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The Employee of the Month Has a Battery: Minimum wage hikes accelerating trend toward automation
Wall Street Journal ^ | 01/30/2014 | MICHAEL SALTSMAN

Posted on 02/03/2014 2:15:40 PM PST by SeekAndFind

Ten years ago it might have seemed far-fetched that a customer could order food in a restaurant without speaking to anyone. But it's a reality now as service employers across the country—including Chili's, Chevys Fresh Mex and California Pizza Kitchen—introduce tabletop ordering devices. A few clicks on an iPad-like device and the food is on its way.

Technology has made these changes possible, but that's not what's driving their implementation. Steady federal and state increases to the minimum wage have forced employers in retail and service industries to rely on technology as the government makes entry-level labor more expensive. Now Democrats are pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25 at the behest of President Obama, who argued in his State of the Union address that the increase would "help families." Lawmakers should consider the technology trend a warning.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made the connection in a recent interview on MSNBC. Asked if he supported a higher minimum wage, Mr. Gates urged caution and said the policy would create an incentive for employers to "buy machines and automate things."

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: automation; minimumwage
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To: RoosterRedux

But what about teaching jobs, from K-1 through to university level, or jobs in sales, managing,accounting, marketing and product design? How would people who specialized their whole lives for work in those fields be able to find alternative work in the automated age? i don’t see how they would - and in these job areas alone we are talking millions upon millions of Americans in addition to currently unemployed Americans.


41 posted on 02/03/2014 3:35:10 PM PST by freedom462
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To: freedom462

I said nothing about liking it. I’m just pointing out some possible outcomes. Outcomes which fall under what I referenced as “unintended consequences”. Conequences which are usually negative in nature. But these are not inevitable outcomes.. It just points out the liberal mindset that in it’s desperate need to make things better tends to make them immeasurably worse. A mindset that is rooted in a deeply flawed understanding of human nature, and thus of reality itself.

CC


42 posted on 02/03/2014 3:35:11 PM PST by Celtic Conservative (tease not the dragon for thou art crunchy when roasted and taste good with ketchup)
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To: Celtic Conservative

That makes more sense. I think we can’t figure out how to improve our economy and encourage more efficiency, that the age of technology could lead to a situation where 80 + % of Americans are simply unemployable and have to rely on welfare of some sort to survive. Particularly as the Millenials and generations after that get older.


43 posted on 02/03/2014 3:37:31 PM PST by freedom462
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To: RoosterRedux
It took six months for a bunch of women with no experience in manufacturing to produce 25 P-51 Mustangs per day, four B-24 bombers, and DC-3 Transports by the hundreds.

Today it would take ten years to make the first article for test flight.

That's some "progress".

44 posted on 02/03/2014 3:41:38 PM PST by blackdog (There is no such thing as healing, only a balance between destructive and constructive forces.)
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To: blackdog

LOL yeah but back then they weren’t handicapped by computers and the internet.

#sliderule
#pencilonvellum


45 posted on 02/03/2014 3:49:34 PM PST by nascarnation (I'm hiring Jack Palladino to investigate Baraq's golf scores.)
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To: freedom462
Teaching is going to be replaced with the Khan Academy model or the MIT Opencourseware model...and rightly so. It's better.

Managers, salesmen, accountants, designers are not being replaced, but their jobs are being enhanced and made more effective by technology. And consider the Da Vinci Surgical robot that allows a surgeon in Baltimore operate on a kid in South Africa.

There are plenty of jobs available for kids that go to technical schools and learn basic trades (many of which are now high-tech) and the oil fields in Texas and North Dakota are screaming for workers.

Much unemployment today is due to kids going to college and majoring in something that doesn't prepare them for a job.

All this said, yes, sometimes people get replaced and/or just fired. New technologies come along...some companies simply fail.

So those people will have to retrain and sometimes move...but such is life.

46 posted on 02/03/2014 3:57:55 PM PST by RoosterRedux (The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing -- Socrates)
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To: RoosterRedux
Teaching is going to be replaced with the Khan Academy model or the MIT Opencourseware model..

Certainly in some countries but not here.

Big Education is integral to the progressive control of society.

47 posted on 02/03/2014 3:59:30 PM PST by nascarnation (I'm hiring Jack Palladino to investigate Baraq's golf scores.)
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To: Vendome
MOMENTUM MACHINES BURGER ROBOT


48 posted on 02/03/2014 4:00:22 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Impressive.
I’ve commented previously that the only fast food employees remaining will be janitorial and logistics.
The manager will be an Indian lady in Mumbai with an internet connection.


49 posted on 02/03/2014 4:03:52 PM PST by nascarnation (I'm hiring Jack Palladino to investigate Baraq's golf scores.)
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To: RoosterRedux; nascarnation

Actually, the Kahn model by itself could not replace classroom teaching entirely - Kahn himself said that was never the original goal of it. At the moment, it is designed to enhance and complement classroom learning. In order for an automated technology to make classroom teaching completely irrelevant, it would also have to replace teacher student interactions and individual tutoring and be able to help with individual questions the way a teacher would. As much as we rip on public school teachers - and yes, of course, tons of them deserve all the abuse they get around here, the Kahn Academy and the MIT open courseware by itself cannot make classroom teaching irrelevant.

A technology that can actually make classroom teaching completely irrelevant would also make scores of other vital jobs irrelevant as well and continue to place millions out of work, at least temporarily while they are forced to adjust and learn new trades. And in our nation, this would damage the economy since, regardless off what we prefer, we are not at all prepared as a country to have these Americans go without food or shelter of any kind while they learn these new trades and make themselves employable again.


