, while I think that individual high-end innovative pizza stores/restaurants will remain.

So glad...

[MitchDev]

...there are no Jack In a Box restaurants in my area (Metro Detroit), makes it even easier to not do business with them

They're way ahead of you

[rsilvergun]

they're already campaigning to cut those social programs. That tax cut bill wasn't even signed into law before the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was talking about entitlement 'reform' being needed to stave off the $1.5 trillion hole in the budget it made.

See, that's the option folks always forget: You can just let these people starve. It's what they do in most of the world, and it's what we did for thousands of years. There's no reason we can't go back to it. Sure, there'll be some terrorism and banditry, but if you're rich enough you don't have to live around it, anymore than we do now.

This is objectively false

[rsilvergun]

Costco's doing just fine. So is Quick Trip. Both pay their employees well and treat them well. You don't have to be an ass to be successful. Sure, it helps, but it's not a requirement.

Not everyone's first response is murder

[rsilvergun]

or the economic equivalent. There are companies like Costco & Quick Trip that treat their employees pretty well, and policies like Single Payer health care and basic income are gaining in popularity (with Single Payer being supported by a majority of voters).

Re:Not everyone's first response is murder

[SlaveToTheGrind]

There are companies like Costco & Quick Trip that treat their employees pretty well

QuikTrip appears to pay less than $10/hr for regular employees and $12-13/hr for managers, so not sure of your point there.

Costco does indeed pay its employees more -- the few employees that remain, that is. Costco figured out how to minimize human labor early on and has been using wages to put pressure on its competitors who actually employ more warm bodies (and for favorable PR for people like you who just look at the raw hourly wages and think they're a bunch of humanitarians). Here's the take-home from an article on the subject from 2006:

• Costco has sales of $51 billion, 110,000 employees (45% part time, similar to WalMart isn't it?) and WalMart has sales (in North America) of $191 billion and 1.3 million associates. So Costco has sales of some $465,000 per employee and WalMart $147,000 per employee. . . . So, in theory, we could in fact get WalMart to pay the same as Costco by making similarly efficient use of labor: that is, firing between two thirds and three quarters of their staff.

and policies like Single Payer health care and basic income are gaining in popularity (with Single Payer being supported by a majority of voters).

You're telling me that the majority of people who were asked if they want More Free Shit said yes? Knock me over with a feather. I'll take a wild guess that the Single Payer polls just ask the question in a vacuum and don't bother to mention the rationing, wait times, and lack of provider choice that result from government-mandated fee structures, but I'd be happy to look at raw data that suggests otherwise.

Not if you're working 3 jobs

[rsilvergun]

in the gig economy. It takes time to cook and clean (and if you don't clean you get bugs and get evicted from your rental). I can get in/out of Micky D's in 5 minutes with 2000 calories for $9 bucks. $6 if I eat off the dollar menu.

France has a 9.8% rate

[rsilvergun]

England 4.5%. Germany 3.6%. Norway 4.2%. Heck, Czechoslovakia has 3.6%.

Did it ever occur to you that youth unemployment rate is by design? You keep your youth out of the job market and in schools. They don't flood the job market and drop wages. Everyone has a better quality of life and you get an educated workforce who makes intelligent decisions. The only people who 'lose' are the Uber wealthy who can't monopolize all the money for themselves.

Re:France has a 9.8% rate

[MightyYar]

Uh:
France 21.80%
Germany 6.60%
United Kingdom 12.00%
United States 9.60%

If youth unemployment were by design, Germany wouldn't have a (very effective) apprenticeship program that exempts youth from the usual employment rules to make them more attractive to hire and train. The UK wouldn't have minimum wage that scales with age, which is actually lower than the US at it's lowest point.

Nobody will spit on your hamburger

[RogueWarrior65]

There is a significant benefit to using robots to make the food. Consistency and quality.
I can remember the first time I had a Sourdough Jack in SoCal. The toast and the bacon was crispy and the food was hot. Apparently all of it had just been made. It's rarely been as good since. Soggy toast, severely under-cooked bacon (bacon is SUPPOSED TO BE CRISP, DAMMIT!!!). Robots won't get stoned and not care about the quality of the food. They can be programmed on the fly to make things the way the customers wants them. If you want crispy bacon and crispy fries, you program it that way. If you're someone with zero gastronomic taste and want soggy bacon and lousy fries, there's a button for that.

