Consequences of high minimum wages: Automated ordering kiosks

[sana8410]

Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich supports raising the minimum wage — and he has every reason to.

Panera’s 1,800 nationwide locations are at the forefront of modernizing the way customers experience fast food restaurants. As soon as 2016, the bread and pasta joint will have replaced all of their cashiers with kiosks.

Shaich, who donated $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund, told USA Today that the move is part of an effort to “never have a customer wait,” but there is growing evidence that as pressure to raise wages builds, employers will turn to wage-free robots to avoid dramatic payroll hikes.

Fast food establishments in European countries with high minimum wages have already begun to replace some of their workforce with automated employers.

All of McDonald’s locations in France, for example, have installed kiosks to substitute and supplement human employees. The kiosks have allowed McDonald’s to avoid some of the high payroll costs of dealing with France’s minimum wage, which currently sits at $12.22 an hour in U.S. dollars. The European country is also suffering from an unemployment rate of over 10 percent.

Although the technology has not been widely adopted, equipment exists to replace almost all of the fast food workforce.

Momentum Machine’s meat-flipping robot, which can turn out 360 juicy burgers in an hour, could “allow a restaurant to spend approximately twice as much on high quality ingredients,” based on the labor costs, the company estimates.

Some companies abroad have already fully replaced human workers with robotic substitutes.

A well-recognized sushi-chain in Japan currently has robots making food while customers order on a touch screen. In lieu of human servers, a conveyer belt delivers their food and a computer tracks customer purchases and automates their bill payment at the end.

Despite the threat of the growing number of cheap and efficient technological opportunities available to restaurant chains, fast food workers, labor unions, and members of the political left have ramped up efforts to pressure lawmakers to raise the minimum wage in recently.

Over the past year, hundreds of protests to hike wages have been staged outside of fast food restaurants across the country, organized by the labor-back groups Fightfor15 and Fast Food Forward, among others.

On Thursday, labor groups plan to expand their campaign to raise the minimum wage to an international level, with protests demanding a $15 hourly wage scheduled to take place on six continents.

Although multiple states and local governments have passed wage hikes since the start of 2014, any initiatives to raise the federal minimum wage are not likely to make it passed Congress.

Currently, there is a Democratic-sponsored bill to push the national minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, but the legislation has already failed to make it through the Senate and stands little chance of getting approved in the Republican-controlled House.

How anyone is shocked by this is beyond me ?

[Ekaros]

It's not all bad, automation increases efficiency and thus purchasing power.

On other hand, there needs to be solution for people who can't find work any more.

[pedrog]

Humans Need Not Apply is a great small video about automation by CGP Grey.

[beetcoin]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

[BPMich]

It boggles my mind that some people don't see this coming. The only reason this technology wasn't being developped earlier was because it was more profitable to just employ people. If you push the minimum wage up, you're just accelerating automation. Ironically it leads to fever jobs, but the people who do have jobs will be paid higher  at the low end anyway. (This is in the short term, in the long term, automation may actually create more jobs, but the price of that is heavy)

I mean come on, if someone is not producing over say $7 of value per hour, and you're suddenly forced to pay them $15, that just doesn't seem like a very sustainable business model, does it now?

[CoinBoerse.com]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

[pedrog]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

[CoinBoerse.com]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

But who will buy their products if most people don't have money?

[Ekaros]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

But who will buy their products if most people don't have money?

There is certain scale that is still workable. It's way too complicated situation in general...

[Watoshi-Dimobuto]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

But who will buy their products if most people don't have money?

The governments will provide the needs of the people but the people will be dependent on the government the rest of their life. And the government has 100 percent control of the people.

[CoinBoerse.com]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

But who will buy their products if most people don't have money?

There is certain scale that is still workable. It's way too complicated situation in general...

Then as the time passby all jobs will be taken by the bots, the peoples money has been all spent. Next is chaos?

[ClownHunter]

It's not all bad, automation increases efficiency and thus purchasing power.

On other hand, there needs to be solution for people who can't find work any more.

This essentially will make it much harder to enter the work force for the first time. This will hurt our youngest generation who has not yet started working and future generations as well. Young people who do not have any skills will have a hard time getting necessary job skills as it would cost too much to hire them and the jobs they are qualified for are done by machines.

