And next time around, the exact same arguments will get trotted out by the exact same people. Well ... almost the exact same people.
Did you know that Seattle raised its minimum wage to FIFTEEN dollars?!?! You’ll never guess what happened.
Someone who doesn't post here anymore called me a name in this decade-old thread and I'm angry about it now.
And since we know that everywhere is like Seattle, a $15/hour minimum wage would work everywhere. I'll keep saying it: if you don't think there's a connection between wages and jobs, then make the minimum wage $50/hour. Meanwhile, my local McDonald's now has fewer people and more screens taking orders...
This would happen regardless. Wages go up, stay the same, or even go down, and the opportunity to automate and cut labor exists, companies will take that opportunity.
And you think this is different in poverty wage states? The robots are coming regardless of the minimum wage. Technological advancement driving down the cost of robots combined with capitalism (ie profit valued over employment) leads to automation, no matter what labor costs are. Moore's Law always wins. Anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant of how business works or are being intentionally disingenuous. When I moved to North Carolina it seemed self checkout was everywhere. I wasn't used to it coming from Washington. At first I was a little perplexed, WA had a significantly higher minimum wage, why no self checkout compared to NC where almost every place had self checkout? My first thought was maybe it was b/c WA grocery stores were unionized, but looking into it nope. That wasn't it. Turns out I was focusing on the wrong aspect. Differential labor costs weren't the driver, capital costs were. I was living on the edge of sprawl in NC. The reason the NC grocery stores had self checkout was b/c they were new. Saving a few bucks on labor isn't worth the capital to replace (still functional) registers even in high labor cost areas. However if you are building from scratch or remodeling or upgrading anyway the capital costs are low enough that even in low wage areas it's worth going automated. Now, I'm not saying that marginally higher labor costs have zero impact. Just that compared to capital costs they are playing around the margins.
"A robot serves me my fast food burgers, so we shouldn't raise the minimum wage" is one of the most hilarious late-stage capitalism quotes I've seen.
Countries like Thailand are placing automated kiosks in McDonalds. If the wage for employees there then it makes it economically worthwhile then there's nothing short of slavery in a modern Western country that would make it cheaper to have an employee than a computer screen.
Do you sincerely think McDonalds doesn't have plans to do this across the entire United States? It doesn't matter if the minimum wage is $15 or $5. If an employer sees opportunity to automate for cheap, they're gonna do that. It has fuck all to do with us greedy peasants who dare ask for enough money to make it worth while to show up there
People forget there was a time when labor was free, when we enslaved human beings and worked them to death, and then we went to war because paying them was an affront to the economic well-being of wealthy white landowners. Capitalism will take every advantage it can, whether it be the exploitation of black people, kids, women, or immigrants.
I’m so sick of people treating fucking McDonalds like it some economic bellwether. Fuck them. A significant number of their employees are so poor they have to sign up for welfare benefits... which in essence means that the government is subsidizing their profits. As far as concerned, the fewer employees they have the better.
Hey, guess what, I live in one of the states with the highest percentage of minimum wage workers and the McDonald's in the town I live in (population ~40K) has the automated kiosks. As did the Taco Bell in another town in this state that I used to live in, waaaay back in the late '90s. You know, before minimum wage hit the jaw-dropping level of $7.25/hr that it is now.
People who think working any McJob other than manager (front or back) should sustain a life (let alone a family) have been greatly misinformed. These are jobs for teens and reclamation projects (someone trying to get back on their feet, or establish some credibility that they can show up clean and presentable for many days in a row). Just another reason why min wage has proved most damaging to teens, and to the poor (who never get the chance to ever develop the "human capital' that might elevate them out of poverty).
Nope, that's never what they were meant for. FDR wanted the minimum wage to be a living wage. Republican sabotage and brainwashing fucked it up. You're a dupe and a sap.
This. Why the hell are you working 40 hours a week if not to afford a place to live, food, medicine, and other basic essentials?
Whenever the subject becomes a "living wage," I have to ask: under what conditions? In downtown San Francisco? Suburban Fresno? In your own apartment? With 1 roommate? 2? 3? Living with your parents? Have your own car? Bus fare? Working one job for 40 hours? Or two jobs for 60? More? Less? Peanut butter sandwiches five nights a week? Entertainment expenses? Cell phone? Savings? Vacations? Do you have to pay the babysitter a living wage? How about the kid who mows your lawn? What's a living wage? And how could it possibly be the same thing for all people in all areas under all conditions?
You've proven over and over again that you don't give a shit about the poor, so why the crocodile tears here? The only job in America where you can go from minimum wage worker to CEO is goddamn Costco. But then like i told Zombie on this or another thread, they don't view employees as disposable tools, but appreciating assets. All their C-level decision-makers spend time in the warehouse so they understand the process. And the system works. You're trying to be purposely obtuse. Living fucking wage is what it takes to survive in that particular area for housing, gas to get there and enough food that they aren't still having to apply for food stamps while working full time. Of course, that looks different in every city and state. But southern states got it nearly as bad as we do in California even with a lower cost of living because $7.25 is chump change everywhere in the US. I'm not gonna move outta state just to end up working two jobs for half of what most places pay now for a slight larger apartment in Bumfuck, Nowhere.
No, I'm not. I'm asking questions about a policy that's being promoted. You want it? Give me the details. I presume by full-time, you mean 40 hours. And since you mention gas, I presume you mean a car is involved. But what housing? An apartment? Roommates? What car? New car? beater? What's the budget for a basic car? Can the car be shared among several people, or does each employee get their own? Insurance covered, too? Full coverage or liability only? Are communications (like a phone or internet access) included? Yes, of course. And it's going to look different depending on what your standard for what a "living" wage is. Plenty of alternatives. Do something to make yourself more valuable in the job market? Learn a new skill? Take on more responsibility? Is bellyaching that the government should command one's wages higher the most productive path to greater prosperity?
I don't think automation in fast food and grocery stores reduces the number of employees as much as people think it does. Every time I went to McDonalds before the kiosks, there was usually one, sometimes two people at the registers. A few different ones near me now have four kiosks, and one, maybe two people at the registers and helping people use the kiosks. Before the self-checkout there's be maybe six lanes open at the food library. Now there's four lanes and two banks of self-checkouts, and still six employees working the registers. Four kiosks in a McDonalds and one person at the register and helping people with the kiosks doesn't mean three people are out of a job, it means four customers are placing their order at a kiosk instead of four people standing in line at one open register. If four people on the registers would be optimally efficient for a store's volume of customers, management isn't going to put four people on registers, they're going to put one or two people on the registers and tell them to haul ass, which stresses out the employees, they make more mistakes, and things take even longer. Automation helps employees better manage the customer volume they have to deal with more than it does reduce the number of employees.
Trade school? Law school? Science degree? How big does a wage slave dare to dream? Not very right now. More and more people are looking at the literally lethal debt you have to take on, and going "nope!".
Wrong again Anna, I'm a champion of the (working) poor and pretty much every policy I would support would particularly benefit the bottom quintile of earners. That's not just eliminate min wage, but e.g. also adopt more limited immigration (and enforce the laws on criminal aliens), and abolish most of the liberal welfare state in favor of a 'negative income tax.' The leftist policy of open borders (and higher min wages) are as bad for poorest workers as the "War On Poverty" that's wrecked poor families, seen skyrocketing % of kids in 1-parent households, and accomplished no discernible improvement in lives of poor or reduction in poverty rates despite spending hundreds of billions over decades. Poor anna gets everything backwards - her butt must hurt something fierce. [from being wrong all the time. what?]
The war on poverty was lost during the Reagan era. You guys own poverty (and immigration for that matter).
