Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
McDonald’s announced it will replace cashiers in 2,500 stores with self-service kiosks.
The story buzzed across the internet but Business Insider reported McDonald’s shoots down fears it is planning to replace cashiers with kiosks.
Official Denial
“McDonald’s has repeatedly said that adding kiosks won’t result in mass layoffs, but will instead move some cashiers to other parts of the restaurant where it’s adding new jobs, such as table service. The burger chain reiterated that position again on Friday.”
Is McDonald’s denial believable? What would you expect the company to say?
McDonald’s has to deny the story or it might have a hiring problem, a morale problem, and other problems.
“Our CEO, Steve Easterbrook, has said on many occasions that self-order kiosks in McDonald’s restaurants are not a labor replacement,” a spokeswoman told Business Insider. “They provide an opportunity to transition back-of-the-house positions to more customer service roles such as concierges and table service where they are able to truly engage with guests and enhance the dining experience.”
Move cashiers to table service? Really? Yeah, right...
An interesting political rule from the British sitcom “Yes, Minister” is to “never believe anything until it’s officially denied”.
Will Humans Be Necessary?
When someone can be replaced by a robot, how can the push for $15 be justified?
Psychology Today asks Will Humans Be Necessary?
Will automation kill as many jobs as is feared? A widely cited Oxford University study predicts that 47% of jobs could be automated in the next decade of two. Price Waterhouse pegs the U.S. risk at 38%. McKinsey estimates that 45% of what people are paid for could be automated using existing technology!
No less than Tesla’s Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking fear the loss of jobs will cause world cataclysm.
Let’s start with jobs likely to be eliminated, starting with the present and with those lower-level jobs.
Already, don’t you prefer a ATM to a teller, self-checkout to the supermarket checker, drive-through tolls rather than stop for the toll-taker, automated airline check-in rather than waiting for a clerk, shopping on Amazon rather than fighting traffic, parking, and the check-out experience with a live clerk, assuming the store has what you want in your size? Indeed, malls are closing while online retailers led by Amazon are growing.
As minimum wage and mandated benefits rise, fast-food restaurants especially are accelerating use of, for example, order-taking kiosks, which McDonald’s is rolling out in 2,500 stores, robotic burger flippers and fry cooks, even pizza, ramen and sushi makers. Even that fail-safe job, barista, is at-risk, Bosch now makes an automated barista. Mid-range restaurants such as Olive Garden, Outback, and Applebee are replacing waiters with tabletop tablets. Will you really miss having your conversation interrupted by a waiter hawking hors de oeuvres and expecting a 15+% tip? If you owned a fast-food franchise, mighn’t you be looking to replace people with automated solutions? Can it really be long until there are completely automated fast-food and even mid-range restaurants?
Robots are already being used as security guards. There are humanoid robots that can move heavy boxes, walk in uneven snow, and get up, not annoyed when thrown to the ground. (And won’t sue for failure to supervise or an OSHA violation.)
Instead of hiring architects for tens of thousands of dollars, many people are opting to spend just a few hundred bucks to instantly get any of thousands of often award-winning house plans which, if needed, can be inexpensively customized to suit. Far fewer architects needed.
BlackRock, the world’s largest fund company has replaced seven of its 53 analysts with AI-driven stock-picking.
The remaining jobs
In such a world, how can a human justify asking to be paid to work?
Four scenarios
The range of scenarios would seem circumscribed by these. How likely do you think each of these are?
- Continue on the current path: The world continues to slowly make progress, e.g., birth rates declining in developing nations, slowed global warming, more education and health care. Those positives would be mitigated by declining jobs, more concentration of wealth.
- World socialism.
- Mass population reduction, for example, by nuclear war, pandemic, or, per Clive Cussler, highly communicable biovirus simultaneously put into the water supply of a half-dozen cruise ships?
- A world run by machines and the few people they deem worthy.
Here is a debate between an optimistic and a pessimist on the future of the world.
The truth may well be something we can’t even envision. After all, he who lives by the crystal ball usually eats broken glass.
