$15 an Hour Pay Advocates Meet Market Reality

[Underverse]

Well people seem to answer UNIVERSAL INCOME as if it is a solution. It's not. People needs jobs. Even if the money was good, people still need some form of employment to give structure to their lives so as not to go crazy from boredom. I understand that progress makes sense but society is IN NO WAY ready for this and if we don't slow it down so that society can actually adapt we are going to see our cultures implode.

And the other problem is automation is not going to simply kill employment. It will also kill most small scale entrepreneurship. SMEs will ONLY survive by servicing remote locations, offering extraordinary service or providing niche services or products; the different in cost is already significant, it will simply become prohibitive and the starting capital to start anything approaching chain store efficiency will be prohibitive.

I know our societies handled the industrial age but honestly the industrial age created more jobs than it destroyed. Automation does not seem to be creating any jobs. And when automation starts overtaking the creative process as well, I am having a really hard time imagining anything other than a dystopia because humanity has given us no indication that there will be any symmetrical distribution of resources. We are just importing third world assymetries to the rest of the planet, hurray!

Eventually jobs will be optional. We don't need them. We're just used to them. People in hunting and gathering societies are pretty happy with their immense amount of free time; they spend most of it socializing.

[bowchikabow]

It's funny. In various academic spheres, the concern is the far-reaching, and long off issue of The Singularity. The fact is, the idea of robotics and automation in general, will have a MUCH more direct impact on society and the workforce.

when you look at the history and evolution of things like Cars: the internal combustion engine to the electric engine. The automatic transmission, Limited Slip differential, GPS.. Car building: Hand built, to assembly line, to assembly robotics, to near total automation. Computers: large, massively unwieldy and super-sensitive monsters that took up who whole rooms, down to devices the size of an average persons hand being able to do most of what a full-size desktop can do. Computers now building computers that are faster than they were. Computers performing more and more complex tasks designed to do more and more of the mundane tasks humans used to do.

The irony: We need to make the system more advanced, so that it can do less advanced/more repetitive tasks.


The moral being: Automation is inevitable, and it will be a massive shock to society each time it impacts more and more industries. Transportation, assembly, general manufacturing.. farming.. yes, farming too. Fewer people needed to tend larger fields thanks to all sorts of automation. How fast should it happen? What should we do about it? Do we try to throttle advancement? Can we? What are we going to do when the majority what jobs remain in this country.. or eventually the world.. will basically come down to "repair of X machine/robot". I don't think it will happen in my lifetime (36yrs old), will probably be in it's large scale infance in my daughter(s) (12 and 6)... basically it will be a few generations before this becomes the mainstream. But I do think we need to start addressing these things now.. not after McDonalds rolls out the McFry cook.

[burzian]

Trying to link this article up to your lame opinion about a $15 min wage doesn't work. The industry didn't decide to invest in robots because workers want a fair wage, they decided to invest in robots years and years ago because they want to replace workers with robots as soon as the robots are cheap enough.

[Stormspellz]

If you don't fund public education sufficiently the public won't be educated sufficiently to know Reaganomics are bullshit.

Clever if you think about it.

in the words of the con man in chief himself "I love the poorly educated"

[Zan15]

I wish i knew the OP job so i can protest each year in front of it to prevent him from getting a raise, because whatever product HIS company sells i don't want to pay more money for.

come on tell us...please....


Same logic, you don't want these people having higher minimum wages because you don't want to pay 5 cents more for a burger.


As everyone else have piled on, this has nothing to do with 15 dollar advocates.


Lets see i think these people make WAY more then 15 dollar advocates do.

https://www.ft.com/content/84bb5c72-...5-82a9b15a8ee7

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/m...ll-street.html


The Robots
Are Coming
for Wall Street
Hundreds of financial analysts are being replaced
with software. What office jobs are next?


maybe they had the balls to ask for a raise????

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oh i think these people make waaaaaaaaaaaaay less then 15 dollars an hour and even they are being replaced by robots

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'


These guys make way more then 15

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...105-story.html

Employing a human welder in a factory in the U.S. costs about $25 per hour including benefits, according to a 2015 study by the Boston Consulting Group; that drops to just $8 per hour for a robot, including installation, operating costs and maintenance. By 2030, "the operating cost per hour for a robot doing similar welding tasks could plunge to as little as $2 when improvements in performance are factored in," BCG said.


scary read

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-fun...-they-cant-yet

[Hyxi]

Someday maybe those "middle class" "disgruntled workers" will figure out they're actually fucking poor and would do well to band together with the people they're looking down on.

Current behavior is by design. The nearly dirt poors are all too busy punching down at the dirt poors trying to climb the ladder behind them to actually climb up themselves. The rich get to sit at the top and laugh.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Well until we get AI I don't think we have to worry about that. In a way that's already happened, without computers I would need a shitload more resources, I would also have a slower design to production process over all.

You don't think a robot can be programmed to build other robots?

[Cthulhu 2020]

Someday maybe those "middle class" "disgruntled workers" will figure out they're actually fucking poor and would do well to band together with the people they're looking down on.

They believe they're going to be big time millionaires one day, or at least firmly upper class at 250k+, but in reality all those disenfranchised middle class workers who lost their jobs over the last two decades are very quickly headed towards minimum wage jobs themselves. All of this governmental dismantling and destruction that they're cheering on, and removal of regulation, is having a very clear impact on pushing wages down.

So really, they aren't going to need to ally themselves with lower class minimum earners... because they're going to be there anyway.

