Seattle continues efforts to kill jobs...

Maybe we can employ people to do things that are less mindless than checking out groceries or taking fast food orders?

That would be nice but it is a lot of jobs and a lot of people who aren't exactly skilled in things like computer programming.

And it's impossible for them to be retrained.

Actually, now that the GOP has looted the store, there won't be enough revenue for that kind of thing, either.

In Der Drumpfenfuhrer's Murica, born a burger-flipper, die a burger-flipper.

The President does bear a striking, if more orange, resemblance to Judge Smails.

Meh, programming will be automated soon anyway, they tell me.

I live in N.C. and I've got an app where I don't have to go through the checkout line at Sam's Club.

I've written VBA/Sql code that writes VBA/Sql code.

We're not all that different in ages, though you've got a couple more years on me. I know you make a bit of money on the side as a writer, but you do medical work for your primary income these days, IIRC. Suppose that medical income dried up, retirement wasn't an option for you (either because of age or you weren't able to set enough aside for retirement). You don't earn enough from your writing to sustain yourself until you can retire, how easy would it be for you to go back to college to learn an entirely new skill? When I was in my 20s, I worked full-time and went to college. It was rough as fuck, but I was able to struggle through. When I was in my early forties, I attempted to work full-time and go to school part-time, and it damned near killed me. I had the benefit of not having a family in my 40s, so I didn't have to worry about things like getting my kids to after-school activities, or showing up at their sporting events or band concerts or what have you. There's literally no fucking way I could have considered school if I had to deal with such things and work at the same time. And while I know that you'd be more than happy to give folks a stipend so that they didn't have to work and go to school at the same time, that's not going to happen. How would you handle retraining in such a situation, when the only option for you was a field that you had little to no knowledge of, and still had to keep working? Because that's the reality for most folks.

You are entirely too optimistic. As were the folks behind the Mad Max movies.

By all means, start the business and get to employing people.

But... that's not possible. You live in a poverty wage state and only living wage states are supposed to see automation replace jobs!

@Tuckerfan :

Working plus school is pretty rough. I can't imagine my stressful job, 22 credit hours of school, AND kids. I honestly don't know how people do it.

My wife never took that many hours at a that a time, so it took longer for her to get her undergrad degree, but she did it while we raised two kids to adulthood and she worked a full time job. She wrapped up her masters degree in August and graduated last weekend. The best part is that thanks to employer reimbursement with all of the jobs she's had, she paid very little out of pocket for either of her degrees (and they're both from a pretty expensive private university).

I certainly couldn't do it, that's for sure. At least not getting any additional degrees in my current profession. I'd get kicked out of class for telling the profs how full of shit they were.

Dick DeBartolo (Mad's Maddest Writer) once talked about why he dropped out of college. He was a media production major, and the professor told the class that they'd be taking a tour of a small TV studio the next day. Dick was already working for a network at the time, and realized that he knew more than the professor did, so he quit.

https://www.thestar.com/business/20...-founders-reduce-benefits-over-wage-hike.html

Problems in Canada as minimum wage hike causes benefits to get cut.

At Two Whole Restaurants no less. You had a good run Canada.

And it is no doubt repeated thousands of times over and over and over again. The money has to come from some where so cutting benefits and reducing hours is often where it comes from if suppliers cannot be squeezed or prices raised.

Anyone read about what happened in so much of Europe on the 1970's? Unions would demand big pay increases, get them, this caused inflation to spike, which set off new rounds of demands for more pay increases...

That slope is slicker than snot isn't it? Anyway, I first want to say hats off to anyone who can go to college, full or part-time, and juggle a family and job at the same time. I had my hands full taking one master's level course one semester at a time while working full-time graveyard shift. I saw people with families carrying a full load. Damn if I know how they did it.
As far as minimum wage hikes bringing in automation: maybe it speeds up the process, but a job that can be automated at $15 per hour will eventually be automated at whatever wage is being paid. Human employees are high-maintenance in terms of time and money. Machines offer a lot of advantages. It would help if compainies didn't have to worry so much about benefits, one of the benefits of single-payer health insurance that nobody seems to talk about.
Here is one argument that minimum wage raises kill jobs. And in the interest of being fair and balanced, here's an article that says raising the minimum wage doesn't kill jobs.

Good job Seattle, you killed the five dollar footlong.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/01/10/seattles-minimum-wage-killed-the-five

And it will happen to Garamet.

AI is coming and jobs like hers will go bye-bye fast.

No one, not even me as a Corrections Officer will be safe from AI. A lot of my current work could be handled by an AI in the future. Less need for officers and their salaries.

And God help us if they get this:



"You have thirty seconds to exit your cell. 29, 28, 27, 26, 25......"

I'll be in the soup line with Garamet.

Seattle's silly soda tax. And the Response:





Curiously of course Starbucks sugar filled shit is exempt from this because it's prepared in store.

As long as there's Autocorrect, I'll never be out of work.

Oh you'll be out of work.

Especially when Paramount buys AI to write Star Trek novels.

Now this was dumb on Seattle's part.
@Ancalagon, comments?

Just like Mayor Giuliani's weird obsession with soda. It's funny how some people want to legalize drugs, yet when it comes to soda and tobacco, suddenly they're concerned about public health and what people are choosing to put into their own bodies.

Pretty much this.

I wonder if cigarettes are cheaper.

That was Bloomberg. Rudy was too busy screwing around to pay attention to much.

The only problem in Canada is this greedy millionaire franchise owner (who inherited their stores) cutting employee benefits just to be shitty. You'll note they didn't inform their employees in person, as they were out of the country at the time, staying at their 10 million dollar winter home in California.

But no, I'm sure this was done because they're barely making ends meet.

Oh, and Tim Hortons spent much of the last decade staffing most of their store level positions with temporary foreign workers, because most Canadians weren't willing to work there for the shitty wages they were offering. In a proper economy that would push them to increase wages and benefits organically, but they pressured previous governments into giving them a way out of paying a fair market rate for labour.

https://nypost.com/2018/01/23/steakhouse-owner-ripped-over-objection-to-rising-minimum-wage/amp/

NYC has twice tge restaurant vacancy rate of most cities and closures outnumber openings last year. Tgere are a number of reasons high rents, a difficult permiting process, but if you ask restaurant owners they all cite the series of big hikes to the minimum wage which has squeezed already razer thin restaurant margins. Customers are complaining as bus boy positions have disappeared, prices have shot up, and many owners are simply throwing in the towel or moving out of town especially since there is yet another $2 increase coming next year.

This is in NYC so think what such big ninimum wage increases will do to more marginal and less dynamic areas.