Minimum Wage Boosts Are Great—For Robots

[Muda69]

http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/26/minimum-wage-boosts-are-greatfor-robots

Quote

In recent weeks, Illinois mandated a huge increase in the state minimum wage, Pennsylvania's governor proposed to double his state's minimum wage, and New Mexico lawmakers moved forward with a plan to raise the minimum wage there, too. Hiking the cost of labor is a popular cause once again—even among people who've demonstrated in the past that they know perfectly well this is a recipe for limiting opportunity and trapping people in poverty.

It's tempting to say that people are actually getting stupider about economics. But maybe, instead, it's all part of a conspiracy by robots who are poised to be the big beneficiaries of an artificially crippled job market.

...

If the laws of economic haven't changed, technology has—in ways that make artificial hikes in the price of labor even more damaging. Robots are ever-more available to take over when people become too expensive.

"To curtail rising labor costs, businesses are investing in automation that can replace 'low-skilled' workers, high school educated or less," warned payroll and human resources company ADP last year in an article acknowledging the new popularity of boosts in the minimum wage. "Automation has already taken hold in grocery stores with self-checkout lines and fast food restaurants with touchscreen order entry kiosks. We see it with smart ATMs and the robots installed in manufacturing plants."

The ADP article points to grocery stores, with a high percentage of low-wage workers and low profit margins (2.2 percent in 2017) as especially ripe for automation. If you've used a self-check aisle at a grocery store in recent years, you know that the process is well under way. But it's not just that one industry.

"Increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers, and increases the likelihood that low-skilled workers in automatable jobs become nonemployed or employed in worse jobs," Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics and David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, reported in a paper published last year in Labour Economics. They drew their conclusions after reviewing data from 1980 through 2015.

"These effects are relatively larger for individuals employed in manufacturing, and are larger for the oldest and youngest workers, for females and for blacks," they add.

To some extent, the researchers found, higher-skilled workers benefit from automation because of the need for somebody to run and maintain machinery. But that doesn't help new workers trying to break into the job market, or established workers who don't have the skills to justify the higher price mandated by law for their labor.

As The New York Times noted in wiser days: "Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired."

From a tech standpoint, this opens up intriguing possibilities. A few years ago, Momentum Machines was a buzzy startup leveraging the movement to boost minimum wages by promising to replace wage-earners with burger-flipping robots. Now, under the name Creator, the company has opened a high-profile demonstrator restaurant that does just that, with hamburgers cooked and served, untouched by human hands. A few actual people take orders on iPhones and keep the automated burger line stocked with supplies.

That even some of those remaining humans can be replaced is obvious to anybody who has ordered drinks or paid their tab through a Ziosk or similar tabletop tablet at a casual dining restaurant. "The biggest fear is that eventually the Ziosk will take over the job entirely," NPR reported in 2015.

Well, yes. If lawmakers keep pricing humans out of the job market relative to ever-more-innovative and automated alternatives, I expect that tabletop terminals and robotic line chefs will replace the biological competition at the low-skilled end of the job market. Maybe they'll be kept company by a well-paid live technician or two, but certainly not by anybody who has little more to offer than their muscles (but who could become more valuable and harder to replace if given time to learn in lower-paid work).

Will minimum wage advocates relearn the errors of their ways and come to recognize, once again, that a flexible and dynamic job market is a healthy job market—for humans? I wouldn't count on it.

In New York, where the $15 minimum wage is an accomplished fact, "advocates for low-wage workers" now push for more rules on scheduling and dismissing fast food workers. That would, it goes without saying, make hiring those workers more expensive.

If I was a robot, or if I manufactured them, I'd root for those "advocates" to succeed.

Developing and maintaining robotics, more than ever, is a growth industry that young people should be encouraged to get involved with.  

[swordfish]

This past weekend in Pennsylvania, SF popped into a McDonalds for a quick lunch during a sales trip - and was able to order his Big Mac w/Bacon meal from a computer screen, pay for it, and the only human interaction was with the lady passing out the bags of filled orders and handing me my cup.  (I did say thanks, BTW)

[Impartial_Observer]

Robotics are becoming much more adaptable to multiple tasks and the price is constantly getting more affordable. The biggest issue for robotics in the early years was that they were built to do a specific task. When the process changed or that process was no longer needed, the robot was pretty much a dinosaur. Today's robots are becoming much more adaptable to do multiple tasks or being able to be adapted to different processes. 

The perfect factory will have one dog and one human. The human is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to make sure the human doesn't mess with any of the machines. 

