Prediction: By the time we hit a $15 minimum wage, there will be no cashiers

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Jazz Shaw:

Now that the Democrats have officially enshrined the Fight for 15 in their platform this year, Hillary Clinton will have a hard time dancing away from it during the general election debates. You’ll recall that she previously had taken a slightly more reasonable approach, calling for that level of pay in high cost of living areas, but not pushing for it in rural locations where it would be immediately crippling to business and employment. Bernie Sanders eventually won that fight and dragged Clinton all the way to the left, so the subject is now one of the planks on which Hillary will stand in Philadelphia.

With that in mind, conservatives should be prepared to keep the public informed about the long term consequences of this populist position. One of the most likely outcomes which isn’t frequently mentioned in the usual DNC literature is described by Panos Mourdoukoutas at Forbes this week. While remaining in the realm of prognostication for now, the message is plain and simple: by the time these proposed laws go fully into effect, the job of being a cashier in the United States (along with several other occupations) will cease to exist.

By the time the minimum wage reaches $15, Wal-Mart, Target, McDonald’s, and Panera Bread will be different places.

There will be no cashiers at Wal-Mart, Target and the like; and robots will flip burgers at McDonald’s and prepare soups, sandwiches and salads at Panera Bread.

The $15 minimum wage movement has a good cause: it wants to make sure that everyone in America is paid a “living wage.” But they want to get there the wrong way – by disconnecting salary from performance, turning business enterprises into welfare agencies.

That was the case in Maoist China and the Soviet Union where corporations were “units” within a centrally planned economy.

Mourdoukoutas doesn’t invoke Maoist China and the USSR out of some need to frighten the masses with cold war imagery, but rather to point out the historical failure of governments to exercise micromanagement style control over a living, breathing economy. Things have value, and that value is precisely equal to what someone is willing to pay for it; no more and no less. That same rule applies to labor costs. As the author notes, the government can, in theory, tell employers what they must pay their workers, but they can’t force them to hire anyone. So if a cheaper method of sustaining their business model is available – such as using ordering kiosks instead of cashiers and robot burger flipping arms instead of short order cooks – the employer will move in that direction. The only way to circumvent such a cause and effect response is to go to a fully socialist system where there is no free choice among either workers or management. If you’d like to see how well that works, stop by Venezuela on your next vacation.

None of the technology required to fulfill Mourdoukoutas’ vision is hypothetical. It’s available today and already in use in a number of places.

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The democrats will respond by imposing a “robot tax” on businesses that use them, as punishment and to replace income tax money lost due to their own policies.
Why is it that politicians of all stripes always want to raise taxes to punish behavior that they don’t like?
They never seem to consider lowering taxes to reward behavior that they approve of.
I am tired of the all-stick, no-carrot approach.

People forget that when the California grape and lettuce pickers went on strike decades ago, there were only a few types of mechanical reapers.
But the strike led to innovations.
Before the strikers got their raises and back to work there were over a dozen new reaping machines on the market.
They were faster, cleaner and worked without pause.
They paid for themselves quickly.

Today our history-challenged SEIU is pushing entry-level food workers to be their useful idiots.
The Union doesn’t care about them.
BUT the Union’s lowest wage is pegged to the minimum wage.
The sacrifice of entry level food workers leads to improved bottom lines for Union workers.

Personally, I look forward to when some worker that forgets to wash their hands after going to the restroom or the one that spits in my food or thinks it’s cute to put glass in a cops sandwich…is GONE. The few always make it worse for the majority. Sad

@Nanny G: In the Central Valley 50 years AFTER that strike about 50% of all the grapes (mostly headed to become rasins) are picked mechanically In NApa only about 10%
As far as lettuce much much less they are still working the bugs out
http://www.growingproduce.com/vegetables/new-harvesting-technology-brings-mechanization-to-vegetable-growers/
It is still in the future for lettuce
However, of course technology is constantly making some forms of labor obsolete I don’t think that is a bad thing
Typically on a cost of $2 for a head of lettuce the total cost of farm labor is 10 cents@Petercat:
Doubling his wages !!!! would increase that cost to consumer to $2.10

There are more farm workers in CA now than since record keeping began in 1990 http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article21450660.html
I guess all those machines must have done it
Nanny you have to know by now that I am going to look ever since that story about the speed skaters I just always check

@John:
If mis-remembering a memory of about 60 years ago is what it takes to get a Lefty to do research then it was well worth it.
I can’t tell you how proud I am of you for doing your own research.
You are rare here.
I still think the individual who taught me speed skating as a child had been a competitive speed skater before he became on of the coaches who was killed in that plane crash.

@John: #4
It’s not about the cost of labor vs the price of goods. It’s about the cost of labor vs the cost of mechanization.
If a business owner can have a machine do the work for an effective cost of $10.00/hour, why on earth would he want to pay a human $15.00 an hour to do it? No smoke breaks, noshows, complaints, or lawsuits if he fires someone of the wrong ethnicity.
I haven’t eaten fast food (except Chic-fil-a)since the first story about an employee spitting in a customer’s food because he didn’t like the color of his skin.
When the first robot joint opens near me, I will patronize it. The food will be safe and consistent, the service will be trouble-free, and I will be free, as I am now, to speak with only the best teenagers.

@Petercat:
You are filled with hate and fear
And if you would rather give your money to corporations that only employ robots that of course is your right
It is also your right to despise people who work for minimum wages and only for 32 hours a week on the basis of one or two news stories
You apparently have been quite successful in your life but that is no reason to hate poorer people. Is it ?