http://ktla.com/2018/03/05/flippy-the-b ... ood-chain/

Increasing the minimum wage is a great way to help low wage workers get their hands on more money, right?

WRONG.

What's happened here is that the increase in California has now made it cost efficient to replace human workers with a costly machine.

If the machine succeeds and goes into wide production then the per-unit cost will drop and more and more restaurant workers will be put out of their jobs to make way for machines that don't call in sick, that don't get pregnant, that don't spit in your food, and etc.

Told you so.

   

Would have happened eventually regardless of the wage hike. Up in Ft. McMeth here in Alberta the first of the driverless giant haul trucks at the oilsands mines will be going online within the next three to four years, meaning the end of employment for hundreds of heavy-equipment operators. And those steel jobs won't be coming back to the US either, despite Trump's bullshit with the steel tariffs, because most of the steelworker job losses were due to the automation of the industry that's been going on for decades, not to foreign competition.

Welcome back, Bart. More comic books inbound to you within a few days. Unknown Soldier? wOOt!

   

Thanks for the Welcome Back!

Spent Tuesday through Saturday in Atlanta.

Best thing about the trip? This place: https://www.thevarsity.com/

   

Chili dogs from heaven! Post lots of pics of your visit to the Stone Mountain Confederate memorial just to trigger some of the real lefties.

   

And you are welcome to eat them. And pay an extra dollar for the capital cost of the machines. And pay more each year as the bean counters find more loopholes.

The rest of us won't, knowing full well the people needed to clean the machines were never hired or let go with the same bean-counter excuse.

   

Circa 2025 - "Congratulations to McDonald's for not bothering to clean the robots properly because someone at head office decided it cost too much, thus setting a new record number of junk-food listeria outbreaks!".

   

This is one of those rare places I agree with you.

The provincial government up here has jacked up minimum wage by 30+% in 3 years (in October it'll be 48% in 4 years), and I'm sure the increased automation here is a result.

The local theatre doesn't have a permanent cashier any longer, and employs machines to sell tickets and combo deals now. The bottle depot has replaced the cashier with an ATM, and kids spinning signs outside restaurants are an endangered species now. But the Mr. Lube has a robot that does it rain or shine all day long. Even drug stores are adding self-checkouts now too.







That place looks great!

   

I’m not bothered by this at all. If the robot can truly grill a better burger through an arrayof sensors then that’s progress. I certainly wouldn’t call for the wages of buggy-makers to be suppressed just so they don’t get replaced by automobile assembly lines. I hope they make a better burger.

But I think the application is pretty limited. At a starting price of $60k how many min wage workers does this robot replace?

Do you think this guy would have hired a human at any wage rate if the human said “ I only flip the burgers I refuse to place them on the grill or add toppings or mop the floor or wipe the counters or take out the trash or work the till or anything else. Flip burgers only. Also, go get a loan so you can pay me 3 or 4 years worth of wages up front.”

I doubt it. A fun experiment but probably the exception rather than the norm.

   

The average life expectancy of a piece of restaurant equipment being five years that $60k investment with, say, another $60k in maintenance over 60 months being about right then the owner will have spent $120k over 60 months against spending $191k on a minimum wage employee over the same period.

Note that the $191k figure includes wages, payroll taxes, disability insurance, liability insurance, and miscellaneous costs.

That's a savings of at least $71k over five years.

That savings will get better as the per-unit cost of the robots goes down.

   

Ok but someone still has to take out the garbage and mop the floors and set up the robot so it’s not really replacing a worker he still has to hire someone.

   

No they don't. Just let the shit pile up, install an 800 number and people will be convince that's great service.
can even print waivers on the underside of the wrap so they can't sue for salmonella.

   

Yeah true. He could come up with creative solutions like customers get a stamp every time they scrub a urinal or unclog a toilet, 10 stamps gets you 10% off a happy meal

   

I don't see a problem. We've automated or mechanized our way out of plenty of menial tasks. People don't have to dig ditches any more. Cars get assembled mainly by robots. Most everything gets assembled by robots.

And guess what? The number of people still goes up, quality of life still goes up, average wages still go up.

   

For that latter class of jobs the California employer can now hire illegal aliens and pay them sub-minimum wages and not only not have to worry about state or local authorities bothering him over it he'll be seen as a 'hero' to the open borders crowd.