Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Wow, they turned a customer into an employee by doing it yourself, huh? If that's the case, they need to lower the prices or provide you direct deposit for making the customer the employee.
There's a natural rate of unemployment and its not 0.
Some people will be in the dumps no matter what they do. You ever play poker? Some people tend to run -EV their entire lives. Call it fate if you must. Others encounter highly improbable events. Most events tend to fall in the 95% range but probability theory tells us that 5% falls in the highly unlikely category (>2 s.d). 2.5% of that is extreme good luck and 2.5% is extreme bad luck. What about these folks?
So there has to be some form of welfare. You don't want true darwinism because you'll be harmed by it as well.
Airborne guy? Military? So you should know probability theory intuitively. How many soldiers have done dumb **** and survived while others mitigated risk and yet got killed?
I couldn't agree with you more: some percentage of people will always fail, no matter what or how many resources are set aside for them. That's why I can't support a system that encourages dependency. It is pointless.
True Darwinism lets the chips fall where they may. I certainly may be one of those who fails, probably never would have gotten where I am today. That very well may be the case, but at this point, I'm not concerned with the Huns at the gate. I'm quite prepared for that eventuality.
Spoke to this earlier this year when everyone was going on about increasing minimum wage and so forth. Fast food restaurants have been using automated ordering in other countries such as OZ for awhile now, it was only a matter of time before it arrived in the USA.
This is nothing more than yet another case of technology replacing low skill jobs and or those requiring little to no education. It is also a continuation of the overall trend you see in the American labour market; that is the career to have is one that cannot be outsourced to technology in whole. Nursing, medicine, law, etc... all have been impacted by technology but you aren't going to find nurses being replaced wholly by a machine, well not yet anyway.
OTOH why would any business pay a cashier at MikeyD's nearly $20/hour (or whatever amount the raise the minimum wage groups are asking), when it can install machines that will do the job cheaply?
Automated ordering does not require mandatory PTO, health benefits, speaking to about their attitude towards customers, etc....
I traveled there and ordered a Big Mac, the Cowardly Lion was handling the cash.
1). Sorry I'm unconvinced about your basic logic here. Raising the minimum wage would just have the effect of shrinking the pool of unskilled jobs, and more people would be unemployed.
2). Whatever you may be thinking, the people who are pushing the $15/hour minimum are not thinking this way. They think the employers will just roll over, pay the increase, and not make any cuts to compensate for the drop in profits. In earlier, much smaller increases in the minimum wage, this was somewhat true. The increases weren't enough of a shock to the system to make the employers invest in retooling their business. What would likely end up being a $6-7 increase would be such a shock to the system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wawaweewa
I've seen these abroad but not domestically until now.
I don't see this as a net negative at all and I support raising the minimum to $15. Why?
Of course some or many low wage jobs will be eliminated but that's not a bad thing. As it stands now, the taxpayer is subsidizing businesses who employ extremely low wage workers (relative to each cities minimum COL; in NYC that's prob around $13- $15/hr).
Some will see their wages rise and some will lose their job. Those that lose their job will either find new work (desperation creates initiative in some; some will retrain , some will move to areas with a shortage of labor, etc) or will go on the government dole. I suspect that the net benefit will be less government support of low wage workers overall as only so much can be automated.
For example; If the government supports 1,000 low wage workers to the tune of $10 / year = $10,000
If the minimum wage is hiked to $15/hr and let's say 400 workers (automation cuts the workforce by 40% which is generous) are cut and now the government has to completely support them to the tune of $20/year (in essence the govt was subsidizing low wage employers to the tune of 100%), now the payout for the government is only $8,000. Net benefit.
The important questions are:
A. what is the rate (percentage wise) of subsidization by each state government and the Federal government?
B. to what extent will the new minimum wage decrease that rate?
C. to what extent will automation increase unemployment?
This equation will be a net positive to society at a high enough minimum wage level (especially with corporate profits at record levels) but not too high that it hurts corporate competitiveness.
All those touch screens will be made in China. Maintenance is minimum. If it breaks down, unplug and roll out the replacement. No sick day, no stike, no problem. Wow. When will McDonald's HQ relocate to Shanghai?
Maybe they can save enough money on the kiosks to pay their other workers a higher hourly wage.
It reminds me of when ATMs first came out and people hesitated to use them. Last time I was at a bank, I heard the tellers say they were about to eliminate 90% of them at that bank branch.
Or when gas stations replaced attendants with self-serve.
Last edited by roxyrn; 12-16-2014 at 01:39 PM..
Reason: adding last sentence
Wow, they turned a customer into an employee by doing it yourself, huh? If that's the case, they need to lower the prices or provide you direct deposit for making the customer the employee.
I dunno - I always end up working hard trying to get the worker to get my order right. They are non-listening drones half the time or just plain dumb. On autopilot with no room for deviation.
If I can punch it in to a machine and just have someone cook it and hand it to me - that's better. Less work for me quite frankly.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