How will this impact small restaurants?

[thedavidcathey]

Larger chains in California can spend the time and money to research and test deployments of these kiosks. But what about smaller restaurants? Do they just go under?

Most definitely in the U.S.

[Uberbah]

The U.S., EU, etc. grew past this stage around the 1900s.

Income inequality is worse now than it was in the 1920's. A handful of billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country.

A market economy *wants* everyone to be as productive as they can, because the feedback effect of that maximizes corporate profits.

Productivity has been climbing for decades but wages have remained completely stagnant.

Henry Ford accidentally stumbled upon this when he discovered that paying his workers above the prevailing wage actually resulted in more business for himself

And now companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart pay their employees so little that they qualify for food stamps, paid for with your tax dollars. Capitalist Winning!

Chicken or the egg

[erapert]

The reason it's happening now is cheap, reliable microcontrollers and big, high res touch screens are finally widely available.

Yes, but why did anyone work hard in order to produce those cheap reliable microcontrollers and big high-res touch screens?

Can't see it

[fyngyrz]

And if there are 7 billion starving people outside the gates of their automated defenses? They will run out of ammunition eventually.

Impossible scenario. First you'd have a pile of dead too high to get over, then you'd have disease, and all of this assuming you could get 7 billion people to surround a compound, which is absurd. Further, the number of poor who would be willing to walk into heavy arms is not going to be large. There's little point trying to get food and shelter by killing yourself. You can say that some will defend the interests of others, and no doubt they would, but also this would be a very small number.

Then there's the "ammunition" thing. Bullets? Really? Will it be a question of bullets? Will a laser run out of photons? How about a tailored disease vector for which the rich have the countermeasure, and the poor don't? Area denial weapons? Chemical weapons? How about armored robots which can simply tear anyone in-the-zone limb from limb?

If the poor become a serious threat (by which I mean, violent), you simply can't argue that they can create and maintain a serious, widespread threat. The first time they go after the unarmed rich, that'll be the end of the unarmed rich, right there. You will almost instantly have armed rich, and now the context is completely different.

See, it's all very well to talk as if the poor were capable of exerting continuous unified force against modern arms, but the idea is utter nonsense: it doesn't stand up under even mild scrutiny.

The only solution to this that has any chance of working is social; government force, used top down, to disenfranchise the rich, and distribute the wealth much more generally than it is now. That's probably what will actually happen, too. If not, it's going to be a hell of a mess, and the poor will almost certainly lose in the process.

Re:Can't see it

[jittles]

If the poor become a serious threat (by which I mean, violent), you simply can't argue that they can create and maintain a serious, widespread threat.

I suppose that the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the North Vietnamese never got that memo, did they?

The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[atrimtab]

Living parents cannot give more than $10K per child per year tax free. Why should they be able to give it all after death. The children didn't earn it. And EVERY other form of regular income is taxed.

The "death tax" is a disingenous lie! It's just the standard income tax and another *huge* loophole that benefits the very few extremely rich and allows the creation of family dynastys where great-great-grandpa did something once upon a time.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[Anonymous Coward]

Living parents cannot give more than $10K per child per year tax free.

Parents should not be taxed on their income again if they give money to their children or anyone else. That's double-taxation.

Why should they be able to give it all after death.

Because it's their money, not yours and not the government's. It's no different than a neighbor raiding your parent's house after their death. Just because politicians codified this kind of abhorrent theft into law, doesn't make it any more right.

The children didn't earn it.

That's irrelevant. Whoever earned the money, decides what to do with it. And, since it was already taxed once, there's absolutely no need to tax it again.

Does one get twice the representation for twice the tax? Didn't think so. Remember that whole "no taxation without representation" thing? You probably don't. I suggest you look into it.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[SQLGuru]

So, say Person A has $1M after paying any and all taxes that were owed. They die and Person B inherits that money. So you want to now tax Person B just because they inherited money. And if they immediately die and Person C inherits the remaining portion of that money, you want them to be taxed, too. And if Person C dies, then Person D would also be taxed. Even though nothing has changed about the fact that the money in question had ALREADY been taxed, you'd like to see that money all go to the government?

