Another small piece on propaganda and how our media covers stories when a political point is at stake. Fast food restaurants are under increasing pressure to raise wages for their staff. Notably, the $15 minimum wage movement has been targeting McDonalds. The industry maintains it cannot afford to pay the workers because the costs are prohibitive. This week that discussion was carried out in a Forbes article with the former CEO of McDonalds, who claimed that the increase to $15 minimum wage would lead to robots and more automation.
www.forbes.com/...
Mind you McDonalds has been using more automation and cutting back on crews all along. And if their human staff weren’t all inefficient and would earn their keep at below subsistence level wages voluntarily, they could maybe keep their jobs. But if they want a living wage, those jobs will all disappear. But what isn’t the former CEO telling us? That these plans have been the intention all along, this isn’t about minimum wages but about wages, period. If a human can be replaced, they will be replaced, regardless of wages because the profit margins get bigger. Screw customer service too, ever argue with a machine and get it to redo your burger or give you the coke you wanted that actually had brown syrup in it instead of fizzy water because the machine broke? And mind you, who is going to replace the $35,000 robotic arm when it breaks and the repair man won’t be out for hours and no one is there to mind the store? The joke’s going to be on the poor franchise operator who doesn’t sell any food for hours or days.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/24/business/business-technology-robots-to-make-fast-food-chains-still-faster.html
Notice the date on that NYT article, 1988. The long term plan of McDonalds and other fast food restaurants was to replace humans as much as possible as soon as possible. There have been many iterations of upgrading technology since 1988. I continue to see new machines and new delivery techniques. The companies spent a lot of money to get here and now they want it to pay off big time. Pizza Hut has made a big move in Asia, tens of thousands of displaced workers, who didn’ t have any big wage increase, but finally the technology has arrived:
www.inquisitr.com/...
At this point neither McDonalds nor Pizza Hut is implementing this technology in the US. McDonald’s started in Europe. But it does beg the age old question, if we kill all the jobs with technology, who is going to be able to afford a combo meal in any event?
And how do these stories and issues get covered by a magazine that doesn’t take advertising:
www.consumerreports.org/...
Life is different is you aren’t paid to take a corporate line. You can see how many jobs are lost, the effect on overall wages not just in the industries that lost the jobs. And American workers, why haven’t they all be outsourced?. Because despite the wage differences, they are in fact, efficient. About a ten percent cost savings despite a huge wage difference. But will that efficiency be recognized or rewarded? It will not be, increase money realized by increased productivity is no longer shared with workers. It goes to profit payouts and massive increases in executive pay.
My personal belief, most humans are rapidly becoming expendable to multinational corporations. The companies seek ever lower wage havens where regulations don’t exist and they can recreate slavery without admitting to it. Slavery exists and affects as many people as it ever did in many places. If you have insufficient funds to be a worthwhile consumer, no specialized skills and make too much money, i.e., a $15 or more wage in the US, you have become a liability to be eliminated one way or another. The planet needs fewer people to be sustainable, but do we want the corporate overlords to determine who and what is worth saving.
To me, that is the choice for Americans going forward. Do we continue to consume our own, to marginalize and starve millions of opportunity so a few can reap all the rewards? Do we continue to work harder for less only to be reviled by the 1% as less useful than a robotic arm and takers and spoiled by sucking on the public teet? Do profits and wealth beyond spending mean more than lives? We have important choices to make if people are to have a future on this planet. The 1%, they don’t want to share, they believe greed is good and they are very, very good indeed.
A little anecdote, I eat at a fast food restaurant locally owned with table service. Since people can get their own drinks, they can serve more people by getting them seated and bringing the food out. They don’t pay a $15.00 minimum wage, but pay above the local fast food average, have a very stable staff and very loyal customers. Because patrons are important people. Something that robots just don’t understand.
