OT- Robots coming to McDonalds

[Mike1974]

I wonder if people thought of ANYTHING ELSE besides McDonalds when they thought of "minimum wage" if the outlook would be different.

I'm not sure I follow. You mean because McDonalds seems like such a low skill job, or the pricing of the food...?

As to your earlier post referencing FDR in '33, well times have changed. I think the problem with McDonalds specifically is they employ lots of part time workers. Of course you can't support a family on $8/hr 30 hours a week! So instead of that person getting two jobs and working 50 hours a week, they bitch they should get paid more. Now if you have read my posts, I hate working more than 40, but sometimes you do what you gotta do. And for the record, I don't think minimum wage is remotely fair, or a living wage, but goddamn it if you make minimum wage do yourself a favor and don't have an iphone, premium cable, 2pack/day smoking habit, etc...

I myself have never, NEVER made minimum wage. My first job I got $5/hr when the minimum was $4.75. I got promotions there, and then went into tool and die and the rest is history. Not that I was special, just that place paid a little bit more to start.

On the flip side, my sister has ALWAYS made minimum wage. We are different people. I have always been one to try and better myself, where she is one of the people bitching about raising the minimum wage, instead of her increasing her own personal skills and therefor pay range.

 

[Mike1974]

Blech...
I also hate the trend to have professionals do things that aren't their job because of automation.
Used to have a travel agent...now it's book it your self.

Speaking of, where I work we have a pretty good sized HR department, but we have to do everything ourself. Health ins, vacation, travel, training, everything is online thru web portals and such. I know that is not uncommon now, but I wonder what HR does then....??

 

[JNieman]

I'm not sure I follow. You mean because McDonalds seems like such a low skill job, or the pricing of the food...?

I mean people think McDonalds workers don't deserve a higher wage at all, so they think the minimum wage shouldn't be raised at all. However, in doing so, they chop the feet out from under all the people making minimum wage, or near it, at jobs in manufacturing or other industries they may respect more than McDonalds. It's like some people can't stand to see McDonalds workers making a little more money, so they'd sacrifice the reasonable compensation American workers have been guaranteed for -decades-.

As to your earlier post referencing FDR in '33, well times have changed. I think the problem with McDonalds specifically is they employ lots of part time workers. Of course you can't support a family on $8/hr 30 hours a week! So instead of that person getting two jobs and working 50 hours a week, they bitch they should get paid more.

I don't think it's as simple as that. Many are working two jobs. But what a 50 hour part time worker doesn't get, that a 40 hour full time workers gets, is basic benefits (usually) that are much more affordable and necessary for families.

I honestly don't think anything about what I posted from FDR has changed. I don't think predatory business practices should exist in this country. I don't think a business dependent upon a persons labor, even if part time, should be able to pay them less than standard wages that provide a reasonable life. Part time or full time. Just because a person works 30 hours for a business instead of 40 doesn't mean their time, per hour, is worth less.

Now if you have read my posts, I hate working more than 40, but sometimes you do what you gotta do. And for the record, I don't think minimum wage is remotely fair, or a living wage, but goddamn it if you make minimum wage do yourself a favor and don't have an iphone, premium cable, 2pack/day smoking habit, etc...

The "welfare queen" diatribe has been proven to not be a widespread problem. If you have a family, these days you HAVE TO HAVE internet in order to complete schooling. My brother is much worse off than I am, and I've given my nephew an old laptop to do school work that requires MS Word and other misc things. It requires internet for research and for accessing the school site. LUCKILY they live within range of a good friend who gave them their wifi password, so all I had to pay for was a network adaptor for the laptop. So that's a $20/mo bill right there, $50/mo in some places, if you're not lucky enough to share. It's just not as simple as people would like to think. $7.25/hr certainly wouldn't be good enough. I made that at McDonalds when I was 16 after a couple small raises. That was in the 90s. The avg price of gas, food, utilities, etc has certainly gone up a whole lot for that wage to have stagnated... yet McDonalds doesn't seem to have any trouble profiting safely.

Companies in general need to pay a decent wage. The only reason it will "hurt" right now is because they built their business around predatory employee compensation. That's to be expected, really - you play the game within the rules that are there. That doesn't mean we can't change the rules. They'll change to suit, like businesses change to suit everything as life goes on.

