My theory is that it is large corporations who are the driving force behind the ‘Fight for $15’ movement. The idea is to make human labor too expensive to be economically feasible. So they have an excuse to bring in artificial intelligence and robotics.
I know a guy who was working on automated cook stations for Wendy’s thirteen years ago. The project was suddenly and mysteriously killed in 2009, I suspect because Wendy’s was loathe to provoke Obama by replacing workers during an economic downturn.
Politics will always trump technology here.