Don't ask for a living wage or you'll be replaced by an iPad

[phantom power]

This is an actual billboard in San Francisco:



So, this is obviously disgusting on the part of the restaurant industry and its flacks. But it's worth noting that restaurants are already beginning to replace servers with tablets.

There are a lot of progressives out there who are very hostile to the idea that mechanization of jobs has had a huge impact on the workforce and will increasingly do so in the future. It runs against the narrative that the entirety of the screwing over of the middle class was a pure product of Reaganomics and political decisions to benefit the rich, and the correlated narrative that we really can return to the economy of the mid-twentieth century if we only go back to the old tax rates and trade deals.

The fact remains that within one year a bunch of server jobs will be gone because restaurants will replace order-taking with tablets. Within a decade or two we won't need truck or cab drivers anymore. IBM can already diagnose cancer five times better than doctors. The flattening of the teaching profession will continue apace as the technology and techniques behind MOOCs continue to improve. 3D printing will render much of what manufacturing remains obsolete. Anything requiring mid-level management or analysis will be done better by computer within two decades at the max, and probably sooner.

Pushing for a higher minimum wage is important. But ultimately we're going to have to decouple human dignity from "having a job." There just won't be enough jobs to go around, and tweaking the tax rates of super-wealthy just won't cut it at a certain point.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/dont-ask-for-living-wage-or-youll-be.html

[JaneyVee]

1. Who's cooking the food, stocking items, bagging,

Taking out the trash, cleaning up spills, etc etc? Cashiers aren't delegated to just doing cashier, especially at fast food places. Let them bring on these kiosks 1-it would actually give them no reason to not raise wages 2-watch the customer complaints mount up.

[Agschmid]

10. .

[Initech]

12. We need to be more like Tyler Durden now than ever.

Last edited Sun Jul 20, 2014, 06:03 PM - Edit history (1)

"Look the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we pump your gas, we connect your calls, we guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us."

[LuvNewcastle]

18. Yes. We're getting to that point very soon.

[JI7]

2. they would have already done it

if they could

[sufrommich]

4. Yep.If the technology exists,no lower wage

will stop them.

[phantom power]

13. I think the 2nd half of the OP's point is, the technology is coming

Which means that sooner or later (and it really may be sooner than later) arguments about issues like minimum wage, unionization, and other labor oriented policy are going to have to evolve into "decoupling human dignity from 'having a job'"

We aren't there yet, but I now suspect that I'll live to see it.

[Tetris_Iguana]

3. vvvv This right here vvvv

But ultimately we're going to have to decouple human dignity from "having a job."

[stillwaiting]

5. If they continue to destroy our ability to work for a living then eventually they will

have to pay a guaranteed minimum income. Even the freakin' Tea Partiers (at least most of them) would come around to that eventually.

If they don't give us opportunities to lead a life with dignity then we will have to make them provide a guaranteed minimum income to all citizens. They would give us no other option.

[Tetris_Iguana]

6. I think they'll just let us eat each other alive.

Just my hunch.

[Sherman A1]

7. Only if they can

Make money doing so.

[Half-Century Man]

8. If I, and millions of my peers, were laying starving on the ground

with a jack booted foot planted on our necks; my choice of entree would not be the scrawny sickly bastard next to me. But, the foot heavy with juicy meat above me.

But, I'll admit I have issues.

[Prophet 451]

20. They wont do it

If you refuse to work for two cents an hour, screw you, there'll be millions desperate enough to take it. Give this SCOTUS a case and they'll judge teh minimum wage unconstitutional too.

[conservaphobe]

9. Time to replace CEOs with computer programs as well.

if GeneratesProfit = 1
BusinessAsUsual()

[NightWatcher]

11. I like when the clerks at home improvement stores tell me to use the self checkout

"You know, that's your replacement right?"

Idiots are cutting their own throats. If I worked at a big box store, I'd be throwing my wooden shoes at those things every chance I got.

[MohRokTah]

14. They're already doing what they threaten to do, so what does it matter.

They've already replaced waitrons with iPads in some restaurants.

I think it sucks and won't go to restaurants where I am expected to digitally place my order. If I wanted to digitally place my order I'd do it from the comfort of my own home to have it delivered, at which time I would tip the delivery person. And they would still ahve to pay that delivery person the minimum wage.

[SoCalDem]

15. I agree. The BEST part of going out

is being seated and waited on ..

[RandiFan1290]

16. Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase

[Rex]

17. I guess the business that do that need to be boycotted out of business.

So that those ipads can be freed up for a local public school.

[Prophet 451]

19. The threats never change

Every single time someone tries to improve the lot of workers, business screams that it will cost jobs. They said it when slavery was outlawed, they sit when the New Deal came into effect, they said it when the minimum wage was introduced and they said it every single time the minimum wage was raised. It's their go-to threat and it's always, always been a lie.