A higher wage will force chains to replace humans with robots

The Kansas City Star ^ | September 19, 2013 | James Sherk

[2ndDivisionVet]

Medieval doctors bled their patients with leeches. Far from improving their condition, it left them worse off. Raising the wages of fast-food workers to $15 an hour would produce similar results for those the proposal is intended to help.

In America, minimum-wage workers are better paid than the average worker in Mexico. Why? It’s not because U.S. employers are more generous than their Mexican counterparts. Nor do Americans somehow deserve better pay.

American minimum-wage earners make more because they produce more. Better education and greater capital investment make American workers more productive, raising their earnings.

Competition forces businesses to pay workers according to their productivity. If companies pay less, their employees will jump ship to competitors. And if they pay workers more than they produce, they go out of business.

For better or worse, fast-food jobs are relatively low-productivity positions, typically filled by inexperienced workers. Most fast-food customers want a quick, inexpensive meal. They will not regularly pay premium prices for a burger and fries.

Doubling McDonalds’ wages would raise their total costs by 25 percent — well above profit margins. But raising prices would drive customers away.

If Congress mandated fast-food restaurants to pay $15 an hour, they would have to change operations to deliver the kind of productivity to justify those higher costs. That would mean replacing current workers with machines and hiring fewer, more skilled workers to maintain them.....

[ClaytonP]

Its all part of the plan, get as many people unemployed as possible

[pepsionice]

I would say this...by 2016...minimum wage will have gone up another $1 (it’s a logical expectation that both political parties will visit to garner votes for that election). Sometime around 2025...I expect McDonalds to shock the public by developing and marketing the ‘automated shop’.

You will walk into a McDonalds and face a screen....hitting the buttons to note what you want, and then swipe your credit card. The bulk of the restaurant will be automated with robot features, and probably feature one manager and two clerks (merely to reload the systems or handle break-downs). It’ll be a staged event with five or six nationally placed for view.

By 2030...half of the McDonalds in America will be on this automated system, and tens of thousands of employees will be released to the public sector...unable to find any real employment.

Burger King, Pizza Hut, and the rest will follow. I expect 2040 to arrive with massive unemployment throughout the US, and economic experts at a loss to explain how automated system arrived, and their relationship to the minimum wage. The dopes will sit there and grin during televised interviews.

Anger and hostility will brew against the developers of automated systems and robots. Occupy Wall Street will turn into Occupy Automation. People will shake their heads over the strange turn of events.

[dragnet2]

By 2030...half of the McDonalds in America will be on this automated system, and tens of thousands of employees will be released to the public sector...unable to find any real employment. Burger King, Pizza Hut, and the rest will follow. I expect 2040 to arrive with massive unemployment throughout the US, and economic experts at a loss to explain how automated system arrived, and their relationship to the minimum wage

There not paying those people enough to even pay for basic things like rent, food, gas, utilities etc...Forget car payments, medical or buying homes etc...

So what's the big deal?

[pepsionice]

The purpose of a business....less we not forget....is not to be concerned with the needs or desires of their employees. The business survives only if they have a product that consumers want, and they can deliver that product to consumers at the price expected.

If Pabst Blue Ribbon were eight bucks a can...Pabst would dissolve away.

If toilet paper were $6 a roll, we’d all be in the forest collecting leaves and using them for important wipes....dissolving the toilet paper companies.

If a burger meal at BK were $15....we’d skip it and just buy a loaf of bread and some luncheon meat, dissolving BK into nothing

Business operations only function, if consumers rate them as desirable. Whether the employee can afford a car or a three-bedroom apartment.....isn’t part of the end-result.

[jsanders2001]

Chili’s is going to let you order from tablets that are hooked into their system and then have a reduced staff bring your food to you. Commies everywhere thank you, Obama, for killing capitalism and instilling fear in the marketplace. Conservatives thank you for proving once again that socialism doesn’t work except to enrich the ruling elite.

[MasterGunner01]

The reason why minimum wage laws are so important is not because of a “living wage” for workers. The minimum wage is tied to union worker's contracts. When the minimum wage goes up, the union members’ wages go up automatically. That's the dirty little secret why Donkeys (and RINOs) back increases in the minimum wage and not because they're concerned about low paid workers.

Minimum wage jobs are entry level, low skilled jobs. They aren't supposed to support a family. Anyone who starts as a burger flipper knows if they want to stay with a franchise, then management is were they need to go if they have ability.

If minimum wage jobs are so crucial to survival, then why not dictate a $20 per hour or $40 per hour or $100 per hour minimum wage? At some point, even a brain dead liberal will say, “how can a business pay this amount?” That is exactly the point. If the minimum wage is artificially raised by fiat, then to to stay in business — sell a product that customers can afford — the owner will have to cut costs. Invariably, the highest cost for an owner is LABOR. The owner will either cut staff or look to automation as a substitute for manual work.

The technology already exists to automate the ordering, preparation, and delivery of product at MCDonald’s [or other franchise]. For the franchise owner, automating replaces his labor headaches. Machines don't get sick, take time off, come in late, argue over shifts, or have other other human problems. All the machines need is periodic maintenance and adjustment.

The SEIU, as an example, is really big on “living” minimum wages for its members. What are these workers going to do if their boss says he's automating and eliminating their job position? SEIU members aren't skilled workers and there's fewer and fewer jobs they can do. Pursuing this “minimum living wage” myth will have negative consequences for the “do gooder” politicians pushing this idea. Low skilled workers will go away and union members will also suffer as increasing minimum wage rates cause blowback in the employment market.

