Robots are being used in many industries already. The recent stories about fast food workers’ demands for $15.00 actually distorts what’s really going on because that is such a large increase at one time for a particular industry.
You have it bass ackwards. There is some breakeven wage per hour where robots become a profitable alternative in industries where they can now be utilized, and as more robots are produced, the cheaper they will become, and that advance of technology has little to do with government.
Some find the government an easy and illogical scapegoat for the negative aspect of every trend in our economy. Government’s biggest impact on employment comes as a result of immigration and work visa policies, and trade policies that reduce or eliminate import tariffs, making it even more profitable for companies to move production to cheap labor nations. Those policies directly or indirectly greatly increase the available supply of labor and drive down employee compensation, making robots less feasible to many industries.
Government has done far more to hold down worker compensation in recent decades than it has to increase it.
So the EPA driving coal out of the country has nothing to donwith the loss of manufacturing jobs. The Mileage standards did not help decimate automotive. Sky high taxes and regulations re. employment doesn’t suppress wages and jobs. A whole host of costs incurred by governemt mandate don’t hurt a thing.