Get ready for completely automated fast food restaurants.
They tried completely robotic fast food places years ago. After a very brief novelty wore off, the public lost interest. To make matters worse, the robots maintenance and restaurant cleaning required so much labor that it was just cheaper to hire people.
I think three things will happen here. First, some restaurants will comply and suddenly a $14 dinner (2014 value) will be $20. Will customers just comply, staying with this restaurant, or quit it? Second, I agree....automation is coming to fast food restaurants within the next decade and it’ll change the dynamic of cheap labor in America. Third, as you escalate wages and the price of the end-product....you also are escalating the sales tax....something which no one talks about. If people get peppy about paying the higher cost/higher tax....you might see a decline in tax revenue, which isn’t very easily replaced unless you push the sales tax up again.
“Get ready for automated fast food restaurants”
It’s not just fast food that will be impacted by this. The entire food prep / manufacturing industry in LA employs only low-skilled labor for minimum wage or just a few cents above that. If the industry is forced to pay them essentially double what they pay now, they will have to either close up shop and move to another county/state or double the cost of their product. Which means people are looking at a massive increase at the grocery store.
Will be interesting to see what happens when they force this upon the manufacturers.
That’s right. They’ll have numerous robots and a couple of $50 grand techies running the show.