This would be equivalent to you being taxed on both your income and your net-worth every year. Even if you only make $50k per year, if you are a great saver and have $500k in the bank, you'd want that $500k taxed just because it exists.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[arth1]

The "death tax" is an abomination.

Inheritance is an abomination. Why should one person be entitled to millions and another entitled to nothing because of how lucky they were at drawing parents?
Taxing gifts and inheritance is a way to try to, in a very small way, counteract this type of discrimination. But until these taxes are at 100%, it's still going to be unfair.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[HornWumpus]

Anybody with a substantial inheritance sets up family trust(s), then finally puts liquidity into 'insurance' days before death. They don't pay inheritance taxes, never will. They can afford lawyers and estate planners.

Estate tax is for the middle class, same as all supposed 'rich fucker' taxes. But even there, they are getting smart and putting their assets into family trusts.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[lgw]

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.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[atrex]

First, I'd like to see a lot more sense and accountability in government spending. There's no excuse for one side of the budget (the military) to swallow up such an enormous percentage of our country's tax dollars (particularly when you compare the US's military spending to that of other nations).

Second, Inheriting money is not Earning money. The inheritor did absolutely nothing to earn that money other than being lucky. It's practically the same as if they won the lottery. No one complains about the tax rate on lottery winnings now do they? It's free money that they didn't have before and that they didn't earn themselves so it should be taxed (exceptions should be made/the tax should be lowered if the amount is below various thresholds and/or the recipient earns below various economic thresholds).

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[SQLGuru]

So, then, why do you allow certain gifts to be tax free? You did nothing to earn that gift. You should pay taxes on it. It can go to pay for roads and schools and what have you.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[atrimtab]

Your argument is complete BS.

All income is taxed when it moves between parties including family members when the amount is over $10K. Anytime that money moves from one party to another where that money is income to the receiving party it should be taxed at rates similar to income.

The "double tax" talking point is false. Income is to be taxed. That *supposedly* includes all income to an entity.

Being born of rich parents is just like winning a lottery. It is luck. And we tax lottery winnings at full income tax rates. An inheritance is just lottery income to the receiving party that should be taxed exactly the same way.

Or are you really arguing that there should be no income tax? Because that is the only way your argument makes in any sense.

Re:The "Death Tax" Lie! (was Re: Of course)

[CQCoder]

Ummm...because it is MY FREAKING MONEY. People..the question is NEVER 'why should you keep your money?' The question is 'WHY should the Government take it?'. If you give the F-ing congress, Liberal or Conservative more money, they will spend it. They have taken in RECORD taxes for all or most of the last 10 years...and yet they spend WAY more than they get. No one cares. But HOLY CRAP, gas prices went up .25 - Now I'm pissed. The problem is that most people are stupid.

Or maybe...

[gatfirls]

Wage slaves in other nations has lowered the pricepoint to one that is acceptable, well enough to put our wage slaves on welfare.

 

Yuck

[DarkRookie]

I hate those things. They are really slow in over all use. I see these only, I will just leave. Its the reason I don't go to a McD near here

EU average is 16.7% / Re: Of course

[nniillss]

Click on "expand" in the statistics. You quoted the average of the Euro countries (excluding, e.g., the UK). Germany, by the way, has 6.4% (according to this chart).

Re:EU average is 16.7% / Re: Of course

[lgw]

Germany has the advantage of being full of Germans (but that has recently changed, and the numbers for the next generation will be interesting). In the meantime, we'd do well to copy Germany's vocational system with tight coupling of industry and education with proven results.

Re:EU average is 16.7% / Re: Of course

[lgw]

Are you honestly claiming culture has no effect on how people work and live?

Makes sense..

[SuperDre]

Especially with these large fastfood restaurants chains, and it's very factory/formula based foods. It makes sense to just use robots/machines to prepare the food (it's all exactly the same, so a robot should be able to handle it even better than a human without the need for safety measures which require pretty some space. At our MacDonalds here in the Netherlands, we're already used to order/pay at a touchscreen and only wait until our food is prepared to be handed over to us by a person. But the whole preparation of the food could be done by machines and just dump it on a tray and put it in a slot on the counter. Only a skeletoncrew needed to keep an eye on everything.