 

[Mike1974]

JNieman, I assume the "welfare queen" comment refers to people having luxuries they can't really afford, right? Well it might not be universally true, but true enough from my perspective. I don't know anybody (personally) that is struggling with two part time jobs, or making minimum wage, that doesn't appear to be living as well as me. What I mean is, I have worked my whole life to get where I am at*, started my apprenticeship at 19 and worked in this career ever since. I don't think I have 'nice' things, but I kind of do what I want, meaning I eat out when I want, buy shit when I want, etc. The people I know working min wage (and so on) do the same damn things, but they never have money to pay bills, utilities shut off AGAIN, etc. So they could pay bills and such if they didn't have the extra shit. Sorry, ranting a little bit... Anyways, yes I know in this day and age a cell phone and internet are almost must haves, but you don't need the latest iphone (with the $40 otter box), you don't need the fastest internet....

* My point being I guess that people IMO should be trying to work their way out of the minimum wage job, not just wanting the wage to go up...

 

[JNieman]

* My point being I guess that people IMO should be trying to work their way out of the minimum wage job, not just wanting the wage to go up...

Why not both? It's hard to do much to better yourself when you're stuck on minimum wage. Especially when you're constantly crushed under the stress of having utilities shut off, paying late fees, etc. It's a downward spiral that only serves to kick people when they're down. Debt is a bitch.

 

[Scottl]

The "welfare queen" diatribe has been proven to not be a widespread problem. If you have a family, these days you HAVE TO HAVE internet in order to complete schooling.

While that is undoubtedly true and a cell phone is also a modern requirement to communicate the "Obamaphones" given out have so many minutes it works out to over eight hours talk time PER DAY! That seems a bit over-generous with other people's money. The phones are provided by a division of TracFone and all TracFone users pay a fee to subsidize them in addition to tax dollars and the Federally required charges on all cell phone bills.

The "welfare queen" may not be much of a problem where you live but in states with more generous benefits it certainly factors in. Since Massachusetts started issuing benefits by EBT cards there have been numerous scandals involving misuse, including some by illegal aliens.

 

[Miguels244]

Speaking of, where I work we have a pretty good sized HR department, but we have to do everything ourself. Health ins, vacation, travel, training, everything is online thru web portals and such. I know that is not uncommon now, but I wonder what HR does then....??

They hire the Indian software companies to write that code.

 

[Miguels244]

Why not both? It's hard to do much to better yourself when you're stuck on minimum wage. Especially when you're constantly crushed under the stress of having utilities shut off, paying late fees, etc. It's a downward spiral that only serves to kick people when they're down. Debt is a bitch.

Hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no shoes.

 

[JNieman]

The "welfare queen" may not be much of a problem where you live but in states with more generous benefits it certainly factors in. Since Massachusetts started issuing benefits by EBT cards there have been numerous scandals involving misuse, including some by illegal aliens.

I know it's a real situation that has existed in some instances. I just mean to say that we shouldn't use that as a reason to trip up the 90%+ that are not abusing the system beyond it's intention, just to "stick it" to the relatively few scumbags.

 

[Miguels244]

I don't think predatory business practices should exist in this country. I don't think a business dependent upon a persons labor, even if part time, should be able to pay them less than standard wages that provide a reasonable life. Part time or full time. Just because a person works 30 hours for a business instead of 40 doesn't mean their time, per hour, is worth less.

Commie....

 

[Scottl]

I know it's a real situation that has existed in some instances. I just mean to say that we shouldn't use that as a reason to trip up the 90%+ that are not abusing the system beyond it's intention, just to "stick it" to the relatively few scumbags.

Never suggested that. I wouldn't give to the food pantry if I thought poor people didn't exist. What I object to is poor policing of the system. The illegals were able to exploit a system that meant to keep them out by getting driver's licenses under false identities and then using the license to sign up for benefits. You would be amazed at how good benefits can be in Massachusetts. The last data I saw ranked us third in welfare generosity after Hawaii and Washington DC. There are so many benefits once in the system it's not hard to see why some might prefer it to working. As the relative's experience showed, the state does not really help people to get off welfare. To the contrary they seem to hinder attempts at self sufficiency and women who do succeed tend to be of very strong character and resolve.

I would like to see a world that helps people in distress but also provides chances to recover and IMO only a strong and stable job market can do that. We have several cities that are nearly bankrupt due to too many people receiving tax dollars rather than paying them. That is disgraceful in a state with so much going for it economically. Look up the statistics on Mass. sometime and you will see that our economy rivals that of some small countries.

