Speaking of technological changes
A lot of fast food places already use some measure of automation. Most deep fryers are automated, timers prevent you from getting a raw burger, and the amount of machinery required to go from partial to full auto is very minimal.
Some things won’t be automated but people will ignore them. A burger that consists of a patty, a bun, and condiments that can be dispensed out of huge containers can be made by a machine, and it will always be perfectly made. Lettuce? Tomato? Pickle? Maybe not likely. But relish, salsa, sure. So someplace soon, and I expect to see it at the machine too show this September, you will be able to walkup to a machine, scan your credit card, and it will deliver a perfectly cooked burger with the condiments of your choice. Another machine for fries- that machine already exists and the fries are pretty good.
Hamburger vending machines will be around soon. The burgers will be consistent and dependable, and most importantly, the guy selling it to you will not have to pay someone to cook the burger and someone else to put condiments on it, and someone else to make change and hand it to you. Some Jack in the Box restaurants have already put the automated order/payment system in, and I expect to see a lot more of the same.
When the minimum wage is too high, people will just eliminate those jobs, and this is one way to do so.
12 comments Og | Uncategorized
Well, at least the machine do not vote for there doom.
It will make sit down restaurants a little more popular for a time. Till we have actual robots.
Too bad the genius’s in Seattle didn’t read this before voting in a $15 minimum wage…
So it has always been, so it shall ever be. Nobody is going to continue using human labor if automation results in lower costs and higher profits.
I prefer the idea.
Because humans have an annoying tendency to get my order wrong.
(I hate fake cheese on burgers – and burger flippers seem to think it impossible that someone could want a burger without the fake cheese.)
Reminds me of a visit to a toolmaker’s in Austria. I was initially surprised to learn that the company’s sales fo a $15,000 widget for a certain textile task were highest in Northern Europe, but neglible other places- even places where that industry had a bigger presence. Because the machine is cheaper than paying Axel’s or Sven’s or Pierre’s pension costs.
Quite a few places are now electronic ordering… all the waitstaff do is deliver meals…
The real shame of it is, these jobs were always meant as an entry level for kids into the work force. Over the years, people have tried to eek out a living at it, usually while drawing a benefit to boot from uncle sam to help raise their litter of kids. Now with the high minimum wage they are trying to ram through, we will end up getting the automation you speak of. I refuse to go to the Home Depot down here as they eliminated the cashiers altogether. Lowes is leaning that way, but not quite there yet. You have a very valid point, but I really hate to see a lot of entry level positions eliminated.
Zendo Deb and I did a story about hamburger making machines in November of ’12. Over a year and a half ago. The machine seems to work well and gets proportionally cheaper every time the minimum wage goes up.
http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/
People hire people because people are cheaper than machines. Make machines cheaper than hiring people, and people won’t get hired.
It saddens me that this plain and simple truth cannot be understood by anyone in the Democrat American Communist Party.
Or maybe I should call them the National Socialist Democrat Workers Party…..
Everybody dances around it, but some mention it almost in passing. The guy selling you the burger doesn’t have to pay anybody THE FORCED UNECONOMICAL MINIMUM WAGE. We in the Right need to hammer that fact home a lot. Maybe the low information crowd won’t get it en masse, but individuals may be capable of learning the lesson, “uneconomical == you might’s well not bother — it’s a waste of time and money.” and the corollary: “uneconomical !== get the government to do it”.
M
Of course all those people who are laid off or can’t get a promotion do to a labor glut are not going to be buying much.
Europe has this issue now with birth rates in the toilet and its almost certainly tied to unemployment and underemployment.
The US won’t be so lucky, we’ll end up with a Leftist hegemony or the Balkans meets Brazil
Now I agree that machines absolutely will be used but I suspect in the end a failure to ensure that the none too bright people have jobs will simply end up with staggering taxes.
Its not going to be politically too hard to put a tax on machinery equal to say three times what they might save per year and use it to fund a deep welfare and security state.
So yeah that burger machine replaces a bunch of workers, they vote socialist and an automation tax ends up paying for the whole thing anyway.
Or well maybe the whole edifice falls apart do to demand and the burger shop owner is out of business or is done in Los Non Pantalones