[Little Pig]

You won’t have to wait until 2025 for an automated fast-food joint. The systems exist now, and fast food recipes are so exacting that they lend themselves very readily to that kind of automation. All it’s going to take is a slight nudge in the direction of automation desirability and it’ll be widespread in no time. The fast food worker cadre won’t believe how quickly they get replaced. No doubt there will be a huge outcry over it, but it’ll all come down to operating efficiency. The restaurants will be able to show better performance, and one more low-skill type of work will vanish.

[PastorBooks]

“Medieval doctors bled their patients with leeches. Far from improving their condition, it left them worse off.”

Leeches are starting to be used again in modern medicine.

I did a little googling and found this:

http://www.leechestherapy.com/history_of_leeches.php

“Recently, however, leeches have once again found their place in the field of medicine. They are now being bred in captivity in several institutions and leech farms are once again being created, but the use of leeches has become quite sophisticated. They’re not just used for anything, they are also used in the field of microsurgery and to release or drain the congested blood in some wound sites and are preferred in this area because of their precision. Plastic surgeons also use leeches to treat challenging skin grafts and most especially for reconstructive surgery.”

[zeestephen]

The invasion of automated machines is not going to slow down, high minimum wage or low.

Before the recession, the total number of manufacturing employees in the USA peaked around June 2008.

Five years later, employees are down 13%, but the value of the goods they produced is only down 2%.

I think the next group of workers to get slaughtered will be interstate truckers who drive warehouse-to-warehouse.

I bet by 2020 we'll have robot expressway trucks, and if their loads are palletized, we'll have robot loaders and unloaders, too.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”A higher wage will force chains to replace humans with robots”

Great points and true.

Like most of the grocery stores here in Maryland that have automated checkers as does does Home Depot. I love those.

Ironically Walmarts stopping doing automated because of the low quantity of customers they attract (Obama voters) and the low quality of employees they hire, meaning theft.
At least that is what is going on here.

It breaks the cult paradigm. I am not waiting on line at walmart for some group of losers to move.

[expat1000]

Regarding another medical practice that made a comeback big time, is using staples instead of stitches.

The Roman military used them for battle wounds. Made them out of silver, which has anti-bacterial properties, and were pre-scored to create weak points making them easier to remove.

Leeches are particularly useful in places where it is hard to dress the injury. For example within an old wound cavity.

[AdaGray]

I actually would prefer to have my BigMac made by a BurgerBot.

[j. earl carter]

I bet by 2020 we'll have robot expressway trucks, and if their loads are palletized, we'll have robot loaders and unloaders, too

Anheuser-Busch already has robot loaders at their Columbus, OH brewery. I've never seen robot unloading.

The robotic truck is farther away, imo, because people will be afraid of the idea. The people in cars are already afraid of the trucks, I don't think a driverless truck would make them feel any better.

[bandleader]

This is EXACTLY what I predicted.The only(employees)left will be”food-prep)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[snoringbear]

“If Pabst Blue Ribbon were eight bucks a can...Pabst would dissolve away”

Pabst is still on the market? I thought it went out of business years ago. When I was a kid I liked their jazzy commercial of an Indian dancing to the tune of “from the land of sky blue waters”, something like that. Anyway, I’m guessing the PC Police nailed that commercial a long time ago.

[CIB-173RDABN]

When you watch old movies you may be struck by the many jobs people had that no longer exist. Jobs that allowed for one parent working to support their family while one parent staying home to raise the children.

Before the government got involved jobs and wages found an equilibrium between what a person will accept to do a job and what an employer will pay someone to do the job.

All other cost followed.

The government trying to manage the economy changed all that.

From the government giving unions special protection, to setting minimum wage, to regulating every aspect of the economy it is a wonder that it works at all.

While no one can predict the future, I can with pretty much certainty predict that an air plane will fall out of the sky if the engines quick working. One of these days the engine that keeps our economy in the air will quit working and it will crash, worse than any depression we have had before. When that happens we can thank big government and all those that love it so.

[Gen.Blather]

There were automated diners in the ‘40’s. But labor was so cheap they couldn’t make it. It’s not so much the direct cost of labor that makes hiring people unattractive, it’s the 45-50% adder cost and the unbounded liability that kills hiring. When you add in unemployment insurance, mandated “benefits” (socialism in the workplace dictated by government) and insurance, mandated paperwork, local taxes, etc. Then, you add on the fact that Congress has put laws on the books allowing your special protected class of workers (blacks) to sue you for imagined discrimination with the taxpayer footing their legal bill...you have the perfect storm to destroy the labor market.

All of the nation’s current economic problems and unemployment are government induced. It’s not just one thing, it’s an entire meddlesome government mentality that would have to change. But, instead of backing away they will meddle even harder.

[nathanbedford]

Hamburger flipper jobs are to be regarded as a necessary evil they are not to be regarded as a positive good if a machine can do the same job more efficiently. To believe otherwise is to be a Luddite or a Democrat.

To make laws to stimulate hamburger flipper jobs is just as wrongheaded as we are when we attempt by legislation to artificially elevate the value of those jobs with minimum wage laws. If we make laws to stimulate the creation of hamburger flipper jobs, or if we pass health care legislation the effect of which is to drive down many workers toward hamburger flipper level jobs, we are severely damaging the economy. If we make legislation to create hamburger flipper level jobs to accommodate another rush of illegal immigrants we are suicidal.

If we let the marketplace decide whether to do a job with a machine or a person we benefit both the person and the manufacturer of the machine as well is the employer who makes that decision and the consumer of the product made as a result of that decision. Let the government interfere in any way in that process and we get dislocations which will surely harm at least one of those people described.

[ontap]

So what do you think flipping hamburgers is worth!!!