Fmr. McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour.

[Derecho]

Yea, and look at all those times when we increased minimum wage and how it destroyed the economy and...

...

Oh.

Who said anything about destroying economies and...


...

Oh. I didn't.

My points still stand.

[Wolfheart9]

That depends on a number of things. How many people will they employ that do virtually nothing but the job a machine does when it´s out of order. And if they actually can do the job if the machine is out of order (full automation/just a robot arm).

Right, missing the point..

Self Check Outs:

4 registers take 4 employees normally.

They install 4 self-check out points.

They fire 3 employees, and train 1 casheer who already knows how to work a normal check out, how to fix every day issues with the self check outs.
That 1 casheer gets a $1 raise.
That 1 casheer now watches over 4 checkout points, eliminating 3 positions, 3 hourly wages, for the cost of the machines, and $1 an hour.

And you think only one company will use these robots?

Lets say every single fast food chain automates.

That's every Burger King, McDonalds, Subway, Wendy's, A&W, KFC, etc. These are jobs that are easily automatable for the most part. That's millions of employees in the US that are now unemployed. It will not take millions of people to create these robots.

This.

[Themius]

If you're going to make a claim then yes you do.

I'll lead by example.

The US does not have the most disposable income. (That's a claim!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...y_average_wage (That's a source!)

Your turn!

I honestly do not feel like going and popping up with various sheets of salary data from around the world. I usually have to google in that language and it's just an annoying process.

How about we don't pretend as if people in the USA in finance do not make more than essentially everyone else.

[Endus]

The argument being made and ignored is this: Raising the minimum wage hurts more people and kills more jobs than it helps. Look at the statistics of those who are actually making the minimum wage. A lot of them are young people. Most of these young people live at home and are trying to gain some experience in the real world.

When you raise the minimum wage, you are basically forcing business to: cut jobs or automate. Both result in a loss of jobs and a loss of opportunity for the young folk. Automation isn't a bad thing, that's not the point that conservatives are making at all.

The problem with the argument is that we have decades of history, including regular minimum wage increases, to look back on.

And increases in the minimum wage have never really correlated with long-term changes to the unemployment rate;

http://cepr.net/documents/publicatio...ge-2013-02.pdf



While there's a few points in that graph where increased unemployment and an increasing minimum wage correlate (2008-2010, for instance), there are many more where it doesn't (1960-1968, 1974-1979). Where they do correlate, it's mostly coincidence. If there were such a causative effect, you'd see a much higher correlation between the two, in the above, and the minimum wage hikes would always predate the increase in unemployment, when the reverse is true in several of those correlated instances.

This isn't some frothing at the mouth conspiracy theory, this is real life economics. It's how it works.

Except that if you look at the actual data, it clearly isn't how it works. It's a neat theory, but like trickle-down economics, the economy simply does not work that way.

It's not like automating is a new idea. People have been shouting that it will cause mass unemployment ever since the invention of the Cotton Gin. It's never played out that way.

[Barnabas]

Imma just sit here and laugh in my computer chair that costs 30x what it cost to produce typing on my keyboard that costs 10x what it took to produce connected to my computer that costs 50x what it cost to produce while my healthcare prices, gas, electric, and just about every other monthly payment I make goes up.. Sad, sad laughter.

Yet you are advocating against automation and we aren't anywhere near where it will be. DEY STEEEL OUR JAWBS.

[Eliseus]

A year sooner?

Eh maybe. Who knows.

[Deleted]

Worked in a factory for automation, they didn't need a $30 an hour guy sitting on his hands with a salary waiting to fix it every three days. In fact the machines stopped working MAYBE once every six months to an extent that the line had to be stopped to be worked on. I don't think you've ever worked at a factory with automation..

What was it the machines did?

I find it unlikely having worked on them myself.

[xuros]

Is it?

You are removing what? Three people in back to add mechanics to the pay roll? Its roughly 30$ a hour on the low end for those mechanics...

You dont seem to understand how productive this equipment is. They also have little need for service so its not like every store staffs a mechanic. There will be like 4 or so mechanics on staff in an area that will answer calls for machines that need work at the stores in that area. So yeah getting rid of 3 (probably will be more than 3 per) people per store is a huge savings for the company in the long run.

Lots of the soda fountain machines in gas stations use that model with mechanics.

[Tyrianth]

I honestly do not feel like going and popping up with various sheets of salary data from around the world. I usually have to google in that language and it's just an annoying process.

How about we don't pretend as if people in the USA in finance do not make more than essentially everyone else.

Got it, don't know what you're talking about. Back to my original post. The US has some of the worst economic mobility rates in the US. These temporarily depressed millionaires, are actually delusional poor people who drank to much of the koolaid propaganda.

[Barnabas]

And you think only one company will use these robots?

Lets say every single fast food chain automates.

That's every Burger King, McDonalds, Subway, Wendy's, A&W, KFC, etc. These are jobs that are easily automatable for the most part. That's millions of employees in the US that are now unemployed. It will not take millions of people to create these robots.

They are unemployed because they didn't get another skill before their job was lost. Who fault is that? That is their fault. There will be plenty of jobs and newer jobs that will be created.

[Wolfheart9]

Yet you are advocating against automation and we aren't anywhere near where it will be. DEY STEEEL OUR JAWBS.

Actually no where have I advocated against automation, so there's that. It is a statistical fact, that if 1 person can run 4 machines that do the work of 4 people, that means there are 3 less people at that job. This is not conspiracy theory, this is not tin foil hat, this is the most basic kind of math that a child would know. What I have been saying, had you spent the time reading instead of trying to insult people, is that something has to give if the amount of automation continues in the way it currently is.

