Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com) 954
An anonymous reader writes: The CEO of Carl's Jr., Andy Puzder, has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant, Eatsa, as he looks for ways to deal with rising minimum wages. "With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," he says. "You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants." Puzder doesn't believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage. "Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job? If you're making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive -- this is not rocket science," says Puzder. What comes as a challenge is automating employee tasks. This is where he draws the line and doesn't think that it's likely any machine could perform such work. But for more rote tasks like grilling a burger or taking an order, technology may be even more precise than human employees. "They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case," says Puzder in regard to replacing employees with machines.
Jokes On Him... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope those machines buy his crappy food...
Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:2, Insightful)
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs. It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
That shouldn't be amazing. No matter what happens in other businesses, or society as a whole, Puzder is still making the optimal choice for himself.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That shouldn't be amazing. No matter what happens in other businesses, or society as a whole, Puzder is still making the optimal choice for himself.
For this moment, maybe.
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees, we need a plan of what to do with the number one enemy of the corporate state, the human taker.
Do we line 'em up and shoot them?
Do we pay higher taxes to support them?
Then who on earth do we sell our stuff to?
Taxes are almost as unacceptable as employees, so I guess we start lining people up. Investor tip! Fertilizers will be a growth industry. There is an old adage about people eating their seed corn.
Modern corp
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
So now that the optimum situation is to have no employees
It's the optimum for the business that Puzder is responsible for. Your questions are good questions, but they are questions for society as a whole, not questions for Mr. Puzder to answer. If society allows people to run businesses with no employees, and it makes sense from a business perspective to do so, you can't blame individual business owners for making that choice.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:4, Insightful)
You have failed to understand the entire argument as presented. Running a business with no employees inevitably results in a business with no customers (because people without incomes won't be customers)
No, it is you that have failed to understand my argument. The guy can run a business just fine serving food to people who work at other businesses. Now, you'll probably start yelling that "but, but, but, if every other business did the same thing, then there would be no customers left", to which I will respond that Mr Puzder has no responsibility for those other businesses, and his choices don't affect them. We can be sure that somebody will move to robots, and they'll gain a competitive advantage, either driving Mr Puzder to quit or to do the same thing.
Re: (Score:3)
You are talking in absolutes: black and white. The real world is shades of gray. What about a business with FEWER employees? Guess what? This happens!
Imagine making a car these days without ANY robots. Or, can you imagine making a cell phone with using just hand-soldering? Me neither.
It is all about making things more affordable. When is the last time that you p
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate. How many file clerks do you know? Know anybody picking corn, wheat, or soybeans by hand? Yet unemployment is around 5%.
The people slinging burgers will find new work. They'll have to. New employment opportunities will open up; they always have.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Informative)
That's only partially true. During the times of the Luddites, it took 3 generations (70 odd years) for employment to increase to close to full, after a significant proportion of the population was shipped of to the new world.
Around the turn of the 20th century a move was made to reduce the number of people in the workforce due to automation. Woman were turned into homemakers and children were taken out of the workforce, as well as limits being put on the hours worked by everyone else.
The trend of taking children out of the workforce continues with the length of time that people stay in school continuing to increase. My parents get by fine with about a 8th grade education. My brother graduated out of grade 10 to go to technical school and become a well paid glazier. Now kids are expected to spend at least 4 years in collage/university.
Things were also pretty horrible for the poor in 18th century England and only the large amount of land available in the New World etc made things bearable in the colonies and the new nation of the USA.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:4, Informative)
This entire thread is based on a false idea that if people are thrown out of minimum wage jobs that they'll be unemployed forever.
This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Once a technological innovation disrupts employment - the loom, the cotton gin, the computer, the combine planter/harvester, the robot - those who were displaced from employment find new jobs in higher paying sectors, at least in the aggregate...
Real history shows that it is THIS claim that is absolutely false. The people displaced in the original Industrial Revolution did not ever find new employment, in high paying jobs or elsewhere. They became destitute. Eventually the productivity increase of the IR created a wealthy enough society that decent employment was restored for the full population, but it took 70 years to do this. Most of the people whose livelihoods that were destroyed in 1770 did not ever get decent jobs again. Their children did not. Their grandchildren did not. Their great-grandchildren did however, around 1840.
The beggars, squalid poverty, workhouses, debtors prisons of Dickens time were all very real.
Interestingly, that little clause you stuck in there "at least in the aggregate" indicates you realize to some degree the falseness of your claim. It is exactly the problem that people exist as people, not as aggregates, that makes the average increase in wealth from automation completely useless to the people put out of work.
If robotics puts people out of work in large numbers today, we need a solution that helps the people put out of work as soon as it happens - not in 2086 after they are long dead.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Interesting)
> This has been proven countless times since the 1700's to be absolutely false.