Note that Psychology Today author Marty Nemko did not ask about $15. He wonders if pay for some jobs is worth anything at all.
Source : ZeroHedge
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Every time a minimum wage is increased, the people are worse off. Prices will increase, and the people at minimum will just break even. And the ones not at minimum will end up having less
Raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. that will solve the problem.
There we go, yes!! And combine that with a Universal Basic Income of at least $50K/yr, and everything will be coming up Milhouse!
Er, wait - on Seattle's recent minimum wage increase: " the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum."
http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/canada/a-very-credible-new-study-on-seattles-15-minimum-wage-has-bad-news-for-liberals/wcm/a9a706bf-9174-4283-a729-adb6d96342eb?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F
right. I actually meant $1,000/hr. What a joke. Don't people understand basic economics? I worked for minimum wage of $3.45/hour as a kid and was thankful for the job. Raising the minimum wage only hurts those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder but taking jobs away from them and encouraging businesses to cut costs with technology.
"Raising the minimum wage only hurts those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder"
I think this is the point that most MW advocates simply ignore or don't understand. Labour has a price like anything else, and if you price it too high, as you say - you are removing the bottom rungs out from the Economic Ladder. I mean, why would an employer hire an immature, 16 yr old high school kid when he could hire a relatively mature 26 yr old college grad w/ life and work experience for the same price? There's just no comparison. You obviously get way more bang for your buck w/ the latter.
Automation will be replacing the service sector in general.
Anyone see the video on the hamburger flipper robot? Or see the Japanese photos of food serving robots? It's coming.
I think this is the biggest challenge that is being faced by people whose hourly income is less than $20 per hour. A very large portion of those people will be vulnerable to be either being outsourced or losing their jobs to automation. The concept isn't too new as there have been many industries that have lost jobs due to new technologies like textile workers that used manual weaving looms were replaced by mechanized weaving looms. Ultimately, people have to shift to higher paying fields that have less risk of being outsourced or automated though this transition is very difficult for those whose skills are based in a specific industry.
because someone is paying the gap for a livable wage. that gap is filled in with government assistance, that comes from the tax payer. someone is always paying.
The push for higher minimum wages is never justified outside the leftist fantasy that greedy employers will begrudgingly pay people more to perform menial tasks out their immense profits. In reality, that doesn't represent the state of our business environment.
You can never go wrong with precious metals and cryptocurrencies, gold silver brass and lead.
You've been upvoted, followed and resteemed, thank you for bringing zerohedge to steemit!
only the tip of the iceberg as to what is coming
We want $15 an hour!
The World responds : http://momentummachines.com
Our first device makes gourmet burgers from scratch with no human interaction. These burgers are fresh-ground and grilled to order and accented by an infinitely personalizable variety of produce, seasonings, and sauces. Serving a burger this great at such affordable prices would be impossible without culinary automation.
Just wait until these machines develop AI and then demand their own wage of $15/hr!
but...hm, by then, it might be more like $150... ;-)
If a job can be replaced, it should be. Does any human really strive to take orders for burgers or to wipe down tables? Is this a career that anyone really aspires to?
Let tech take the jobs it will, and lets focus humans on what they are better at and more fulfilled by.
more technology we created, the more unemployment for poor peoples. technology is good, but humans are more best for these. machines are runned by humans but these days machines are replacing the humans. this sound shit!
that's really good one
All those IOUs called U.S. dollars are a part of the problem too.
It is inevitable that some jobs will be replaced by automation, and some of he job replacements mentioned in this article to me are questionable, the real issue is that there is no organized effort to create jobs for people that can pay well to replace the ones that are being lost - there are many things that people could do, like start their own business, or go back to school to train for the jobs that companies say they cant fill because too few people have the skills they are looking for!
There needs to be investments for startups and small businessess, free training for people who want to stay at home and work on their computer on the internet, and there needs to be FREE subsidized formal schooling and education for the jobs that companies need people to do and they say there are not enough candidtates to fill those jobs!