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Plus, a robot bartender is slingin' cocktails in Germany. The human race's pancake flipping days could soon be over. MIT Technology Review reports that RobotHow — a European robotics research project focused on teaching robots to understand language — has developed a robot chef capable of using instructions to complete complex tasks like flipping pancakes and making pizza. While things like flipping a pancake might seem simple, for robots it's a challenge to determine how much force and what exact motion is required to complete the action, writes Quartz. The robot called PR2 learns tasks by following instructions on wikiHow....

The Democratic Party on Friday adopted a call to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr as part of their established party platform heading into the 2016 election season. The move further polarizes the progressive wing of the party by moving them further to the left of both the Republican Party, and corporate centrist Democrats such as Hillary Clinton. In response to the Democratic Party’s vote, Terrence Wise, a Kansas City, Mo. McDonald’s and Burger King Worker and member of the National Organizing Committee of the Fight for $15, issued the following statement.

Restaurant owners, customers and staff have long railed against the tyranny of tipping, but like a love affair gone bad, it has proved difficult to quit.Now, prompted by a spurt of new minimum wage proposals in major cities, an expanding number of restaurateurs are experimenting with no-tipping policies as a way to manage rising labor costs.Here in Seattle, where the first stage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage law took effect in April, Ivar’s seafood restaurants switched to an all-inclusive menu. By raising prices 21 percent and ending tipping, Bob C. Donegan, the president and co-owner, calculated he could increase everyone’s...

NEW YORK (AP) — Police say a security guard has died after a man walked into a federal building in Manhattan and opened fire. The guard, identified by his union as Idrisa Camara, died shortly after the shooting Friday evening. Police say the gunman walked through a side entrance of the building that houses an immigration court and other government offices. Chief James O'Neil says the gunman later shot himself in the head. He was found dead in the building. A law enforcement official identified the shooter as Kevin Downing, of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

African Americans and Hispanics make up only 5 percent of the workforce in Silicon Valley technology companies, compared to 14 percent nationally, according to 2014 data. But billionaire Donald Trump has a plan to improve the numbers of Black, Hispanic and female workers. (snip) "More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program's lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two," the leading Republican presidential frontrunner writes. "Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant...

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump gave his thoughts on the minimum wage and as to whether or not raising the minimum wage would good for the American economy. “It’s such a nasty question because the answer has to be nasty,” Trump said. “You know, we’re in a global economy now. It used to be companies would leave New York State and companies would leave New York State or leave another state and go to Florida, go to Texas, go to wherever they go because or lower wages. You know, all sorts of different things. Well...

Small businesses are already struggling to survive the spate of minimum wage increases to $15 per hour in parts of California. Last month, the small Bay Area town of Emeryville, California, (population 10,000) decided to act as flag-bearer for raising the minimum wage in California, hiking its minimum wage to $14.44 per hour. Even though businesses with less than 56 workers are exempt from the $14.44 rate and do not have to raise their wages to $15 until 2018, Vic Gumper, who owns Lanesplitter Pizza, with outlets in Berkeley, Oakland, Albany and Emeryville, decided not only to bite the bullet...

If you don't like the idea of robot waiters and robot cooks replacing entry-level workers, you might think twice about the recent $15 minimum-wage craze.

California has embarked upon a dangerous experiment. The Democrats who secured total control of the statehouse have been the most productive group of legislators at passing bills in the last 50 years. Most of these bills were passed stealthily to avoid media scrutiny. The last minimum wage hike was rammed through without much media attention. The same with the Sick Leave Law that went into effect in July of 2015. These two new costs, when combined with the federal ACA have increased the cost of labor roughly 35% overnight. None of these assaults on California businesses were sensibly staggered, nor...

