If you are stuck in a mindlessly repetitive minimum wage job, remember it is the progressives who wish to tether you to that job . . .

The Replacement Continues

. . . not Maddog. 

"Minimum wage hikes are rippling across the economy, and corporations are responding just as you would expect them to. Investor’s Business Daily reports:

Wendy’s said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.

It will be up to franchisees whether to deploy the labor-saving technology, but Wendy’s President Todd Penegor did note that some franchise locations have been raising prices to offset wage hikes.
McDonald’s has been testing self-service kiosks. But Wendy’s, which has been vocal about embracing labor-saving technology, is launching the biggest potential expansion."

We at the Lair discussed this here:

Wendy's, regarding that new minimum wage, there is more than one way to skin a cat . . . 

"This was going to happen anyway, and the elimination of mindless, routine work thanks to automation is, in the long run, a great blessing for the human race. But at a time when we haven’t yet mastered the art of creating new jobs fast enough to ensure rising living standards and steady employment in the face of rising automation, it seems like a bad time to accelerate the job loss trend.

We don’t need laws against robots or progress, but we don’t need laws that hasten the elimination of low-skilled employment either."

This is what happens when one believes in ideology to the level of religious fervor. One becomes incapable of seeing the world as it is, and can only see the world as it is believed. Nothing will stop these changes. It is we who want to pay less, and it is we who want to remove the human from the burger making chain. We don't have to worry about dropped burgers, washed hands, or working while sick if a robot makes them. 

"If we’re concerned about improving opportunity for those at the bottom, we should be looking at ways to supplement incomes for low-skilled workers (such as the EITC, or government matches for retirement, child care, and health savings accounts), or at policies that might help them acquire more skills. Passing radical minimum wage increases that risk condemning thousands to permanent joblessness is the wrong move."

Progressives are hidebound to maintain the current system, mostly because if offers the greatest amount of graft, but also because they spent the past 100+ years optimizing it. And now, it is kaput. No amount of Miracle Oil, or carnauba wax will bring it back to life. Maddog finds it impossible to believe that progressives like being wrong as much as they are, but until they throw off the yoke of the secular progressive religion, and begin to see the world as it is and not as they wish it were, they will continue to be wrong. 

And as Mead notes, the fix for most of this is relatively simple and inexpensive. Retarget the EITC to address these concerns, and have some significant amount of the EITC pay directly into retirement, medical payments savings accounts, unemployment savings accounts, etc. Additional matching funds, would be a very good idea, as would EITC funding for children of the poor to help defray the cost of education, among other things. 

These economic changes cannot be stopped, they can be delayed, or accelerated. Why progressives seeking to delay them would cause acceleration and fete this outcome is beyond me.

This is the Jodie Foster Effect:

"How do these people have all the time to know the things that they know?” She searched for the answer to her own question, and smiled. “I think I’m just not . . . I’m not a fact person. I don’t really care about facts. I don’t even really retain them and I find them anxious-making. I like ideas.” 

Jodie Foster on Wall Street’s ‘Rigged System,’ Mel Gibson, and Stars’ Right to Privacy

They don't care about facts, they find facts make them anxious, and so avoid them. And like Jodie, they simply bask in ideas they like. Mostly this means adopting an ideology which makes them feel good about themselves, regardless of actual outcomes.

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