 

[Miguels244]

I would like to see a world that helps people in distress but also provides chances to recover and IMO only a strong and stable job market can do that. We have several cities that are nearly bankrupt due to too many people receiving tax dollars rather than paying them. That is disgraceful in a state with so much going for it economically. Look up the statistics on Mass. sometime and you will see that our economy rivals that of some small countries.

You need to vote for Democrats if that's what you really think.
They have a much better track record of both fiscal responsibility and a good general economy...we all know how well trickle down works.

 

[JNieman]

You need to vote for Democrats if that's what you really think.
They have a much better track record of both fiscal responsibility and a good general economy...we all know how well trickle down works.

Possibly, literally, the only thing I like about Trump is that he has been attacking our recent history of economic / trade debacles. I think his vulgar ethnocentrism/xenophobia would be a benefit to our domestic manufacturing.

I think Bernie Sanders would be better, since he's discussed in much more thorough detail what we did wrong, and how we should be doing it, and I like what he says about what we should do with trade. Plus he has a voting record that shows he means what he says.

But Trump uh... he might accidentally/coincidentally do something productive on that subject while he's on his intranational crusade. I'll give him that much.

 

[Miguels244]

Possibly, literally, the only thing I like about Trump is that he has been attacking our recent history of economic / trade debacles. I think his vulgar ethnocentrism/xenophobia would be a benefit to our domestic manufacturing.

I think Bernie Sanders would be better, since he's discussed in much more thorough detail what we did wrong, and how we should be doing it, and I like what he says about what we should do with trade. Plus he has a voting record that shows he means what he says.

But Trump uh... he might accidentally/coincidentally do something productive on that subject while he's on his intranational crusade. I'll give him that much.

Bernie is a policy wonk.
Interestingly almost everything he proposes has, at one time or another been in place in the USA.
Usually in the halcyon years conservatives like to hark back to...Of course, leave-it-to-beaver land never really existed.

 

[JNieman]

policy wonk.

I had to look that phrase up. Looks like I learned something new today - I'm going home early!

Yea, I'd agree - he seems to be very interested in studying the past, studying other examples, and making thoughtful proposals. I may not agree with all his ideas but he seems to actually care about doing his best at his job. IMO, /every/ legislator should be a "policy wonk" because that is there primary job role.

 

[adama]

#5....will it be able to make change without using its "fingers"?

In all honesty that would be incredibly hard to do robotic-ally the same way a human does, actually using a optically read finger position of only 10 digits for the memory to do it. Code wise its so damn simple just to do it in memory, but actually counting fingers optically would be way hard!

 

[greenbuggy]

While that is undoubtedly true and a cell phone is also a modern requirement to communicate the "Obamaphones" given out have so many minutes it works out to over eight hours talk time PER DAY! That seems a bit over-generous with other people's money. The phones are provided by a division of TracFone and all TracFone users pay a fee to subsidize them in addition to tax dollars and the Federally required charges on all cell phone bills.

The "welfare queen" may not be much of a problem where you live but in states with more generous benefits it certainly factors in. Since Massachusetts started issuing benefits by EBT cards there have been numerous scandals involving misuse, including some by illegal aliens.

Please stop calling them "Obamaphones" the program was started by conservative heartthrob and renowned steaming piece of shit Ronnie Reagan, though in his time it only applied to landlines. You can thank GWB for expanding the program to include cellular phones - I'm under the impression that nowadays the program is hardly used for landlines at all. The only connection Obama has to this program is an FCC overhaul that happened under his watch aimed at curbing waste and fraud in 2012.
Free 'ObamaPhones' for Welfare Recipients : snopes.com

For fucks sake, throw Obama under the bus for stupid, crony and wasteful shit he's actually responsible for, not made up shit because you can't be bothered to use GOOGLE.

 

[Mjdentist]

Robots will be out just as soon as 3D printed burgers are possible.

Yeah right...LOL

 

[capital7]

In all honesty that would be incredibly hard to do robotic-ally the same way a human does, actually using a optically read finger position of only 10 digits for the memory to do it. Code wise its so damn simple just to do it in memory, but actually counting fingers optically would be way hard!

These are my favorite posts, working out the technicalities of a sarcastic idea :p

 

[capital7]

Also, to add to this... Where I live, the McDonalds has touch screen ordering, and they take debit, so unless you use cash, you don't need a cashier, we're getting closer.