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton would lose Missouri to every GOP presidential candidate pitted against her in a new survey conducted by Public Policy Polling. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio performs best against Clinton, winning by 15 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush performs worst, winning by only 7 percentage points. Donald Trump leads Clinton by 9 percentage points, Carly Fiorina had a 10 percentage point margin of victory, and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky each won by 12. Missouri went blue for President Obama in 2008, and also features a...

Putting at risk other people's money and livelihoods is easier than putting at risk your own money and livelihood. Anyone with the power to put at risk other people's money and livelihoods is prone to take unjustified risks with that money and those livelihoods. This fact is one reason for private property: With private property, each person has control over only property that is his or hers. I decide what happens on my side of the fence while you decide what happens on your side. If I decide poorly, I suffer the consequences; if you decide well, you reap the...

According to a report released Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the $15 minimum wage has caused Seattle restaurants to lose 1,000 jobs — the worst decline since the 2009 Great Recession. “The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” AEI Scholar Mark J. Perry noted in the report.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Steve Caldeira, CEO of the International Franchise Association, alerts us to the latest plan to ensure “economic justice” through raising worker pay by government decree. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, believing that the Empire State is free from the strictures of supply and demand curves — or more likely that he must appease Big Labor — is promoting a plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour from $8.75 an hour for workers in fast-food restaurants with 30 or more locations. Such a plan may be politically astute — how can anyone...

According to a report released Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the $15 minimum wage has caused Seattle restaurants to lose 1,000 jobs — the worst decline since the 2009 Great Recession. “The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” AEI Scholar Mark J. Perry noted in the report.

Last week, in "Economics 101: Wal-Mart Hikes Wages, Prepares To Fire 1000," we highlighted an internal memo circulated at Arkansas recruiting firm Cameron Smith & Associates. The letter, which was obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, advised employees to prepare for an expected wave of layoffs at WalMart’s home office in Bentonville. "Please remember, these people are our neighbors and friends," Cameron Smith tells his recruiters, "you have a skill that will be very much in need when this goes down."The retail giant has received quite a bit of scrutiny this year (more than usual), after abruptly and simultaneously closing...

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Unfortunately, many journalists did not remember that when covering a new report claiming $15-an-hour wages would raise fast-food prices only 4 percent. A closer look shows that the study underlying the report had major methodological errors. More serious analysis shows that $15-an-hour wages would raise fast-food prices by over a third — at least until stores automate work currently done by humans. The study, by Purdue University economists Richard Ghiselli and Jing Ma, has made quite a splash. The Washington Post covered it extensively, concluding that the higher wages...

Meet 31-year-old Dan Price. Dan is the CEO of Seattle-based credit card payments processing firm Gravity Payments, and three months ago, he did a funny thing. After talking with a friend who confessed to having difficulties making student loan payments and rent each month on an annual salary of $40,000, Dan decided to set a $70,000 per year pay floor at Gravity. Dan was not, The New York Times says, looking to insert himself into "the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor." All he wanted to do was improve the lives of...

Apart­ment rents are up. So are prices for restaurant meals, haircuts, gym memberships and a cup of coffee. For consumers who have become used to flat or even falling prices for years, an unfamiliar sight has emerged in many corners of the economy: Inflation is ticking up.

He hit headlines earlier this year for declaring every one of his 120 employees would earn a minimum wage of $70,000. But now Dan Price - CEO of Seattle-based credit card processing firm Gravity Payments, who lowered his $1 million salary to better compensate employees - has fallen on hard times as a result of his bold move. However the 31-year-old, who is renting out his house to keep the salary increases going, refuses to give up. 'I'm working as hard as I ever worked to make it work,' he told The New York Times. 'I haven’t made this little...

They say what goes around comes around. In this case, ignore the basic laws of economics and human nature, and you’ll soon find yourself living in a van down by the river. That looks to be in the very near future for one liberal CEO who insisted on making a political statement about the minimum wage, rather than looking after the best interests of his employees and company. We predicted this would happen. But then again, conservatives tend to understand basic economics better than your typical liberal nutcase.