Yes because new jobs come along all the time that people gradually shift to that are too complex to be automated. People stopped making cloth by hand when looms and later power looms came in, people stopped farming when tractors became a thing, assembly line workers were somewhat phased out when specialized robots came to the line, etc. The difference this time is we are finally on the cusp of general machine learning.
In the not too distant future robots and computers are going to be in a position to replace not only easily-repeatable low skill labor, but almost ANY job not requiring super specialized knowledge or skills. Those in high paying "intellectual" jobs are also going to be on the receiving end of a pink slip. It's already starting to happen. Lawyer firms used to employ armies of articlers and clerks to do discovery and research on case law, and are already being replaced by automated systems that do the same work in less time. RBS just the other day cut 400+ investment adviser positions to be replaced with their digital robo-adviser system that recently rolled out.
When a machine can learn to do anything you can do, and do it consistently without error, even if it only works at 1//4 your speed you're gone. The machine won't take coffee breaks, surf /. or get sick while it works at its task 24/7/365. And it will get faster over time as the hardware and software inevitably improves.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
And no other jobs come to fill their places?
By your logic, we'd be at 75% unemployment (figure pulled out of my ass, admittedly, but just making a point here...) right now with all the technological advances since the 1970s. What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate? Are all those file clerks and bookkeepers still out of work or did they find something else to do?
People made the same arguments you're making for every technological leap forward. The net result has always been people thrown out of low wage, miserable jobs have found higher wage, less miserable jobs, given enough time.
It's called Structural Unemployment. It is a problem for workers who are too old to retrain - think people in their upper 50's trying to sprint to retirement - but for the vast majority of the workforce, it's a net benefit in the long run at the cost of a little short term pain.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Informative)
What do you think happened to our economy to achieve our current 5% unemployment rate?
What happened is that the powers-that-be pulled a fast one on you and you're too foolish to see it. You've been hand fed a statistic that is false on its face but you didn't care to look into the truth...
Check out the population-employment ratio numbers and they speak a much different story. You see, the unemployment rate that is mainly touted is the U3 rate. The U3 rate is made up of people with no job who've actively tried to find one in the last month. Today we have a good number of discouraged workers* and a vast number of people who have no intentions of ever being employed again. And these numbers are likely to continue to grow. And this doesn't even take into account the underemployed either.
That 5% number you're kicking around means nothing in the real world but keeps the sheep voting under the illusion of what is good/bad in the economy.
*Discouraged workers are people who want to be employed and have looked for work in the last year but have stopped looking due to poor prospects.
Re: Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe they'll just shoot you and take your wallet. Desparate people are dangerous and social security nets keep the crime rate low.
Re: (Score:3)
You're wrong; we'd be at -27,000% employment. What defect of thinking would lead you to believe we've only eliminated 3/4 of the jobs that ever existed since the 70s? We eliminated half of them, and then created new jobs; and we then eliminated half of those and created new ones; and eliminated half of those. Over a decade, we eliminate more jobs than the entire workforce population.
People don't find higher-wage employment by magic; we create new lower-wage jobs to replace lost jobs first. We can onl
Re: (Score:3)
Malthus will always be wrong, because he neglected many important factors.
He might someday 'be right', but only in the 'broken clock' way.
The issue with Malthus is that like so many people have done for just about ever, he didn't take into consideration the fact that technology moves on.
As a cleric living at the beginning of the industrial revolution, he did not correctly predict just how much that revolution would allow more people to be supported.
Then the so called green revolution came along. Another technology improvement that allows more people to be fed for less.
Want to know another failure? People who seem to think that we are ru
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem with this idea that the unemployed will find work is that the number of people required to design/operate/maintain technology is much smaller than the number of people required to do the work the technology replaces.
We've gone from 95% of people doing agricultural work to less than 5%. Yet people found new jobs: almost everyone did. Same thing with manufacturing. But somehow not with burger flipping jobs? Those are magic? Seems unlikely.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
We didn't have cell phones in the 1700s.
There's population versus technology [divergingmarkets.com], there's people spending less on food and clothes while buying bigger houses [theatlantic.com], the increase in non-necessity expenditures [theatlantic.com] as a percentage of income, and all kinds of other data showing we actually do increase the number of people in the economy.
You're right, though: The number of people needed to do a job doesn't increase. That's the point: technology *decreases* the number of people required to do a job, freeing their labor time up for other tasks. That's why we've moved people out of agriculture and manufacture and into construction, medicine, retail, and business services [theatlantic.com]. Somebody has to sell those products from China; somebody has to handle the logistics, the distribution, the shipping; somebody has to drive the trucks; somebody has to run the involved IT systems.
Even after we've reduced the share of labor per product in *all* of these types of jobs, we create more jobs by buying more products. You buy 3 times as much shit, you need 3 times as much logistics. Maybe it takes 1/5 as much labor to provide those logistics, so you have 60% as many people doing that; the other 40% are running Spotify and Netflix.