50 posted on 02/03/2014 4:08:30 PM PST by freedom462
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To: RoosterRedux

So as far as teaching goes, if automated systems can make classroom teachers completely irrelevant, then in fact they could do the exact same for managers, salesman, accountants and designers. When you can fundamentally replace one type of human interaction like that, you can see that it is only a series of small steps before tons of other types of human interaction get replaced entirely as well.


51 posted on 02/03/2014 4:10:33 PM PST by freedom462
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To: freedom462
MIT open courseware

At MIT, EdX is now the big thing.

52 posted on 02/03/2014 4:15:48 PM PST by glorgau
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To: freedom462
This suggests even the expansion of technology is not always a good thing. If it can make blue collar workers and sales people and teaches wholly obsolete, pretty soon the same will happen for managers, many if not most engineers and many, if not most, business men as well. Which, if the economy does not drastically improve enough to the point where other options immediately come up, could lead to literally 10s of millions of Americans, in addition to the currently unemployed Americans, who now have no job opportunities of any kind whatsoever.

Not necessarily. As we have seen with computers, what was first seen as something only corporations and the government would own turned out to be something everyone owns - even little kids. And all that computer power does tasks not envisioned in the early days of computing, like run this forum so people from all over the world can share ideas.

Similarly, as robots and similar automated machines become more common and affordable, they will become personal tools as well as business tools. So instead of going off to the factory on Monday morning, perhaps a future American will just send his robot over to do the work. Or you'll sit at home and control a half dozen snow plows that are taking care of the driveways that belong to your customers.

And maybe you'll be able to earn a good living just by intensively farming ten acres of land, since your robot weeders work around the clock, and your neighbors can send their robots over to help pick the crops.

In the short term the ability of robots is far from that of human workers in terms of dealing with general, day to day circumstances. Automated systems, like CNC machine tools are great for specific tasks, but even the most advanced robots can't effectively swap between even rudimentary tasks. Many jobs that appear simple require judgement and awareness of the environment that are far beyond what a robot is capable of.

53 posted on 02/03/2014 4:15:54 PM PST by freeandfreezing
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To: glorgau

But that, like the Kahn academy, is not replacing classroom teaching entirely, which I suspect is why MIT still even now has classroom teachers, Thus it goes back to my original point I made above.

In any event, it seems like short term this EdX is rather tough to get access to anyway, which may explain why at the moment, out of all the thousands of universities and colleges, MIT is the only one with regular access to it.


54 posted on 02/03/2014 4:18:31 PM PST by freedom462
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To: nascarnation
I remember my pilot training in the 70's. Round slide wheel and nautical mile ruler with compass. Everything, including fuel consumption, true air speed, density altitude, course correction, etc.... had to be done by hand while flying the plane(with no auto pilot)under instruments. You had to dial in VOR's and NDB's to discover your position while being tested. Cockpit management was a busy task. Then came the first computer in 1978 called the "Navtronic". It was a handheld thing which was lousy. If you used it on a test you would fail. It wasn't accurate enough.

I remember flying a Baron 58 and if it wasn't for the corner of my eye I would never have seen the needle deflection and would have blown right thru my fix. It happens real fast at 200mph. Throw in bad weather and lot's of radio activity in busy airspace and flying a twin was a dicey thing to do without a copilot, or at least savvy helper.

Today it's easy breezy. That is until something takes out GPS. I even got spoiled on Loran C. Without it there were times I would have had no idea where I was.

55 posted on 02/03/2014 4:18:59 PM PST by blackdog (There is no such thing as healing, only a balance between destructive and constructive forces.)
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To: nascarnation

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/navigation_calculators.html


56 posted on 02/03/2014 4:22:55 PM PST by blackdog (There is no such thing as healing, only a balance between destructive and constructive forces.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Ten years ago it might have seemed far-fetched that a customer could order food in a restaurant without speaking to anyone.

Twenty years ago, in Burlington, MA, there was a Taco Bell with three touch-screen computers positioned in front of the counter, at which you could place your order. They were clunky kiosks with CRT screens, but they worked fine. However, evidently, TB didn't consider them cost-effective because they didn't roll the feature out to their stores (and that Burlington restaurant eventually turned into a Wendy's).

Today, in Lexington, MA, there is a Panera with four iPads mounted on sturdy stands positioned near the counter. They are much prettier than the Taco Bell kiosks, and, unlike the TB gadgets, they have credit card readers glued on. But other than that, they work about as well as the 20-year-old technology. However, they do address a particular problem Panera has: for some reason customers take inordinately long to give their orders to human order takers. The iPads solve that nicely.

57 posted on 02/03/2014 4:24:26 PM PST by cynwoody
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To: blackdog

Interesting stuff, thanks.


58 posted on 02/03/2014 4:49:51 PM PST by nascarnation (I'm hiring Jack Palladino to investigate Baraq's golf scores.)
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To: freedom462
Which again, could mean we now have many tens of millions of Americans who have spent their lives learning specific trades that are obsolete and therefore have become wholly unemployable.

You mean, like, farmers?


Source

In 1870, 48% of the US workforce was employed in agriculture. In 2002, 2% were. Looks like a lot of new trades got learned. And the country got a whole lot richer in the process.

59 posted on 02/03/2014 4:56:14 PM PST by cynwoody
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To: bigbob

The farm machines also replaced the people. You don’t see many people working on farms anymore.


60 posted on 02/03/2014 4:57:06 PM PST by VerySadAmerican (".....Barrack, and the horse Mohammed rode in on.")
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