[Ekaros]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

But who will buy their products if most people don't have money?

There is certain scale that is still workable. It's way too complicated situation in general...

Then as the time passby all jobs will be taken by the bots, the peoples money has been all spent. Next is chaos?

I'm not sure if all jobs are ever taken, but basicly those who control sufficient primary resources or ways to recycle them will live very well. Rest will scrape by what they can find. Probably at that point they will be killed due to looming threat or just locked up somewhere...

[pedrog]

people are still resistant to automated services though. retailers have tried this for some time and it's not exactly perfect.

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Homeless.

But who will buy their products if most people don't have money?

The governments will provide the needs of the people but the people will be dependent on the government the rest of their life. And the government has 100 percent control of the people.

I was not serious with homeless thing...

Actually this is one solution, we may be going into some socialist utopia where the usual market forces don't apply and everything is managed at maximum efficiency by highly advanced algorithms and production and distribution made by robots and other automated machines, and we can do the things we like to do whatever it is...

[Chef Ramsay]

The "check out yourself" kiosks at Meijers grocery chains here make life easier for me but likely has unemployed many cashiers over time. They also have these things at the casinos' food court these days.

[Full Spectrum]

What should be noted is if/when advanced A.I. are developed that surpass humans intellect, that will be the day the Earth stands still(for people). Even if each AI costs $1,000,000 a piece, they would automatically kick even the most intelligent out of their jobs such as doctors, engineers, as you don't have to pay an AI as it has no need for food, water, shelter, just power.

[beetcoin]

okay, so if you're against welfare (which i understand), and you're also against a minimum wage.. how do you expect poor people to survive? and how do you expect the economy to continue rolling if the the middle class is hamstrung?

[Mike Christ]

okay, so if you're against welfare (which i understand), and you're also against a minimum wage.. how do you expect poor people to survive? and how do you expect the economy to continue rolling if the the middle class is hamstrung?

If an individual's labor at a company is only worth, say, 5$ per hour, and the business has to pay them $8.00 an hour by law, the business doesn't then hire the person anyway, they just don't get hired at all.  That means:

A. No chance for the person to gain the experience needed to make more than $5 an hour, and
B. An hourly wage of 0$, which is, by all standards, much worse than not making a "living wage"

That means the individual making 0$ an hour is not adding wealth to the economy.  Then the individual making 0$ an hour gets on welfare to survive.  Who pays for these people to live?  The middle class, which is indeed burdened by this extra weight they must carry.  This is not even mentioning the increased cost of hiring an American worker thanks to his governmental overlords, over a foreigner willing to work for a fraction of the cost, and even excluding the incredible cost of empire which directly makes the average American that much poorer.  I expect the economy to continue slowing to a halt; there is no "if", the middle class is hamstrung.

Let's say the minimum wage is raised to $10/hr, nationwide.  The direct effects are easily understood: the unemployment rate goes up, the amount of people on welfare increase, and the middle class is further burdened.  Let's say the minimum wage is raised to $20/hr, nationwide.  Same thing, just worse.  At some point, the middle class evaporates--no business can afford to function, nobody can afford paying the bottom rungs $20 an hour, and so the economy either flops, along with the nation, or there's a coup d'état.

But let's say the minimum wage was lowered to just $1/hr.  What would it matter?  Nobody really wants to work for that wage, or less, so there may as well be no minimum wage to stop it; people know what others are worth, and what they themselves are willing to work for, so there's no point for government to actually define a minimum wage, except to buy votes for democrats from welfare recipients (it's the perfect scheme, if you ask me; you not only satisfy the people with a "living wage", but you get more voters for your party: it's brilliant.)  Anyhow, once that's out of the way, and people are no longer prosecuted for wanting to work at their own determined price, the amount of people on welfare diminish, until welfare is no longer required, and the poor people survive immensely better than they did with government assistance.

[Snail2]

The robots capability is increasing by day. I wonder what would my sons do in the future if most jobs is filled with robots.

Your sons should learn robotics, so they can repair the machines vandalized by the unemployed neo-luddites, thus getting a good salary .

[Rigon]

"There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers," Obama said. "You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."