We don't create higher-class jobs; we reduce costs and improve the standard-of-living of the lowest income earners. We may create more or fewer poor people; those poor people will be objectively wealthier than last generation's poor people, but they're still poor because literally everyone else has more than they do. Some of the replacement jobs are higher-income-class, some are lower-income-class, and we wind up with more things produced per wage-labor hour, more stuff per-capita, and more luxuries in the hands of everyone as their basic needs become cheaper.
Re: (Score:3)
This allows further specialization, and thus more things to buy.
There is a "common sense" screed about too many things to buy, conspicuous consumption, and consumption of non-necessities just for the purpose of consumption. Yet this is what progress enables us to do, when basic needs are satisfied, for very cheap.
The cheaper it is to make things, the more things a minimum wage can buy. This is the direction of the future, same as the past 150 years. Not just cheaper necessities, but more varied things t
Re: Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:4, Insightful)
As well as making labor more productive, you get the double whammy of lower prices. As long as regulators stay out of it, that is.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why basic income is inevitable. Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work. There will be no personal income to tax if people don't have jobs. The only thing left to tax will be the corporations.
And the corporations, while they might not paying taxes to give people a basic income will need to. For without the people getting that basic income there are no consumers to consume what the corporations are producing and so they will go out of business.
The corporations will leave and go somewhere else, like China and India you say? Of course they will and they will just do to China and India what they did wherever they moved from, putting everyone out of work and forcing the government to make them pay for a basic income.
What of the country that all the corporations left that now has an unemployed work force but no corporations to pay for their basic income? Probably there will be a new tax to "sellers" of goods and services, so the corporations will pay the tax to keep people in a basic income one way or another. But more likely, a new economy will rise up.
So yeah, keep up the good work you corporate bastards. Looking forward to sitting on my ass while you support me. Well, in fact, I won't be sitting on my ass, but I will be spending my days doing something *I* want to do instead of wasting away 1/3 of my life in your factories.
And unless you continue to support me in that endeavour, you will be unemployed (out of business) too.
Greed is awesome.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Paid for by the corporations through taxes because they put all of the people out of work."
Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer.
A CEO I worked for once said "People are idiots, they think they can raise minimum wadge or add taxes to a company to pay for some social benefit. Corporations pass the added expense on to the customer. Thus they never realize they are the ones paying the taxes not the company.
A corporations job is to make money, that means that we take what ever expenses we have including taxes, add them up, attach a profit margin to it, and sell it. Otherwise we would not be making money."
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Informative)
"Corporations simple pass any added taxes and costs on to the customer. Thus if you add taxes to a corporation they simple raise the price and pass that added expense on to the customer."
No, they don't. Or, at least, they don't do it *automatically*. That's what competition is about.
Currently we all see how high officials' overall wages and shares' profits are increasing well over average/median salaries. This means that given strong competition they can absorb increased costs by reducing their profit margins and still stay in business (of course, this doesn't mean they would accept it out of their free will, but that they'll do if there's no other way).
"A corporations job is to make money, that means that we take what ever expenses we have including taxes, add them up, attach a profit margin to it, and sell it."
Exactly this. Which in turn means that, as long as the profit margin is higher than "the fair profit for money" (in Adam Smith's words), they can possibly reduce their margin and still stay in business (because it's still better to accept the reduced profits than putting their money anywhere else with even lower margins). As an extreme example, you can see how as of now "the money" is accepting even negative returns on long term bonds from healthy economies.
That's called Detroit, offshoring, capital flight (Score:3, Insightful)
This has ahll been tried, repeatedly. You say "they can possibly", let's look at what people ACTUALLY DO.
> as the profit margin is higher than "the fair profit for money" (in Adam Smith's words), they can possibly reduce their margin and still stay in business
They "possibly could", I suppose. Here's what is in fact happening. Each paycheck, I have a certain amount set aside for retirement, and to buy a house again, because I'm trying to be a responsible adult. That money that is set aside is of course "
Re: (Score:3)
I can't wait for the throngs of homeless in your scenario!
But fuck 'em right? Lazy bums.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:That's called Detroit, offshoring, capital flig (Score:4, Interesting)
"Why must I give up my property at gunpoint to someone claiming to act for those who refuse to work?"
If I take your sentence at face value, no, you don't forcibly have to give up your property at gunpoint, you just need to if you want to stay alive after the encounter.
But I suppose you are not talking about any real gang of armed robbers but that you are allegorically talking about taxes and the government power to collect them.
On one hand, what in hell makes you think that even a minimally significant part of your taxes are collected "for those who refuse to work"? Not facts, for sure.
On the other hand, about the wider issue about taxes, no, you are not giving up your property *at all*. Government only collect taxes in the form of money. Now, take a bill from your wallet and look carefully at it: you see? it is *not* your property; it is just a government issued certificate for all debts, public or private so whatever portion the government reclaims of it, it's still nothing of yours but something you shouldn't have in your control to start with. You can barter your cows for grain instead, if so you like.
