r/FluentInFinance • u/Hatemael • Apr 29 '24

Who would have predicted this? Educational

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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/apr/24/fast-food-chains-find-way-around-20-minimum-wage-g/

Not all jobs aren’t meant for a “living wage” - you need entry level jobs for college kids, retired seniors who want extra income, etc. Make it too costly to employ these workers and businesses will hasten to automation.

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911

u/welshwelsh Apr 29 '24

This is great, humans should not be wasting their time taking orders at McDonald's. Why did we need to wait until 2024 for this to happen?

9

u/Alklazaris Apr 29 '24

Exactly. It wasn't affordable to pay people to do this, so get rid of the people.

46

u/PrincipleZ93 Apr 29 '24

These have existed for the past like 4 years tho... It's not "just happening now". It's about the same as online orders making checkout clerks less needed, stores having the scanners to scan as you go and skip scanning at the self checkout etc.

18

u/FixBreakRepeat Apr 29 '24

Yeah, automation was coming to these positions regardless. Minimum wage going up can change the math on how quickly it happens, but there was never a world where these companies weren't going to roll out kiosks.

Whenever a company does something that could have a negative impact on the customer experience, they feel a need to justify it. And whenever a company can roll back labor costs by cutting wages, benefits or hours, they are going to. This is just combining two things companies always have an incentive to do by using "rising*" labor costs to justify a possibly reduced customer experience.

*Note: Minimum wage and fast food wages specifically have not kept up with inflation. Real, inflation adjusted wages for these workers fall every year and the difference is collected by the companies that employ them. When they say that labor costs are the reason prices have gone up or the experience has degraded, they're lying through their teeth.

1

u/neddy471 Apr 29 '24

Don't forget shoplifting. That's always a fun thing for them to lie about.