Company Raises It's Minimum Wage to $70,000 and All Hell Breaks Loose

The less I have to interact with the mongoloids working at a typical fast food restaurant, the better. Praise be to higher minimum wages.

Lyrical_sl said:

And this is an unintended consequence of raising the minimum wage. There always are unintended consequences of altering things in capitalism. Pay attention to the part in the article where the rest of the industry is trying to do the same, in response to a rise in expected minimum wages.

You can't legislate what the market will charge, the market will find a way around it.

At This New Fast-Food Restaurant, Human Interaction Is Almost Zero

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I guess you've never been to a sheetz or wawa. That kinda stuff has been happening forever man. Saying it's correlated to raising minimum wage is ridiculous. Companies have been trying to automate people out of jobs since the industrial revolution.

Lyrical_sl said:

It's not my article.

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Interesting way to defend your position...

Khane_sl said:

Interesting way to defend your position...

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It's how he started the thread too - attack and retreat, or something.

Lyrical_sl said:

It's not my article.

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The article didn't make a single mention of the minimum wage until the last fucking sentence. You did however provide a commentary on the minimum wage in your post, jackass.

Just need to bring up how Batman defeating Darkseid is perfectly reasonable!

Khane_sl said:

I guess you've never been to a sheetz or wawa. That kinda stuff has been happening forever man. Saying it's correlated to raising minimum wage is ridiculous. Companies have been trying to automate people out of jobs since the industrial revolution.

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It's absolutely nothing new, but the whole point is to illustrate that automation is becoming more and more affordable and profitable. Invariably lower tech costs and higher wages mean you reach that gap much more quickly. Even if it costs 20% more for reliability, no HR issues, no FMLA, no sick days, no feelings, no car accidents taking your only competent employee in one department, no cross-training, less insurance cost in some cases (just liability), etc.

Palum_sl said:

It's absolutely nothing new, but the whole point is to illustrate that automation is becoming more and more affordable and profitable. Invariably lower tech costs and higher wages mean you reach that gap much more quickly. Even if it costs 20% more for reliability, no HR issues, no FMLA, no sick days, no feelings, no car accidents taking your only competent employee in one department, no cross-training, less insurance cost in some cases (just liability), etc.

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From how I read the article, it's not really anything on a new level - it says the "customer service experience" is managed by machines. That doesn't necessarily include the backside of the house.

So it's just ordering terminals with a slot to receive the items. Not really that high tech or new.

Palum_sl said:

It's absolutely nothing new, but the whole point is to illustrate that automation is becoming more and more affordable and profitable. Invariably lower tech costs and higher wages mean you reach that gap much more quickly. Even if it costs 20% more for reliability, no HR issues, no FMLA, no sick days, no feelings, no car accidents taking your only competent employee in one department, no cross-training, less insurance cost in some cases (just liability), etc.

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Raising wages certainly has the potential to speed up the automation process as it becomes more cost effective to do so. But if we automate all our jobs we are removing a huge amount of buying power and stifling the economy and it should be easy enough to legislate around that.

I gotta be honest though, I am very guilty of using self check out lines wherever they are available. I'm a hypocrite.

Khane_sl said:

I gotta be honest though, I am very guilty of using self check out lines wherever they are available. I'm a hypocrite.

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Had some old lady behind me in a regular line a few weeks ago during my weekly large grocery trip. I clearly had ~$150 worth of items to check out and she was behind me for a few minutesbeforethe cashier got to my order. Every single time the cashier moved to a new bag to put my stuff in I heard this loud sigh. I turned around and she had two items in her hand. As long as people like that exist, companies will need humans to do things. Currently the people most likely to not care one way or another have spent the majority of their life communicating through a device of some sort.

I wonder how the economy and feminism will cope with the first round of job cuts. It seems the first 'obvious' place to remove jobs would be to trend back to single income families. At the same time, I know some people who work and barely make enough money to cover their expenses (car/gas/work stuff/business clothing/etc.) and childcare... yet they still work. Childcare facilities are serious $$ these days. It's going to be an interesting transition over the next few decades. I have to imagine the initial shift will be tomoreservice based and niche businesses (ie, Iwill gladlypay 20% more to get 'humancare'!).

Yeah, we did childcare when my kids were toddlers and eventually my wife sat down and worked out the numbers and found out it was more beneficial for us for her to cut down to Part Time and work on my days off (at the time I worked 12hr shifts, rotating 3 or 4 days a week) so we had 100% kid coverage.

During my schooling my social studies requirement had me in a class about the 60s. One section was devoted toward the millions of housewives developing psychological issues stemming from the post-WW2 society. Those in the rising middle class didn't need to work, and society expected them to stay at home, but they didn't necessarily want that. Here we are fifty years later and it's pretty much reversed. A woman who wants to stay at home is unable to because the stagnation of wages forces many to have to work in order to keep up with expenses.

Yeah childcare is stupid, stupid expensive. My parents lucked out that my aunt was willing to watch us while my mom went to work for pretty minimal pay.

New York state APPROVES $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers | Daily Mail Online

New York state will gradually raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $15 an hour - the first time any state has set the minimum that high.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration formally approved the increase Thursday - a move the Democratic governor announced at a labor rally with Vice President Joe Biden. Cuomo said he will work to pass legislation setting a $15 minimum for all industries - a promise that comes as more and more cities around the country move toward a $15 minimum wage.

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Apparently it's just fast food workers if I read that right. Other industries to follow later. So those making $9-$14 in non fast food are fucked.