Greedy Wendy's President Sites Wage Increase as Excuse for Replacing Workers With Kiosks.

[liberalnarb]

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. If it can be automated, it will be automated. Research on 3-d printers that will print food

is underway, which will usher in the age of the Star Trek Food Replicator.

Of course, the end of work is going to, forever, end stop the Capitalist/Consumerist economic system. If there is no work to exchange for wages, consumers will have no money. If have no money, they can not consume. If they can not consume, there will be no movement of capital from the consumer class back to the capitalist in the consumer-debt cycle.

Sort of a vicious circle there. We are in for big changes for the next two decades.

[1monster]

2. A relative who was autistic used to work for Wendy's. They worked him

12 to 15 hours a day days and often six or seven days a week. Minimum wage was was, I think, $5.25 an hour.

I took him to buy clothing once and was appalled to find that he was wearing children's sizes eight to ten. Yes, he was small, but when I had him try on size 16 children's size, the trousers literally slid right off of him.

I weighed him and he was 84 pounds at five feet tall.

I asked him if he was eating regularly.

"Well, I try to eat at least one meal a day," he answered.

"One meal a day!" (at the most on most days).

"Well, we are so busy, they don't always have time to give me a break."

Remember, this young man is autistic and was unable to speak up for himself.

I went to the manager and read him the riot act. Things got better as to breaks, but there were other problems. Unless I had no other option, I would not work for Wendy's, no would I suggest anyone else do so either.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. I'll have my secretary type up a comment.

When she's done, I'll put a carbon copy in the file cabinet, and, on Monday, when the post office is open, put the original in the mail.

I can state categorically that I do not have a secretary making less than minimum wage.

[procon]

4. It would have happened any way, that's the future.

If must do better at educating young people, teaching them the skills they will need to be a marketable asset as new technologies replace manual labor. Maybe workers won't be taking orders at the burger joint, but someone will need to know how to program that new kiosk and repair it when it glitches out.

The excuse that a quality education is too expensive, is ridiculous compared to the costs of propping up a population that lacks the basic skills to get any sort of job in a high tech world.

[Urchin]

9. They tell you education is the answer

But what skills do you fancy will be immune to being replaced by automation, and how could there possibly be enough jobs for those few skills?

Even now, students are starting to flock to the few remaining majors that might give them some hope of finding a job in the dwindling number of occupations that still exist.

The result is too many graduates for the jobs remaining.

And the situation will get worse.

Technology destroys jobs in many different and often treacherous ways.

What do you think a taxi cab dispatcher imagined when told that technology might eliminate their job?

I bet most cab dispatchers would have laughed at the thought of a robot marching into the room and shoving the dispatcher aside to take the dispatcher's place.

It didn't take a robot.

And it really didn't just take smartphones.

It began with GPS.

Who among us would have thought that the invention of GPS would destroy the traditional cab industry in few short years? Who saw that coming?

Technology can eliminate your job by one of the following ways I can think of (there might be more ways):

1. Outright.

2. By destroying the need for what you do (self-driving cars could well eliminate the need for jobs in the car insurance industry and for sure would reduce the need for traffic cops--the makers of those radar guns cops use would also find themselves all or nearly all out of work; even if we don't ever have self-driving cars, once cars are on the internet of things, speeders will be instantly detected with the fine deducted from whatever form of bond you were required to post when renewing your license--no need for a cop to chase you down and no need for a radar gun to check your speed)

3. Technology, especially the internet, now enables instant movement of huge amounts of data throughout the world, meaning that an increasing number of knowledge jobs can be done anywhere for less than it costs to pay an American worker.

4. And even if your job is still good when all around you have lost theirs--I dunno, maybe you're a physician--how will your patients have money to pay you when they are permanently out of work?

There's a zillion ways technology will come for our jobs. No one is safe. No one can see it coming.

In the past, people fought against technology replacing jobs, and lost.

They lost because in the past, technology created new jobs, and so the movement against technology petered out as people got those new jobs.

But in this, our second industrial revolution--the technological revolution--the number of jobs destroyed seems likely to far, far exceed the few jobs created.

This time is different and something will need to be done about it because there is no other choice.

To those who think technological development cannot be controlled, maybe some governing body can be formed to use technology itself to enforce limits on how technology can be used and developed.

And one other thought: if, for example, people who would have wanted to be poets, painters, musicians, writers, historians, librarians, mechanics, truck drivers, etc. must now all be FORCED to have careers that give them no joy--where is the freedom in that?

How is that different from Soviet Russia when you were ordered to do whatever job the government ordered you to do, whether or not the kind of work you were made to do was soul-crushing to you?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

11. I hope you didn't use a computer to send that. NT

[procon]

12. Your tirade got so far off into the weeds, I need a GPS to get back to reality. nt

[Urchin]

14. Exceeded your attention span, did it?

Those of you in denial will be the first whose jobs will be replaced by technology.

Don't say I didn't try to warn you.

[procon]

15. Sorry; just a lack of interest.

Honest, your rambling dystopian fiction just wasn't all that interesting. Besides, I'm already reading a really good SF novel.

[Urchin]

16. It's not dystopian

It's already happening.

But fine. I'm not wasting my time on someone suffering from normalcy bias.

Time for me to get back to work, because if you're not working and studying as much as possible, your ability to earn a living will be taken from you by technology sooner than later.

Because everyone and every business is no longer in competition with local businesses and local talent--the competition for our income is now against global competition and/or against machines anywhere.

Thanks to technology, we now have to work and study like slaves for the rest of our working lives.

[Bodych]

5. Wendy's CEO: $3,444.23 per hour (40-hour work week): 2014

[yeoman6987]

10. We did this yesturday. Wendy's CEO makes 2.5 million

Each worker would get 14 dollars a year if he gave up his salary. Not enough to change lives.

[Bodych]

13. No. In 2014, the compensation was $7,164,198

Equity/stock/options is how all CEOs minimize their tax obligations while inflating their undeserved pay, and most of this CEO's compensation package was in equity.

Not enough to change lives? Perhaps not, but "incremental change" just happens to be the talking point of one of the Democratic candidates...and the other would not object, I'm certain.

[jomin41]

6. I'm waiting to see the bottom line.

[SheilaT]

7. I'm old enough to remember the 1950's

when lots of manufacturing jobs were being automated. Some people saw this as opening up a reduced work-week for all, which never happened, others foresaw millions of men out of work -- men specifically because jobs were far more gender-based back then. No one foresaw the sending of jobs overseas.

Already there are restaurants that encourage you to order on a computer pad of some kind at your table.

[Gomez163]

8. Tip your robot.