They are unemployed because they didn't get another skill before their job was lost. Who fault is that? That is their fault. There will be plenty of jobs and newer jobs that will be created.

Which means that in the current system you are now saying it went from being able to get out of highschool with 0 debt to get an entry level job, to having to have tens of thousands of dollars of debt after collage, to get the new standard of entry level job.

[Endus]

You dont seem to understand how productive this equipment is. They also have little need for service so its not like every store staffs a mechanic. There will be like 4 or so mechanics on staff in an area that will answer calls for machines that need work at the stores in that area. So yeah getting rid of 3 (probably will be more than 3 per) people per store is a huge savings for the company in the long run.

Lots of the soda fountain machines in gas stations use that model with mechanics.

The general point, however, is that the jobs lost in front-line cashier positions are made up elsewhere in the economy. There is no observable increase in unemployment due to minimum wage hikes, historically. Narrowing it down to look at the effect on one company is pretty irrelevant. A single company going bankrupt, by way of example, does not mean the economy is collapsing.

[spankthetank]

automation does not equate to job disintegration, just a focus on a different experience for the customer and employee. linking a raise in minimum wage to an employer's decision to automate processes that a human does right now is disingenuous -- they will do it anyway if it increases productivity. a robot doesn't have legal stipulations on when it has to take a break, or when it qualifies for benefits.

i am not allowed to post the link because i am some what new to the forum but if you google "cbc news calgary mcdonald's 1900 jobs" there is an article that talks about automated kiosks and what it means for their workers.

[Tyrianth]

They are unemployed because they didn't get another skill before their job was lost. Who fault is that? That is their fault. There will be plenty of jobs and newer jobs that will be created.

Right, I agree that there will be plenty of jobs. But there wont be enough jobs and you're delusional if you think there is. The world only needs so many engineers or programmers.

[Deleted]

You dont seem to understand how productive this equipment is. They also have little need for service so its not like every store staffs a mechanic. There will be like 4 or so mechanics on staff in an area that will answer calls for machines that need work at the stores in that area. So yeah getting rid of 3 (probably will be more than 3 per) people per store is a huge savings for the company in the long run.

Lots of the soda fountain machines in gas stations use that model with mechanics.

Can you realistically do that with fast food? I admit I pictured it as a assembly line like one that builds cars but on a smaller scale.

You are talking about a vending machine though no? I suppose it could work but... well I have a hard time envisioning it. You would have to build a freezer, grill, and have everything stored in it and then not have anything fuck up...

[Mayhem]

Right, missing the point..

Self Check Outs:

4 registers take 4 employees normally.

They install 4 self-check out points.

They fire 3 employees, and train 1 casheer who already knows how to work a normal check out, how to fix every day issues with the self check outs.
That 1 casheer gets a $1 raise.
That 1 casheer now watches over 4 checkout points, eliminating 3 positions, 3 hourly wages, for the cost of the machines, and $1 an hour.

No not at all, it still depends on the machines. If the machine is fully automated, so they can´t make fries if the machine isn´t working because they can´t use that machine at all. Sorry, a bit late and i´m not sure how to bring my point across. It doesn´t even matter that much anyway.

[Endus]

Hell, here's the US Dept. of Labor;

https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster

Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.

Not true: In a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders urging a minimum wage increase, more than 600 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners wrote, "In recent years there have been important developments in the academic literature on the effect of increases in the minimum wage on employment, with the weight of evidence now showing that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front."

[Deleted]

As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture.

“I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries -- it’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary and it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe,” said former McDonald’s (MCD) USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Mornings with Maria.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.3 million people earned the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour with about 1.7 million having wages below the federal minimum in 2014. These three million workers combined made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/...-per-hour.html

I think many would appriciate not having to work at McDonalds. I just pity that robotic arm.

But yeah let's remove all human interaction and the human factor from cooking. Just make everything from a machine. Machine meat, machine cooked, machine made. QUALITY!

[Deleted]

The general point, however, is that the jobs lost in front-line cashier positions are made up elsewhere in the economy. There is no observable increase in unemployment due to minimum wage hikes, historically. Narrowing it down to look at the effect on one company is pretty irrelevant. A single company going bankrupt, by way of example, does not mean the economy is collapsing.

I agree.. I just can't see inflation not making the increase trivial if not even noticeable in a few short years.

[Wolfheart9]

Yet you are advocating against automation and we aren't anywhere near where it will be. DEY STEEEL OUR JAWBS.

Actually no where have I advocated against automation, so there's that. It is a statistical fact, that if 1 person can run 4 machines that do the work of 4 people, that means there are 3 less people at that job. This is not conspiracy theory, this is not tin foil hat, this is the most basic kind of math that a child would know. What I have been saying, had you spent the time reading instead of trying to insult people, is that something has to give if the amount of automation continues in the way it currently is.

They are unemployed because they didn't get another skill before their job was lost. Who fault is that? That is their fault. There will be plenty of jobs and newer jobs that will be created.

Which means that in the current system you are now saying it went from being able to get out of highschool with 0 debt to get an entry level job, to having to have tens of thousands of dollars of debt after collage, to get the new standard of entry level job.

What was it the machines did?

I find it unlikely having worked on them myself.

Sorting machines, packing machines, ones that installed the bolts and bearings on the bladed parts of the machine, ones that stocked the line for the manual labor to use and assemble, pallet loader/unloaders, wrappers, auto cart trollies that delivered the wrapped pallets to another station.. need I go on?