In fly over states people can live on $11/hr. That is $44k per year for a couple. Where rents average less than $1000/m.
Point is if Wallmart pays too much, Amazon takes over and retail stores disappear.
Work 1.5 or 2 jobs.
When I was a cashier at Whole Foods, most of the immigrant workers had another job. I did too! I was in college full time, Whole Foods 30 hrs/week, and a paid internship 20hrs/week! Crazy!
CEO Leonard Comma told an industry crowd that âit just makes senseâ to swap cashiers for inanimate machines in the year 2018. Not because he thinks 2018 will be the year that fast food gets technologized so much as itâs the year that Jack in the Boxâs home state of California increases the minimum wage to $11. In fact, wage bumps hit 18 states this year, with California on pace to become the first $15-wage state in coming years â a prospect that terrifies industry executives.
Higher minimum wages bring automation and job losses isnât that an obvious corollary of we automate when the labor cost is too high?
Many fast food chains are rolling out/ have rolled out:
a. Ordering & payment online
b. Ordering & payment via a kiosk instead of at the counter
Auto factories used to have 5,000 workers per shift. Now itâs 500. The UAW contracts and more accurately retirement benefits got too expensive.
Do we need to expand section 8? Give bottom 20% people a section 8 Vouncher when machines starts working and the real people are unemployed. Rent control is worse. Probably can have an employment or training condition on section 8.
Section 8 already has huge wait lists.
For the not so obvious corollary, salaries of SWEs are sky-high now, so what firms are planning to do/ have done?
a. Create reusable codes such as frameworks and libraries;
b. Employ cheaper source of labor;
c. Move to a cheaper place (neighborhoods then another state then another country);
d. Use AI/ ML/ Automation for works that donât require creativity;
Section 8 is a totally different issues. More and more people are unemployable due to increasingly sophistication of automation (because of AI, robotics, etc). More and more mundane and uncreative works would not need to be done by humans⌠supposed to be a good thing Is a secular problem for the politicians to deal with
As soon as i can buy a nice burger at cost + some profit i am down no need to pay humans. Eventually robots will do everything and mankind will enjoy the beneifts.
Im also ok with lab grown meat as long as taste is good
3D printed?
Itâs obviousâwhen the robots are cheaper than the humans, theyâll let go of the humans.
BUT when the humans are cheaper than the robots, theyâll be back.
Iâm actually kind of annoyedâthe Home Depot in EPA has only one checkout lane and 8 self-checkout lanes. I am NOT enjoying the checkout process although thankfully theyâve gotten rid of the weigh station part. Maybe if I could say âIâm buying 10 of theseâ itâd be better.
Automation not just automate the original tasks, quite often job design is done such that the new job may require higher intelligence. So the original humans may not be able to do the new job Also automation tends to be very efficient i.e. same job done faster than say 10 humans
The current design of checkout lanes is not good. Need to be improved.
SWEâs are paid too much. As a shareholder of so many tech companies I canât wait for them to replaced with bots. I bet most of them donât add any value at all.
There goes the RE market around here. Be careful what you ask for.
I see too much hubris among the SWEâs. They deserve some whacking on their heads.
Thatâs not happening in large numbers yet. Unemployment is low and labor force participation has increased. We arenât displacing people. There are more open jobs in the US than unemployed people. The bigger issue is upskilling workers, so they can fill the jobs that are available.