And, of course, in the wider issue of social contract, what are you really claiming to be "yours"? You are able to make a living because of a society you didn't built up, going to work over roads you didn't built up, with a level of security you didn't built up, trading things over both national and international channels you didn't built up, tradings that are secured because of a legal system you didn't built up, using a legal tender whose confidence you didn't built up... need I to follow? And still you whine about "giving up your property at gunpoint"? What property at all would you own without all that coverage you didn't built up and that you wouldn't possibly build up even if you lived one thousand lives exclusively devoted to that task?
It is of course legit to ask for always greater levels of scrutiny and efficiency about our taxes, but taxes themselves? I won't tell here what I think of that kind of people... Anyway, there must be some place, somewhere, where you can be left alone. Just don't bother calling 911 to the rescue if you ever happen to break a leg, you never payed for it, you know.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Basic income is NOT inevitable. (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider this alternative future:
1) Wealth and control of resources concentrates in the hands of a few.
2) These people stop considering the rest of humanity "humans", or just believe that what is theirs is theirs and no one else has a right to anything. They also don't need labor very much at all because it is automated. So people who have only their labor to offer are frozen out economically.
3) The owners use automated weaponry to enforce their rights of ownership
4) The power of the few snowballs and they eventually own the entire planet and all means of production, and the rest live in misery on whatever pittiance is allowed them or is outright exterminated via automated weaponry.
To see this in its infancy, look at Detroit. People there can't sell their labor, don't have means to leave, and have resorted to subsistence farming. However, if a "landowner" comes along with the means of ejecting the "squatters", they won't even be able to subsistence farm.
Societies that *do* what you say is inevitable (basic income) will avoid this. Societies which allow ever increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of a few might not. The USA's trend on this is pretty scary, witness the almost complete capture of the political system by money.
-PM
Re:Basic income is NOT inevitable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite the opposite: Detroit is such a basket case precisely because most of its residents already receive a "basic income" from the government.
Yes, that is the future we face if we give government the power to hand out a "basic income", to control private weapons ownership, to restrict entry into markets and businesses, etc. And people like you are working hard to make it happen.
Re: (Score:3)
No, I'm going with the "government has destroyed most of the jobs in Detroit, destroyed property values, taxed people into poverty, raised the prices for basic necessities, destroyed families, destroyed job skills, thrown fathers into jails, shot teenagers, and failed to educate their kids". That's all the while politicians, public employees,
Detroit (Score:3)
Hey, remind me: Which political party has ruled Detroit as a essentially a one party state the last 50 years [battleswarmblog.com]?
Oh yeah, that one.
The one pushing the minimum wage hike.
The one pushing for higher welfare payments and eliminating work requirements.
If the policies of the Democratic Party worked, Detroit should already be one of the best places to live in America.
How did that work out?
Re:Basic income is NOT inevitable. (Score:4, Interesting)
As for breeding? Well, right now many advanced countries are facing massive shortfalls of population growth. The only difference is how bad it is. The US birth rate has been at or below replacement level since 1971, and the population has only grown largely via immigration. Provide contraceptives and such, and population control will be the least of your problems.
Re:Beat 'em or join 'em (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your premise is that a social safety net must exist.
I'm always amazed by the consumer who thinks that he can demand production and enjoy the benefits of other people's capital.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm always amazed that people think their "capital" has any sort of meaning unless the mass of society can benefit from it. Guess what, the only thing preventing the masses from stringing you up and taking your capital is the basic social contract that allows you to get rich as long as standards for the masses don't fall too far. You violate that social contract no amount of funny money or gold bars or factories is going to save your head from getting blown off as the police officers and military you depend on to live find it expedient to slay you.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're talking as if this is all theoretical. But you do well to remember a few things:
1) Masses don't string up producers, they string up the wealthy. In a typical society the people getting rich are not the producers but middle men. Suzie can still flip burgers just as well as she used to, and best of all she and the other employees no longer need to share their wealth with a fat CEO.
2) Farmers are not the ones getting strung up, they will be lining up with strings in their hands right along side the rest of the lower class.
3) Society doesn't break down when the top are axed.
4) This isn't theoretical. This has happened many times in many governments in history. Google Peasant's Revolt for an example. Society will live on because the people who society are built upon ARE the middle-lower class.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Insightful)
And after the masses string up the producers for their wealth.
Nobody's talking about stringing up the producers for their wealth. They're talking about stringing up the parasites for their wealth. Let's face it, nobody is productive enough to become wealthy from their own productivity - even the best brain surgeons and rocket scientists are barely rich. Those that have become truly wealthy have done so through business - by exploiting the labor of others - or by exploiting markets - simply taking the wealth of others. These people don't make a net positive contribution to society, and yet they're the ones that amass all the wealth. It's the producers that are losing wealth, as the middle class is eroded, and wealth stratification continues to worsen.