Cheaper/Faster Except...

[kackle]

Except when there is ONE of the following standing in front of the screen:

-Someone who doesn't read English.
-An elderly person.
-Someone who doesn't eat there often.
-A family with kids running around when the parent is trying to enter everything.
-A person with a special request ("No pickles.").
-A person with cash.
-A person with a flaky credit card account (I'm looking at you, Capital One!).
-A person who's blind.
-A person who can't use their hands.
-A person who's too short.

I assume these situations occur frequently; and these are just off the top of my head. It takes 3 SECONDS for me to say "Can I have a #3 with a Coke to go, please?" (Yes, walking in is often faster than the drive-through.) I go to a fast food place for fast food. If things are slowing me down, I will go elsewhere...in 3 seconds.

It won't be as bad as people think

[DMJC]

I work inside one of the two largest grocery stores in Australia. I can tell you that the self service checkouts as good as they are, are never going to replace staff. There's multiple reasons for it but theft/loss is one of the big reasons why staff are always going to be there. Minimum wage/staff wages are not the major drivers of these decisions. Any business that thinks they can automate away staff without increasing/improving on service, is going to quickly get crushed by businesses that provide a better customer experience/service.

Information.

[allforone808]

Here is a link to a part-time job i came across, Feel free to apply if interested in making an extra income. https://promotionaldrivecom.wo...

Re:Mc Burgers

[SuricouRaven]

Heat must be monitored to ensure it is properly cooked, but if you are trying to make something humans will judge you need to evaluate it by an equivalent of human senses too. Monitor color.

Straw man

[rsilvergun]

Even if the people earning minimum wage have degrees that has absolutely nothing to do with their impact on and importance to the overall job market.

You're attacking people with useless degrees (a group especially reviled here on /.) to side track the conversation about minimum wage workers and their place in the US economy. At best that's mean spirited trolling. At worst an active attack on the working class. Either way (and I'm getting tired of saying this): you should be ashamed of yourself. I don't know what you think you're doing, but you're not helping yourself or the people you care about.

Re:There's your problem.

[Opportunist]

It's my job to profile people and come up with plans to neutralize problems. It has little to do with luck. It's mostly finding a person's weak spot. Everyone has one. Loved ones, kids, friends, pets, character flaws, things they treasure, reputation...

You needn't kill a person. It's preferable when they do it themselves.

but

[bobmajdakjr]

if you pull everyone out of money making positions, they wont have any money to spend on your shit. that makes sense i guess.

not sure what the article is about

[Arunex]

what the fuck is jack in the box

Your numbers are way off!

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

First of all, most of McDonald's locations are franchisee owned. Only 18% are corporate owned, 6,444 stores as of 2015.

Secondly, McDonald's does not employ 1.5 million people. They employed more than 375,000 at the end of 2016.

Already a done deal

[stoatwblr]

Automation of fastfood ordering is already happening.

It's relatively easy/cheap to do and doesn't (normally) affect hygiene standards (although it may increase security risks, given that counterdroids can pick up on potentially troublesome customers)

However - As many franchise holders are finding out the hard way, many customers don't like it and are starting to go elsewhere.

Automation of the backend (cooking, cleaning and packing) is a lot more expensive and likely to take some time. Robots to do physical work are not cheap. relatively inflexible and require constant cleaning in this kind of environment. Employees not cooking or serving are cleaning, whilst robots not cooking are idle.

Employers who replace burger flippers on cost grounds are likely to be the same ones who attempt to cut corners on cleaning and in the process generate food poisoning outbreaks with subsequent compensation payments far exceeding the savings.

It Just Makes Sense....

[Stubbyfingers]

Dear Jack.

I have a question. When you, and most of your other CEOs lay off all their employees, WHO'S going to be left with money to be your CUSTOMERS?

Do Robots eat Hamburgers?

Asking for a friend.

Replace Law Makers

[NewYork]

Can Robots replace Law Makers and CxOs