Will Fast Food Workers Be Replaced By Computers?

You may wish to look at it that way, but I don't believe corporations do anything more than pay people what the labor they perform is worth, and quite often much more than they are worth. Our constantly devaluing currency presents a much greater problem in my opinion.

 

And that's the recorded truth. Pfffh.

 

Jack In The Box has kiosks.

 

It's just that it isn't concerned about in India. I gotta' wonder about that security guard's job at the Airport.:mickey:

 

Yeah, I suppose 15-20 million a year could be labor intensive. In a pigs eye!!

 

There is the other security company which lies too about it's job guarantee: claims a lower hourly pay; but is more sophisticated in it's english lesson for explanation. Is that a fact; we're lying too.

 

Nobody shed a single tear when video store workers were replaced by a Red Box.

 

Sure--machines need work-not people.

 

People design, build and repair machines, and people are also employed to acquire the raw materials used to build them from,
That, my dear friends, is what we call progress. While some jobs may be lost many other jobs are created.

 

It's not progress when it displaces more jobs than it creates.

 

Well, replacing people with machines would be progress to some. Not to those replaced, of course. But that doesn't really matter now, does it. The machines will be good consumers, I'm sure. Those replaced will not. Again--doesn't matter. The quicker most everyone is replaced by machines, the quicker everyone gets to sit on their asses and rake the money in. You know--like the ones that initiate the replacements.

 

Good point Scratcho. How it will effect the economic model? A displaced or unemployed worker has less money to spend, contribute to the economy.

At the time of the industrial revolution, people were required to not only build the machines but maintain and tend them. At least displaced workers had those and other employment opportunity's.
Nowdays the machines replacing people no longer need tending, they are 'smart' (controlled by computer) and are built more and more in robotized factories.

Of Henry Fords factory employees many were also loyal customers.
Would a machine have dreamt of one day owning their own beautiful Ford automobile?
No, machines don't have hopes and dreams. People do.

 

You get a recession and a shrinking middle class that's what you get.

The households who depended on those manufacturing or simple jobs (like fast food cashiers for example), have less to spend, less to invest, less money to endure emergency car or medical insurance or rent/mortgage/ property taxes.
If that happens on a mass scale as we saw in 2008 and a little bit before that you have entire towns property values plummeting.

That effects home values because the neighborhood goes to shit, looting a happen.

Cash flow at a constant rate is the most important thing to a healthy economy, that's why unemployment benefits are so important along with other safety net programs. They help families endure economic transitions.


In the case of machines(and TIME magazine had an article about this very subject about machines replacing workers) it is a tipping point where even high level thinking jobs are being replaced by machines.

So the answer is yes and it's not really debatable when you look at the facts. Machines are creating machines, and maybe only a handful of engineers and designers spent some time inventing the machine and then once designed they're job is done. Meanwhile their invention might replace 100K workers.

This dynamic throws classical economic theories out the window. Because the labor to market to firm/business back to labor market is broken.

 

Eventually the machines would have all of the money and we would have none. What then?

 

The massive profit machines are obviously already in charge of most of the money and that money is being used to make them MORE money. The shuffling of paper to make money almost ruined the world economy, never mind the shrinking middle class workers that USED to do the work of this nation and were able to spend their money on the products they, themselves made. Profits over people is reducing us to soulless automatons. Use self checkouts at the grocery store? Not me.

 

I have to agree with the comment above me. Computers really are taking over everything. I use to work in a factory but i lost my job last septemeber. Computers in my honest opinion are evil.

 

I don't think you would feel that way if politicians hadn't made such a mess of it.

We've known computers and robots were going to displace more and more people since at least the 1970's. So, we should have had economic plans that took that into account. We should have had more investment in education and training and R & D. Instead, we got NAFTA and globalization which has created such misery for working people in America. And now, Obama is pushing hard for the Trans-Pacific Partnership which will push even more jobs offshore. Meanwhile, the Republicans say that creating jobs is their highest priority while they vote against every reasonable jobs bill, even the infrastructure bill for bridges and roads, which would have made total sense.

Computers are not the source of the evil. It's corporations putting profits ahead of people.

 

When a machine replaces a person--that person doesn't get to keep getting a pay check. That job for a living, breathing, money spending, family supporting person is gone.

When I worked in the Ford plant years ago, I had 5 tasks to complete as the Mustangs came by me, most likely a typical #, as did the others on the line wherever they were located. Management constantly would pick positions to attempt to eliminate, (say-position A)by taking one task away from that position and giving it to another position.(say-position B) Another task from the same position(A) would be given to yet ANOTHER position. (C-or any) We worked HARD enough keeping up with the tasks we were assigned. (not to mention the sneaky way they made the line go faster, not following the Union contracted reasonable, agreed upon speed. They would get caught, apologize and reset it correctly. For a while.) Sooooo--they had and used little suck-ass motherfuckers that would be placed in my assigned position (and others) to prove that one additional task could be done by me that was being taken from position A. Various other positions would "get" other segments from position A, until position A was eliminated. On and on it went until you have what you see now in those commercials with all the machines doing so many jobs. It frankly was a tedious boring job that I quit-----but--it was a good paycheck and had ALL the benefits companies USED to give as a matter of course. Machines don't need benefits or paychecks, thus the urge to convert to them as much as is possible, to the detriment of people that just want to work for reasonable wages and working conditions.

 

Machines don't call in sick, take maternity leave, neglect to show up to work, join unions, start pointless drama, steal from the company, demand a pay raise or a pay check, don't need lunch breaks, tell others how to do their job, don't join unions, don't need bennefits of any kind, and on and on. So I can see how machines sound very enticing to most industries. Machines have their flaws no doubt, but people can really suck.

 

A machine will never 'go the extra mile'
A machine will never be 'employee of the month'
A machine will never look up to their superiors.
A machine will never provide guidance or mentoring.

A machine will never be invited to the company Christmas party.