If you disagree, can you explain to me how stringing up, say, the Walton family would meaningfully impact society? Would we be lost in a world incapable of conducting retail sales operations without the Waltons? Would the lack of their high-volume low-margin retail empire really result in a world where nobody produces anything, farmers stop farming, cats and dogs start living together? By what mechanism?
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty sure in the bronze age a horde of barbarians would kill him and take his "capital", possibly also raping him and his family. Beginning mostly with feudalism a group of very low wage earners protects him militarily while a group of other low wage earners and machinery designed by other low wage earners takes his capital and gives it back to him with interest. Those people, while unquestionably delivering more to his (and each others) bottom line than he is compensating them for, refrain from barbaric behavior because their pathetic wages are still better than raping and pillaging. In the modern age there has been a push to realize that simply possessing money is probably not a contribution to society and such people are effectively the same useless parasites their poor non-job seeking equivalents are, unless they are also capable of using that money effectively. Due to the need to maintain the semblance of a meritocracy and stability in society, we do not simply take their money away and redistribute it, this might undermine the productivity of capable and motivated low wage earners ambitions. Regardless, devoid of income and hope the low wage earners that do produce a better world are likely to return to the bronze age or earlier when it becomes the lesser of evils. The latest fashion out of paris suggests a return to togas and horned helmets.
Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's impossible to have a society where a large fraction of people can't find work that pays a living wage. Those people will vote (or act in other ways) to overturn the system that is making their lives impossible.
With real wages having gone nowhere for decades, we're arguably well into that scenario now. How much longer do you think we've got ?
When the wealthy have a police state with killbots on their side, what chance do you think the people have ?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If Puzder is going to fire Suzie rather than give her a $3 raise, then his taxes are going to go up to pay for her social safety net costs.
He has bought the politicians. So he thinks he is covered there on the tax issue. But the damn fool does not realize, his machines won't need food, would not buy entertainment, would not buy a home or pay for college. As more and more employers automate more and more functions and lay off more and more people, he will end up with lots of shiny new machines willing sell food at great profit.... if only there are people with money to buy them.
It is really very short sighted of a food industry CEO to go this
Re: Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. (Score:3)
I read somewhere that only 2% of jobs pay a minimum wage. You are hurting those who are above that level by making them now minimum wage and increasing the share
Re: (Score:3)
You can babble on about living wages, greed, and similar crap, but that rhetoric doesn't get Suzie that job or feed her. $0 per hour is much further from a living wage than whatever Suzie was making before.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
Wh
Re: (Score:3)
Despite what Fox News says, the vast majority of the poor are working poor, and most of them grab every job they can to make ends meet. Many of the ones Fox News points at are poor people with illnesses and mental illness, who are hard put to hold a job. The viewpoint you wink at is a wildly inaccurate stereotype.
NEWS FLASH: People have never stopped being responsible for their own fate.
Re: (Score:3)
Just looking at some numbers for viability...
Wikipedia says the average US household income is $50,756 at an average size of 2.54 people, and about 20% are under 21yo. I suspect capital gains are not included in that, and would make the picture far rosier.
So 1*share*0.8 + 0.5*share*0.2 = $50,756/2.54
-> share = $22,202
So, if 100% of all income were spread equally among the population (with children counting for 50%), every adult would get $22,202/year, or $1,850/month. Your $500/month would amount to 27
Re:Jokes On Him... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Hope those machines buy his crappy food...
They can save even more if they automate the CEO position.
Sorry Andy, you've been replaced by C3PO.
Yes, yes, give it a year or two... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember how they told us that there would be no IT jobs left in the US because everything can be done so much cheaper in India?
Now it's that there will be no burger flipping jobs left because machines can do it cheaper. Let's wait and see how these burgers taste and whether I don't like them over there at [other burger joint] better even if they cost 30 cents more but taste like a burger and not like the bag it came in.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
When dealing with standardized patties, how can you tell if a human or a machine "flipped" it? Can you really taste the spit the human added to it and, more importantly, do you really like that taste and is that taste consistent across chefs?
This is Carls Jr -- like their competitors, humans don't hand grind the meat and hand form the patties carefully compressing them "just right" -- places that do that charge a whole lot more than an extra 30 cents.
Machines likely will likely result in a more uniform and,
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
My biggest problem is the opposite... People using the self checkouts who have no business interacting with a machine. I was at Wal-Mart yesterday and there were only 2 lines open with human cashiers. There were 3 self checkout lanes open (one was out of service). One woman had a huge cart full of items and was slowly looking up items of produce, weighing them, carefully bagging them, and then repeating. She didn't even make it through 4 items in the time it took me to scan my 8 or so and get out of there.
Re: (Score:3)
The machine reaches the onions step and the onions gate opens and the plunger presses down through the dispensing tube, dropping 1/2 tsp of chopped onion onto the patty, the gate closes the piston retracts and the feed hopper opens allowing onion bits to gravity feed into the dispenser tube filling it with 1/2 tsp of chopped onion, then process then repeats. At the pickle state the pickles gate remains closed.
