$15 Minimum Wage Fallout: Machines Replace People At McDonalds

Welp. They can’t say they weren’t warned. When the union-backed ‘Fight for $15’ first started, economists, business owners and anyone who understands basic math warned that if unskilled, entry level workers were required to be paid $15 per hour, companies would start looking into automation.

The left cried nonsense! and told us we were just trying to scare poor people.

And yet here we are.

Earlier this month, McDonald’s announced the nationwide roll-out of touchscreen self-service kiosks. In a video the company released to showcase the new customer experience, it’s striking to see employees who once would have managed a cash register now reduced to monitoring a customer’s choices at an iPad-style kiosk.

It’s not just McDonald’s that has embraced job-replacing technology. Numerous restaurant chains (both quick service and full service) have looked to computer tablets as a solution for rising labor costs that won’t adversely impact the customer’s experience. Eatsa, a fully-automated restaurant concept, now has five locations—all in cities or states that have embraced a $15 minimum wage. And in a scene stolen from The Jetsons, the Starship delivery robot is now navigating the streets of San Francisco with groceries and other consumer goods. The company’s founder pointed to a rising minimum wage as a key factor driving the growth of his automated delivery business.

There is a threshold for what business and consumers can bear. It’s too bad that so many young adults who are transitioning from school into the workforce will have an even harder time doing so in the future.

A $15 minimum wage is worthless if there are no jobs in which to make the wage. And this ultimately serves as an example that the real minimum wage is always $0.

Of course, the unions feel it’s no skin off their back when they shutter businesses and the jobs they provided with them. Their coffers continue to grow and they are able to buy more protesters and ad space to continue their wage war which then puts more young people and struggling Americans out of work.

Way to go guys.

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