

Minimum-wage push could bring robots to restaurants - russ5russ
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/minimum-wage-push-could-bring-robots-to-restaurants/ar-BBlNiTA

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onion2k
Robots are the excuse, not the reason. The fact is, a robot is cheaper than a
$15/hour burger-flipping employee, but it's also cheaper than a $7.50/hour
employee, so the automation is practically inevitable. All the robot 'cost
savings' are coming regardless, and fewer people will be employed (or they'll
change employment to something else).

The only reason to keep wages low is to save money on the salary costs of jobs
where a robot _can 't_ replace a human. Arguing that wages shouldn't go up for
those people who robots won't replace only serves to protect profits and
income for the people at the top.

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hnal943
Even accepting your argument, there still comes a point where:

    
    
      [wages of robot-replaceable employees] + [current wages of non-replaceable employees] > [robots] + [higher wages of non-replaceable employees]
    

And $15/hr for robot-replaceables may well be that point.

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devrelm
I think the idea is that $7.25/hr is already that point.

Let's say that each of these robots costs $10k per year, including R&D and
maintenance. Let's also say that because of inefficiencies with having people
order their own food or with assembly ultimately being done by hand, a store
has to install 6 robots to replace 3 workers.

    
    
        3 workers * $7.25/hr * 8hrs/day * 365days/year = $63,510
        6 robots * $10k/robot = $60,000
    

So it is actually less expensive already to replace minimum-wage workers with
robots. The minimum-wage issue has very little to do with it besides trying to
keep wages low in general.

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tariqali34
A blogger created a calculator that allows you to determine (over a 5-year
time frame) whether it is cheaper to buy an expensive robot and do automation
or to just use manual labor and to save the excess in Treasury bonds. He found
that when the minimum wage is at $7.25, it would be slightly cheaper to hire
humans, and if the minimum wage is raised to $10.10, then it would be slightly
cheaper to hire robots.

The blogger assumes that it would cost $150,000 to build the robot, including
R&D and maintenance. This comes out to $30,000 per year (while your
assumptions claim that the bots only cost $20,000 per year to replace one
human).

[http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/01/business-m...](http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/01/business-
math-robots-or-minimum-wage.html#.VdHwijZRHIU).

I don't know which assumption is correct, though I would guess that eventually
bots will be cheaper as we get better making them.

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devrelm
I'm thinking specifically in the case of McDonalds and other large chains
where the costs of R&D and dedicated maintenance staff would be spread over
thousands of restaurants.

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JoeAltmaier
I look forward to an entirely robotic fast-food joint. Drive up, wave your
rfid card, get a list of your last 5 menu choices, poke at one, food comes out
the slot in a bag. No human involved.

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illegalsmile
Restaurant means different things to different people. To me, I do not care if
a fast food establishment (McDonald's, Qdoba, Panera, etc...) replaces workers
with robots. The food and experience already feels autonomous and
disconnected.

I do not see robots replacing servers at non-fast food places for a long time
if ever.

They bring up grocery stores but I think most employees, especially check out
clerks, will be replaced by machines. As much as I love to talk to the older
person about their grandkids while they, slowly, scan my items I would be OK
with dumping my items onto a tray and having the machine do all the work.
Almost like self checkout except for a robot replacing me.

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silveira
Robots are comming to restaurants regardless. There is already touch kiosks
where you can order in some restaurants, there is one at a Panera Bread near
me, and many in some airports.

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eli_gottlieb
Woohoo! About time we got to automating the tedium away!

