McDonalds Reacts To $15 Minimum Wage Announces Automation In All U.S. Stores

This post comes from the “Department Of I Told You So.”  Back in August we reported that a Heritage Foundation study looked at the effect of the $15.00 minimum wage on a state by state basis the progressive program would put between 7 and 9,000,000 Americans out of work. The first indication that the unemployment wave may be happening is the latest news that McDonald’s is planning to expand its digital self-serve ordering stations and table service to all of its 14,000 stores in the U.S.

According to CNN

The changes are already starting to show up at locations in Florida, New York and Southern California, where 500 restaurants have been updated. Restaurants in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, D.C. and Seattle will get upgrades in early 2017.

The Daily Caller points out

The locations that are seeing the first automated kiosks closely correlate with the fight for a $15 minimum wage. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a new $15 minimum wage for New York state in 2016, and the University of California has proposed to pay its low-wage employees $15. Florida’s minimum wage will rise Jan. 1, 2017. Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15 in 2014, followed by San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Of course Cuomo is pushing hard to implement every progressive program possible, he’s already pushed through oppressive gun laws, banned fracking which would add jobs and income to the state, and made sure the state would attract illegal immigrants criminally trespassing aliens.  The guy wants to be the 2020 Democratic Party nominee.

The Daily Caller explained how the Kiosks work:

Customers place their order at touch screens, and then receive a number with a “digital locator,” which then notifies staff to where the customer is sitting. Once the order is ready to serve, a McDonald’s employee delivers the food to the customers table.

News of McDonald’s plans to expand its digital self-serve ordering stations and table service to all of its 14,000 American restaurants backs up concerns that the fight for $15 will expedite the growth of automation and robots. Aparna Mathur, Resident Scholar for Economic Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that a push for a $15 minimum wage might just be enough for companies to expedite plans to automate industries such as fast food.

“We know that we don’t really need someone to take an order [fast food], and we will eventually have machines do it. It is risky to fight for something that could put you out of work,” Mathur told The DCNF.

Here’s the bottom line. Of course people need to make a living wage, and I understand the calls for a $15 minimum. But that needs to be balanced with what the worker is worth. Companies hire workers when the additional earnings their labor creates exceeds the cost of employing them. Starting wages of $15.00 per hour mean full-time employees must create at least $38,700 a year in value for their employers (including wages, employer payroll taxes).Such a high hurdle makes it harder to fill jobs for unskilled workers, and in the case of McDonald’s those unskilled workers will eventually be replaced by machines.

Neither McDonald’s nor any other company cannot pay someone a salary that would cause the company’s profits to drop, or worse cause them to lose money. If they did that they would cease being profitable and eventually will go out of business.

So go ahead progressives– push for the $15 minimum wage, it wont generate a “living wage” for those who will lose their jobs.  Oh and don’t think it’s just McDonald’s working on automation, every major fast food operation is developing something similar.

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