Results
Extra onions, no pickles.
No spi
Re:Yes, yes, give it a year or two... (Score:5, Insightful)
"And I'd like that with extra onions but no pickles".
Good luck.
Just wait, it won't be long until their facial recognition software sees you enter the parking lot and their robots will have your preferred extra onions with no pickles waiting for you as you reach the counter.
Re: (Score:3)
Enough of a reason for me to avoid that restaurant in the future.
Re: Yes, yes, give it a year or two... (Score:5, Funny)
Getting sick every time, while most people are fine, kind of localized the problem to you.
Try washing your hands with soap before eating. Obtain good from the counter - not the trash. Don't drink a bottle of Jack with your burger. Eat your food while it's hot, as opposed to keeping a burger in your pocket for a few days before you eat it. Don't lick tables and windows.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
You keep saying that word... (Score:3)
With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs
That's what he wants to make this about, but in reality his actual reasons for using robotics are
They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case
Which has nothing to do with the cost of the labor and everything to do with the repeatability and efficiency of the employee. I'm betting that, for the right money, you could get an employee to fit almost every one of those. But on the whole, it's not that employees are getting more expensive, in real dollars, but rather than AI and robotics which can do these jobs better than people - per his own words - is getting cheaper than the cost of an employee. It's not if people get replaced but when. The only thing that changes is the exact spot in time where the curves cross.
This happened in the industrial revolution when mechanical devices took over automatable tasks. It's just that it's coming for a different class of worker this time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:You keep saying that word... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's arguing against raising the minimum wage because it's pricing human employees out of the market. Okay, so what's the plan in 5 years when the machines cost half as much? Or 5 years after that, when the machines cost half as much again? Are we going to lower the minimum wage to one dollar an hour?
More than that, if minimum wage employees get pay cuts and job losses like he is threatening... who does he think will have the money to buy his robot-made burgers? Cutting the minimum wage means you spend less on payroll, but your customers are somebody else's employees and they got a pay cut too.
Re:You keep saying that word... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not arguing anything. He's making a threat - which means he doesn't have a plan, because if machines were cheaper he wouldn't need a jab at minimum wage. He wouldn't need anything - he'd just do it.
Re: (Score:3)
"which means he doesn't have a plan"
Oh, he has a plan - he just can't quite afford it right now. Automation costs money, but it costs less and less every year. He's hoping to put off moving to automation until it's even cheaper, and to do that he needs lower wages. It is about money, but it's not about any long term human job prospects.
Re: (Score:3)
We give everyone... It isn't like they're taking anything away from anyone else.
Oh really? I'd love to hear how you think it works then.
If they're receiving "free" money or services from the government, then they most certainly ARE taking money from those that are actually working hard and paying into the system. And you can't just solve this by taxing corporations, because ultimately, you're still taxing people, whether its employees that either aren't hired or are paid less, or fewer dividends to investors, or simply increased prices by customers due to higher overhead, it's ultima
inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
You have the traditionalists, who just don't want anything to change. You have the sour grape connoisseurs, who believe positive change is undesirable because they see it as unlikely. Then there's the worst of them, the people who believe experiencing unpleasantness like working is intrinsically valuable. It's happening. The list of things humans can do that robots and computers cannot do is shrinking... and that list never grows longer. It's time to look to a future free of involuntary employment. It's time to make it [wikipedia.org] happen as soon as possible.
Re: (Score:3)
Without minimum wage, automation drives competes with low cost labor, but it also drives down prices. The net result is that people at the low end might see their incomes stagnate or even decline, but they are still better off in absolute terms. With minimu
Re: (Score:3)
In both cases, the motivation is the same: voters are saying "we don't like seeing people with low incomes / people driving less safe cars, so we're just going to legislate the problem away". But that simply transforms poor working people with cars who could gradually improve their situation into even poorer jobless people without cars who will never be able to get out of poverty.
It is staggering that there are people who look at the race to the bottom of the last few decades, producing stagnant wages, near
But will they sell. . . (Score:2)
Cut that shit out (Score:5, Insightful)
Puzder doesn't believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage.
Square brackets are used to modify the original statement only when it would provide contextual accuracy, not when you want to add bias to a statement. If you add bias this way, I instantly think you're a moron, regardless of your views.
Minimum wage doesn't really matter (Score:5, Interesting)
He is an idiot.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Those automated restaurants don't run for free without trouble. They need highly skilled ($40 to $50 an hour skilled) employees to maintain and repair them plus you need skilled workers to clean them and stock them. So he is simply moving labor to high skilled tier where it will end up costing him more because he will have to pay 1/4 the employees 5 times more. AND now he has maintenance costs that are significantly higher.
Stupid CEO is letting his hatred for poor people color his business decisions.
Re:He is an idiot.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:He is an idiot.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the typical fast food restaurant is full of machines that need cleaning.
But who's going to do this when the minimum wage goons are gone?
