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Honest question here. How do these 2 conservative policies jive together:
- Don't raise minimum wage; keep them low
- Don't hire illegals so wages for low-skilled jobs rise (because Americans will demand higher wages)
How can they both exist in the same world? It seems like you either want to keep wages lower (to make labor cheaper than automation) or you want to raise it (to keep American workers). Many illegal workers now are at minimum wage jobs... if you want to boot them out so those jobs "pay a living wage," doesn't that automatically raise the minimum wage??
Honest question here. Have you quit beating your wife yet?
I feel like my views don't fit on either side of the spectrum. I don't really care much about minimum wage (puts me at odds with Dems) because I think the eventual automation of low-skill jobs is inevitable and make it a moot point anyway. And I'm ok with that... automation brings evolution (puts me at odds with base Cons). It's cold but society can't subsidize low-value jobs forever... those people need to evolve into other trades too. I know that's why I work my butt off and make sure I'm always keeping up with my field.
"I think the eventual automation of low-skill jobs is inevitable"
Just as middle class and many high paying jobs have been going to automation for a couple hundred of years, starting with wheel.
Everybody is not college motivated or even suitable for the standard model of what College represents or even what it presents or how it presents it.
Work is Work.... Service is Service... Slavery and Indenture is OVER from the period and era of classisfying jobs based on what the skin color of the person who did them, or what side of the tracks of the woods patch they lived on...
Fast Food is Big Business and that business is Service... Pay the people to provide the quality of service.
To some people these jobs is their lifeline and in some places people work these jobs to support their families..
"To some people these jobs is their lifeline and in some places people work these jobs to support their families."
Whose fault is that?
Maybe they should start with getting a high school degree.
Except that the VAST majority in the US are not that high currently, not even remotely. And these are going in at 14,000 locations.
Actually minimum wage WAS supposed to be a livable wage for a single wage earner to have a comfortable living. Thats as per the president that put it into place BTW. The talking point about how it was never supposed to is a recent one, not based in historical reality.
In his 1933 address following the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”
“By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of decent living,” he stated.
Actually it used to be. At one point minimum wage was enough to keep a family of 3 out of poverty.
"At one point minimum wage was enough to keep a family of 3 out of poverty."
I think that was for FULL time jobs NOT, part time un-skilled jobs.
well, there's a bunch of $15/hour jobs up in a cloud of French-fry smoke.
I have followed the market a long time. The market or a company's share price is stimulated when a company lays off workers. They see layoffs as an increasing the companies bottom line....and hence making it more profitable and attractive to share holders. Hence, anything that reduces employment without jeopardizing revenues will be seen favorably by the market and investors. Also, the market responds inversely to interest rates. When the FEDS lower rates, the market almost always goes up and when they increase rates it goes down. Of course, there are exception, but this is the rule.
This kind of shows how our economic system is really cannibalizing itself for short term benefits. When the market responds favorably, meaning that it is rewarding certain types of economic activity, to the loss of jobs and the increasing of debt (low interest rates), you know the economic system is not sustainable. It is essentially eating a limb for the calories to get buy in the short term......but eventually you will eat yourself out of existence. We are simply maintaining the system at the expense of the future.
Just face it people. The minimum wage jobs were never meant to be careers, but stepping stools towards careers. Want to make a good living, use the minimum wage jobs to put yourself through college or trade school where you learn a skill to better yourself.
College costs have far exceeded what someone on minimum wage can afford- unless they have the benefit of a family providing room and board and access to transportation. And not all college degrees are good investments.
This level of automation has been in the offing forever. When I was in grad school ten years ago one of my research professors used a paper on computerization/automation/retraining of McDonalds workers as an example of how to combine difference sources of investigations- not just journal literature & books but manuals, interviews, presentations, so on, so forth. I got more wrapped up in what McDonald's goals were. At the time they had rethought their whole method of delivering orders and preparing/assembling food because they felt the functional level of their employees was dipping below high school level. So the monitor readouts were idiot proofed. Any thought into prices/order combos was being taken out with touch screens. Their food assembly area was literally turned into drawers & bins of already cooked components that could monitor themselves. And they literally were doing things like having 2-3 stops where people verified and order before clearing it from a screen. This interested me because I worked at McDonalds as a first job ten years earlier and remembered having a couple of people who could run the whole front or back almost single handedly.
The simple truth is that at the lower end of the employment ladder they are having a hard time finding people who can perform many jobs. It makes you appreciate the midnight shift at a waffle house that runs the place on two employees. The risk with automation is that when something goes down there is no work around.
Thanks for the lofty speech. How is someone who is attempting to support themselves on this job, albeit temporarily supposed to put themselves through college? College costs money, takes time, and is certainly no guarantee of a job, as is trade school. And the $15 minimum wage doesn't even exist. It is not the reason for the kiosks. McDonalds would rather spend $0 in labor than even the $8/hour or $10/hour that our minimum wage wage is now.
"albeit temporarily supposed to put themselves through college?"
A couple of my relatives did it.
1st, go to a Community College for your 1st 2 years THEN transfer to a 4 year college.
Do NOT expect to graduate in 4 years. MANY people have taken 5, 6, 7 and even 10y ears to get their degree.
Many people work real full time jobs and go go college part time, taking 1 or 2 courses a semester.
Live at home and don't EXPECT to to go college and live on campus.
Hundreds of thousands of people have done it and continue to do it today.
Conservatives do seem to rejoice when fast food workers lose their jobs. I guess it makes them feel better about themselves.
The coal miners sure don't seem happy about being replaced by machinery but whatev. The people in the 'heartland' making $50,000 for making widgets on a factory line sure don't seem happy .
But they all like to scoff at fast food workers.
No, liberals make THEMSELVES feel better by ASSUMING they know what conservatives think, and are usually DEAD WRONG.
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