Raise the minimum wage! To $10, $12, $15 — more!
Help the downtrodden fast food worker. It all comes out of corporate profits, and so who cares? What could be more fair?
Two problems:
1. Economic reality.
2. Technology.
Dramatically raising wages (coupled with all the ancillary costs of labor) is a huge incentive to replace labor with machines. Below is a highly sophisticated coffee dispensing kiosk (not yet in commercial production) that is potentially the complete replacement for a Starbucks store. It’s a highly specialized, heavily customized “coffee shop” with next to ZERO labor.
Don’t get me wrong. For years to come, many clueless liberals will still pay $5 or more for their handmade coffee at Starbucks. Saving the world, one cup of java at a time.
But if (more like when) this technology innovation wave is fully commercialized, market forces (and lower prices) will have a devastating effect on unskilled fast food labor. Unemployment will grow, with fewer and fewer able to get even that first all-important job experience. While automation is coming regardless of further minimum wage hikes, the faster the minimum wage rises, the faster and more disruptive the automation process will be.
Of course, liberals will blame the greedy rich for it all. But the REAL “culprit” will be the consumer, who will be better off by rationally responding to market forces that will counter government edicts such as runaway minimum wage rates.
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An army of robot baristas could mean the end of Starbucks as we know it
Kitchens are just factories we haven’t automated yet
. . .
To read the rest of this article, go to:
http://qz.com/134661/briggo-coffee-army-of-robot-baristas-could-mean-the-end-of-starbucks-as-we-know-it/