Are you really this stupid?
It will be two guys in a little white van that says "Carls Jr" on it that drive around and do these things, covering all the locations on the "west side" (maybe 8 or 10 of them)
There might be cameras and "manual steps" to take over a machine run out of Phillipines to fix minor glitches. That will be 8 people covering 120 stores corporate wide.
But in general, two moderately paid employees will drive around, clean, re-stock and troubleshoot machines. A regional tech group will be on call for big problems. There will be a dozen people per shift taking the place of three hundred droolers.
They could pay those dozen people 100k per year and still come out ahead.
Re: (Score:3)
Even a full t
Alternative headline: (Score:2)
Minimum wage increase fuels automation technology, relieves humans from drudgery. Everyone benefits from the increased efficiency, unemployment remains low, miserable fast food workers end up in slightly less miserable job just like the factory workers before them.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly right. Automation increases the marginal productivity of labor, and therefore the value of labor.
Re: (Score:3)
miserable fast food workers end up in slightly less miserable job just like the factory workers before them.
Assuming that the slightly less miserable jobs are available in sufficient numbers, and that the workers are qualified and motivated.
Life in the U.S. is rapidly degrading. (Score:4, Informative)
It's good that low-level jobs are taken by machines. It's bad if the hi-level jobs of designing, manufacturing, and maintaining those machines are all taken by Chinese.
In Hong Kong, a long time ago, I met a man who was having golf clubs made in China. He said he taught a Chinese man to design the factory. He found later that the Chinese man's brother was building an identical factory to make golf clubs that would compete with his business.
This is an excellent book that tells one part of the story of degradation: Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game [amazon.com]. There are many other, related issues.
Some Questions... (Score:3)
Assuming for the sake of argument that we ALL have a stake in, and ALL have contributed to, the progress that our civilization has enjoyed - why is society becoming so extremely polarized at the very rich and very poor ends of the economic spectrum? In other words, why is the middle class disappearing?
Don't get me wrong - I understand that hard work, intelligence, and creativity, (along with a HUGE amount of sheer luck that is usually unnoticed, much less acknowledged), engender differential material gain and economic stratification, to some extent. We will always have inequality - it seems to be the law of the universe. But I don't believe that we must have the extreme inequality that has taken hold over the last three decades or so. Victor Yakovenko has some interesting things to say about the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
We use artificial mechanisms to protect ourselves from extreme weather, disease, natural disasters, etc. Now, how can we all pull together to protect ourselves from extreme economic conditions? For this kind of polarization is unstable - like a lightning storm, major discharges will occur. Many of these 'discharges' will be very destructive - global war, famine, climate change, bloody revolution... Andy Puzder sounds both self-righteous and somewhat panicked at the prospect of having to defend his masters' hoard against those who insist on a decent living wage for Carl's Jr. employees - he really sounds like he's talking about war tactics and strategies. Why can't we arrange it that 'more than enough' is considered the end of this fight for wealth concentration? How can we tame the collective gluttony which both feeds on the misery of our fellow man and steals a staggering amount of opportunity from our children's children's children?
I ask these questions and make these observations in the context of TFA and TFS because with all of the automation and efficiencies of production our civilization has gained over the past several decades, we ALL should be working fewer hours while having both a better standard of living and a better quality of life.
Apologies for seeming a bit rambling and unfocused. This is a very complex, very broad issue, and it's hard to formulate thoughts and questions at all, much less do it in the space of a Slashdot comment.
Wanted (Score:3)
Labor costs (Score:5, Interesting)
Start a franchise, pretty much any big name brand restaurant. Your contract has set costs, your contract for the building set in stone, your overhead minus labor, non-negotiable... that leaves labor.
So you want more money in your pocket, the only place to grab it is from your workers somehow. I knew a woman that was an "assistant manager" at a Culver's. They cut the health care coverage to the bare bones & made the employees (managers & assistant managers) pay 100% for it. The owners (they had 3 Culver's) saved 10K. Just enough take their families to Hawaii for 2 weeks over Christmas.
They treat their employees like machines (Score:3)
With fast-food chains going after anything human with their human employees, it is no wonder they found that machines are more effective.
When the person taking orders has to follow a precise script and take order within a certain time, that the kitchen is all about timers and calibrated doses, what's the advantage of having humans in the first place?
In a real restaurant, you can ask for advise, make special demands (within limits), the chef can compose with unusual ingredients. Commercially, they know the little attentions that can make you a returning customer. This is what humans are for. And this is part of the reason people are ready to pay more in a good restaurant, because you have real, competent humans rather than robots in human bodies.
He left out... (Score:3)
Unfortunately people's buying behaviour is not in general altruistic, it's based upon self interest.
Humans Need Not Apply (Score:4, Interesting)
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU [youtu.be]
Start where you can save the most (Score:3, Insightful)
Wages don't matter (Score:3)
"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case"
He complains about wages, and then lists the reasons he'll automate no matter what the minimum wage is, no matter what the regulations are. Sounds about right.