[Allybeboba]

Burger-flipping robot replaces humans on first day at work

9 MARCH 2017 • 10:42AM

Mark Molloy



A burger-flipping robot has just completed its first day on the job at a restaurant in California, replacing humans at the grill.

Flippy has mastered the art of cooking the perfect burger and has just started work at CaliBurger, a fast-food chain.

The robotic kitchen assistant, which its makers say can be installed in just five minutes, is the brainchild of Miso Robotics.

“Much like self-driving vehicles, our system continuously learns from its experiences to improve over time,” said David Zito, chief executive officer of Miso Robotics.

“Though we are starting with the relatively 'simple' task of cooking burgers, our proprietary AI software allows our kitchen assistants to be adaptable and therefore can be trained to help with almost any dull, dirty or dangerous task in a commercial kitchen — whether it's frying chicken, cutting vegetables or final plating.”

Cameras and sensors help Flippy to determine when the burger is fully cooked, before the robot places them on a bun. A human worker then takes over and adds condiments.

More Flippy robots will be introduced at CaliBurgers next year, with the aim of installing them in 50 of their restaurants worldwide by the end of 2019.

CaliBurger say the benefits include making “food faster, safer and with fewer errors”.

So let's see, no one has to guess what it wrote on an application. It doesn't get high on breaks. It doesn't spit in food. Won't take time off to protest its own job. It never complains it's raising a family of peripherals on minimum wage. Oh and last but not least it will get along really well with the kiosk that took its order and won't be loud and abrasive.

What's not to love.

Just think of the new people that were employed designing "Flippy". And all the new people that will be needed to sell and maintain them.

Some look at the glass as half empty. I look at glass as being as being half full.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Current behavior is by design. The nearly dirt poors are all too busy punching down at the dirt poors trying to climb the ladder behind them to actually climb up themselves. The rich get to sit at the top and laugh.

This is by design. While the wealthy are the real ones creating job and wage stagnation, they've created rhetoric and propaganda that makes the poorly educated worship wealth, and blame anyone making less than them.

"The poor are paid too much, thus taking away money from us rich people, who give you middle classers your jobs, and while the reality is that we can pay you more and we aren't going to, what we're going to tell you is that the poor and immigrants are at fault for you being stuck on hard times. Now I'm going to go laugh at you on my fifth yacht."

[Kathandira]

For those who thought there is no Mopping Machine...

http://store.irobot.com/default/robot-mop-braava/

[Zan15]

give those robots a month before the sensors are all gobbed up and they have to pay some dude making 40 dollars an hour to clean or replace them.

oh and can you imagine the health problems with all that grease and meat particles in those joints.

[scrangos]

Robots are replacing everyone anyway, they are replacing factory workers in china that already have slave wages. $7.25 or $15 doesnt matter, if a robot can replace it, then itll get replaced regardless.

give those robots a month before the sensors are all gobbed up and they have to pay some dude making 40 dollars an hour to clean or replace them.

oh and can you imagine the health problems with all that grease and meat particles in those joints.

Engineers are smart enough to test robots under working conditions before deploying them en mass.

[De Lupe]

Burger-flipping robot replaces humans on first day at work

9 MARCH 2017 • 10:42AM

What's not to love.

Motor oil in your food.


Furthermore, any restaurant with a menu simple enough for a machine to cook isn't worth my time.

[scrangos]

You don't think a robot can be programmed to build other robots?

Were pretty far off from being able to make software that can create ideas or innovate on its own.

[I Push Buttons]

Were pretty far off from being able to make software that can create ideas or innovate on its own.

https://www.ibm.com/watson/

Not really.

[HumbleDuck]

This type of thinking was the reason behind industrial revolution happening in Britain and not Japan.

[Masark]

Just think of the new people that were employed designing "Flippy". And all the new people that will be needed to sell and maintain them.

Some look at the glass as half empty. I look at glass as being as being half full.

1. Decidedly fewer people than they displaced from the workforce.

2. Your measuring device requires re-calibration. The glass will be maybe 1/10th full, not half, with the remainder having been slurped out by the executives and shareholders.

[Glorious Leader]

This is by design. While the wealthy are the real ones creating job and wage stagnation, they've created rhetoric and propaganda that makes the poorly educated worship wealth, and blame anyone making less than them.

"The poor are paid too much, thus taking away money from us rich people, who give you middle classers your jobs, and while the reality is that we can pay you more and we aren't going to, what we're going to tell you is that the poor and immigrants are at fault for you being stuck on hard times. Now I'm going to go laugh at you on my fifth yacht."

40 years ago or so it was a different picture. Unions were strong, parliaments had all the power' working people were receiving wage increases and making demands of employers and the gap between the highest paid ceo and the lowest worker was incredibke small relative to today. The rich decided that was too good so they funded what amounted to a market friendly revolution.

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1. Decidedly fewer people than they displaced from the workforce.

2. Your measuring device requires re-calibration. The glass will be maybe 1/10th full, not half, with the remainder having been slurped out by the executives and shareholders.

The first one is incredible important and its stupid that people think the exact amount of jobs will still be there. Why bother investing in robots if you need to hire as many people to maintain them? The entire point is to increase effeciency by removing the dependance on human labor. Why do you then think you will have as much human labor?

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Were pretty far off from being able to make software that can create ideas or innovate on its own.

I didn't say they were designing them...I said they were building them. Observe the considerable distance between those two points.