Want To Force A $15 Minimum Wage For Your McDonald Job? Be Prepared To Be Replaced By A Robot!
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by A.F. Branco at constitution.com
For the last few years we have seen minimum wage workers on the streets protesting and going on strike to have their wage increased by law.
"What do we want? 15! If we don't get it? Shut it down!" chanted the protesters at dawn, bathed in neon light from the restaurant and Times Square billboards.
This mindset is a bit of a problem.
You see, your wage is set by things like your personal skill-set and market demand for the position you occupy.
If you have skills that allow you to occupy a position which is in demand in the marketplace, you are going to get paid more. If you don't have such a skill-set and occupy a position that is not in demand, you're not going to get paid much at all.
So, what happens when you demand more money than your skill-set or position is worth?
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McDonald's shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday as Wall Street expects sales to increase from new digital ordering kiosks that will replace cashiers in 2,500 restaurants.
Cowen raised its rating on McDonald's shares to outperform from market perform because of the technology upgrades, which are slated for the fast-food chain's restaurants this year.
Automation and technology takes over obsolete jobs
Slavery was abolished in the US because the practice is immoral.
It doesn't matter that plantation owners complained that they wouldn't be able to get all of their cotton picked. They simply had to deal with the reality and use technology and automation (the cotton Gin) to fill in the gap.
It is my belief that in 50 years we will look at McDonald cashier positions the same way that we look at cotton picking plantations from 100 years ago: they were archaic remnants of an immoral society.
Hopefully, we can figure out the user-generated-token economy, like Steemit and the many other similar platforms that will be developed using blockchain technology, and nobody will have to be a wage-slave.
My vote is for humanity!
:D
a wake up call like this is needed for most jobs. Everyone has this sense of entitlement that they're owed something or they're worth a certain amount (wage) . You're worth what the market is willing to pay for your services... and if you're willing to settle for a skill-less job.. tic toc, tic toc, you're number will be up sooner than you think.
don't worry about new jobs - platforms like Steem will be a huge source of freelancer Jobs now & in the future.
With each year there are more & more creative ways for people to earn money without the need for a 9 - 17 job.
People should be rewarded constantly for every positive thing that they do :))
"Money" itself may become obsolete by 2020. ;)
Maybe sooner...
Well said. The problem is exactly what you said - an entitlement to "I deserve x amount of dollars and x amount of vacation time and freedom to create my own work schedule". However, these people fail to consider their consequences when reality is, employees are already very expensive. Right from the beginning a company loses money training an employee for given job. During and after training, the employer has to pay their share of the employees part of social security, they have to pay workmans comp, unemployment, as well as that hourly wage or salary. Remember, a person doesn't open a business so you live can live comfortably - they open it so they can live comfortably and you as the employee are there to assist in a (hopefully) smooth operation.
Now lets look at a kiosk. Lets say a kiosk costs $8-10,000 each. So that's a big upfront expense plus maintenance and subscription for repair etc. See where this is going? In a few months, the kiosk has already paid for itself and the employer isn't paying into workmans comp, unemployment, social security etc. The only concern is potential kiosk down time which will only cost a few hundred per month rather than a few thousand per month.
best of all, robot's don't check their txt messages & social media during work hours :)
Having given up fast food places years ago unless there is no other choice, I'd actually prefer they close... Food is unhealthy, horridly expensive for what you get, and the eco effect from the disposable table ware, transportation, and water usage is huge... Not the choices I make!
Well said but again value depends greatly on the living standards you know, for example I've been to Switzerland where average pay is 5000$ and then I get back to Balkan where average pay is 300$. Do you notice a difference? And yes things are a bit more expensive in Switzerland but again there having an iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S8 is like a most normal thing ever and here you have to be pretty rich to allow yourself to spend 800$ on a phone. The thing is that I earned 170$ on steemit for 2 weeks I've been here and tht is someones pay for a month of hard work here, but for example that kind of money is unimportant for someone in Switzerland.
This is a very good perspective.. different countries.. different cost of living. Although i think $15 dollars minimum wage is crazy.. i do beilive a small increase is due. Maybe $8 dollar minimum wage increase? In the state that i live the minimum is $7.25 .. 75 cents would be huge! Most people that i know living in the U.S know that cost of living has increased but pay has stayed around the same! My economics teacher once told my class that it was possible to work a sumer job and be able to afford college wihtout having loans or borrowing money ( when she was in college) . Unlike many other students i know im lucky to have a decent paying job.
Yes exactly, every country has different living standarts !
The other day while I was getting gas for my car, I pondered this minimum wage thing. I didn't think about it too long, because the car hops had finished filling my tank, checking my oil, cleaning my windshield and topping off my tires. I reached out the window and paid my bill and drove home to my building. I started to bring up the discussion with the doorman, but he just laughed and let me know that the night milk delivery had come and he would have the bellhop take it up to my apartment. Before getting on the elevator, I let Joe the lift operator know that I was going to get my shoe shined, which became an opportune moment, since the paper boy had just delivered the evening news. The front page article was about a local operation having a hard time finding workers and offered to train them as an apprenticeship. I didn't think much of it and decided check out the wanted ads to see if I could hire someone to wax my handcrafted boat.
100% upvoted this.
Amazing reply.
I'm glad you got it. I'm sure there are plenty of people too young to understand the references.
Bring on the robots! I'm sick of them always messing up my order! How many times have I had to send you back? haha plus I trust a robot more when it comes to handling my food.
Corporative greed going moon it seems. Robots are cheaper, possibly convenient than humans in some operations but imagine a world where all corporations are using this freaking tech. Large population will be out of job. We might see another anti-tech revolution just like Ned Lud strike in Britain couple of centuries ago.
It's a good way of showing how dysfunctional modern democracies can be. A lot of people on minimum wage vote for a higher wage, while not being equipped with the knowledge that this only hurts them. Sure, in the short and medium term they will earn a little bit more.
Over the long run most og us will be displaced by some form of automation anyways. It's a tectonic shift in our society and it's going to be interesting to see where this goes!
Good post, good subject
In my life I have witnessed the birth of the internet, the birth and death of bbs's, the various surges of tabletop gaming, more wars than I'm allowed to know about, and the birth of crypto. These are exciting times. They are what the old proverb calls "interesting times". There's a reason that's a curse, failure to adapt quickly to the new environment leads to death.
People calling for the raising of minimum wage are operating with tools from before my birth. They are failing to adapt.
I think this will occur in a lot of position were the task is easily automated. In the end it may actually cause less errors to happen as well. Human error happens and it occurs more often because the people working a lot of entry level jobs are unsatisfied with there working environment and don't try nearly as hard. This isn't true of everybody, as I've known people who have worked at fast food restaurant that were better workers then I've seen in corporate jobs also. As technology becomes more and more advanced humans skill sets will
Skill set and market demand have little to do with wages, especially in the context of the last 20-50 years. Automation will replace workers making $7.25 or less and it will replace a significant amount of construction workers, administrators, and others whose skill sets are considered more advanced.
Minimum wages are an admittedly far less effective solution than Employee Stock Option Plans or DAO's but the general public is also far more aware of them. Perhaps working to educate workers facing displacement regarding the opportunities in decentralization would be more helpful than blaming them for fighting for better wages.