Self service, etc. (Score:3)
I refuse to use self-service lines. Why the fuck am I going to work as a cashier and not get paid for it, and not even get a discount on the items? No, I want a human who is trying to make a living to ring up my items for me. If you try to "force" people to use self-checkout by having only one register + 6 self-checkout lanes open I'll leave the cart full of groceries and walk out and buy from your competitor instead.
If you're going to have robots running the fast food joint, I'll give it a miss and go to the salad bar at Whole Foods instead and I'll be better off with that healthier food choice anyhow. :)
Economics 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a simple problem really.
You work at Mcburgerbelldees and you want 15 dollars/hour cause minimum wage just isn't cutting it.
You're right, but the thing is, you should be working towards a better job, flipping burgers or dropping fries in hot oil isn't and shouldn't be a career goal, nor does it merit 15 dollars/hour.
Minimum wage jobs are there for supplemental income and those who are just starting work for the first time.
I understand, shit's expensive, I've been there and done that. Used to work in convenience for 6 years before I started work with a Fortune 500 company making great money for the area I live in, 7 years later and I've moved into the office as part of the management staff. It's not a hard concept to grasp, but if you're not willing to work hard, towards a goal that doesn't involve doing as little work as possible, you'll never get anywhere.
As an aside, if you go into any Wawa or Royal Farms in this area, they have already done away with the waiters, they have been replaced by an automated kiosk. And guess what, they're always to work on time, always do their job and never get the order wrong unless you entered it that way.
So what makes more sense to you? Paying a snotty over-privileged 20 something 15/hour, or buying a 500~ dollar kiosk that never complains? The decision seems cut and dry to me.
Is it obvious yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies hate their employees. Labor costs are a barrier to higher profits. Employees are treated as liabilities.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah about that... Applebees has new touchscreen things that they put at our table. You can order from it, pay your bill from it, and request server assistance. Except the server assistance request never worked. Worst service I've ever gotten... If the digital screen is doing 80% of the serving, is it acceptable to reduce the tip by 80%?
The digital screens also show you ads for their stupid games during your meal as well. Luckily the screen is portable so you can just turn it around. What marketing idiot de
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The big point being missed is "Who are you planning on selling your cheap to produce burgers to ?"
I'm confident you can replace my job with machines, most jobs with machines and I don't think CEO's will be last against the wall either. Problem being if you do that, well the machines won't be buying your shit food will they ?
Economic illiteracy by the parent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you've got that backwards, fighting against minimum wage laws illistrates economic and historical ignorance at the highest level.
Historically they were associated in a huge increase in the middle class. What you're arguing for is the creation and maintenance of an underclass to keep the wealth centralised in the current upper classes.
But you said it best
Your superstitions need to die out, sadly this is taking a long time.
Your assumptions are based on conditions that dont exist in the real world because of a little economic principle called "externalities". Keynesian and Libertarian economists love to ignore externalities because they 1) Aren't immediately apparent on a balance sheet and 2) completely screw up their chosen economic dogma. OK, so lets allow businesses to decide what is the minimum wage, the first thing they're going to find out is that fewer people can afford to buy they're product. This alone will reduce the available workforce because unlike companies, workers can pick up and leave when they cant make a liveable wage. As a result, anyone with any skill, talent or worth will move to a place with wage laws so all that CEO Stingy-pants will be left with are the most uneducated employees, literally the people who cant get. a job anywhere else.
A good historical example was Henry Ford. Instead of paying the lowest wages possible, he paid the highest and what he saw was a huge uptick in sales because his own workers could now afford to buy his cars. It wasn't just Ford that benefited from this, his workers could now afford other luxuries like a refrigerator.
Re:Economic illiteracy by the parent. (Score:4, Insightful)
Evidence? Oh, right...
That's sort of like lumping together Catholics and atheists.
That is roughly the level of Villard de Honnecourt's "Many a time have skilful workmen tried to contrive a wheel that should turn of itself; here is a way to make such a one, by means of an uneven number of mallets, or by quicksilver (mercury). ...there will always be four on the downward side of the wheel and only three on the upward side; thus the mallet or bag will always fall over to the left as it reaches the top, ad infinitum."
Henry Ford voluntarily increased wages for his work force. He did so because he made the calculation that he could afford it and that it was good for his business. That's not a minimum wage law.
Re: economic illiteracy (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife's car was broken into several times when she lived in Antwerp for eight months, but never in years of living in Denver, Pittsburgh, Houston or Washington DC. Maybe Belgium hasn't worked out "social peace"?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah. Fiduciary responsibilities. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their SHAREHOLDERS. In the system we have set up, corporations are REQUIRED to act in the best interest of their shareholders. They are not required to employ a single person, and to the extent that they HAVE TO (sigh) employ people in order to conduct business, they are not required to act in the best interest of those employees or pay them any more than legally required, or