[Irishman]

12 minutes ago, swordfish said:

This past weekend in Pennsylvania, SF popped into a McDonalds for a quick lunch during a sales trip - and was able to order his Big Mac w/Bacon meal from a computer screen, pay for it, and the only human interaction was with the lady passing out the bags of filled orders and handing me my cup.  (I did say thanks, BTW)

Or so you THOUGHT that was the ONLY human interaction. 😂

http://mentalfloss.com/article/565564/mcdonalds-touchscreen-menus-are-covered-poop-report-finds

[foxbat]

18 minutes ago, swordfish said:

This past weekend in Pennsylvania, SF popped into a McDonalds for a quick lunch during a sales trip - and was able to order his Big Mac w/Bacon meal from a computer screen, pay for it, and the only human interaction was with the lady passing out the bags of filled orders and handing me my cup.  (I did say thanks, BTW)

Yeah, the US is behind the rest of the world on this.  This was standard fare at the McDonald's in Madrid when I was there last summer.  I know Lafayette has these at one of their stores ... I haven't checked the ones by the campus yet.  For each person that McDonald's takes off of a shift per store per day, they save roughly $1 billion and that's recurring.  They also don't call in sick when they really aren't, don't need to be re-trained when one quits and new one is handled, and are cheaper standing around when the traffic is light.  Standard McDonald's comes with four screens which takes out the need for four cashiers at rush ... probably two average during the course of the day.  Check out the drink machines too.  The new ones are tied into the order system and drop cups into a "chain" which then sits under the nozzle which dispenses the drink.  Only human interaction there is putting the lid on the cups.  Probably just a matter of time before those machines create a flap seal like a juice pouch and you won't need human interaction on that machine either.

 

[Muda69]

1 minute ago, foxbat said:

Yeah, the US is behind the rest of the world on this.  This was standard fare at the McDonald's in Madrid when I was there last summer.  I know Lafayette has these at one of their stores ... I haven't checked the ones by the campus yet.  

 

The Frankfort McDonald's has had the touchscreen ordering for almost a years now.

Earlier this month I was down in Nashville, Indiana.  Their McDonald's also has the touchscreens.

[swordfish]

28 minutes ago, Irishman said:

Or so you THOUGHT that was the ONLY human interaction. 😂

http://mentalfloss.com/article/565564/mcdonalds-touchscreen-menus-are-covered-poop-report-finds

Ew, EEEEWWWW, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!  Come on man.....Bringing out the rubber gloves now......

[Muda69]

7 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Ew, EEEEWWWW, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!  Come on man.....Bringing out the rubber gloves now......

I was thinking they need to hire someone to wipe down the touchscreens with a disinfectant  after every transaction...............................

 

[Impartial_Observer]

1 hour ago, Irishman said:

Or so you THOUGHT that was the ONLY human interaction. 😂

http://mentalfloss.com/article/565564/mcdonalds-touchscreen-menus-are-covered-poop-report-finds

My guess is this is the case with pretty much any public access point. Money, touch pads for debit/credit cards, a hand rail ANYWHERE, magazines at the doctors office, touch screen on the Coke machine at Burger King, etc. 

I would argue too much disinfecting is probably more detrimental to our health than ingesting a little microscopic fecal matter. 

[foxbat]

1 hour ago, Irishman said:

Or so you THOUGHT that was the ONLY human interaction. 😂

http://mentalfloss.com/article/565564/mcdonalds-touchscreen-menus-are-covered-poop-report-finds

Kind of like the coke traces in your paper currency ... only grosser.

[DanteEstonia]

On 2/26/2019 at 7:33 AM, swordfish said:

This past weekend in Pennsylvania, SF popped into a McDonalds for a quick lunch during a sales trip - and was able to order his Big Mac w/Bacon meal from a computer screen, pay for it, and the only human interaction was with the lady passing out the bags of filled orders and handing me my cup.  (I did say thanks, BTW)

They still have humans at In-N-Out.

Why is there nothing but straw men every time this thread re-emerges?

[Muda69]

7 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

They still have humans at In-N-Out.

Why is there nothing but straw men every time this thread re-emerges?

Afraid of robotic competition Dante?: 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-07-17/let-robots-teach-american-schoolkids

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/technology/robots-will-soon-become-our-children-s-tutors-here-s-n748196

 

 

[DanteEstonia]

31 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Afraid of robotic competition Dante?: 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-07-17/let-robots-teach-american-schoolkids

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/technology/robots-will-soon-become-our-children-s-tutors-here-s-n748196

 

 

I am afraid more of a mass of unemployed people.

[Muda69]

43 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

I am afraid more of a mass of unemployed people.

So there needs to be legislation preventing, or at least slowing down, the replacement of jobs with robots?