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Cicero posted:I'd like to believe this, but I've seen some poor rear end parts of the country. It can be hard to imagine setting the wage floor that high for areas that just don't have that much going on, economically. Nah, they talk about it in the article. So much of the populace has left that area due to lack of job prospects that they have to pay $14-15 to undocumented workers to do the labor, and figure they'd have to offer $18-20 to get legit workers to stay there. Everyone they interviewed is hilariously behind Trump despite being utterly terrified of ICE destroying their whole business with a single raid.
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Oct 3, 2018 02:36
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All of these labor being replaced by machines are ignoring that machines have to be bought. Capital investments are large up front costs. They’re also not cost less to use. They require far more in energy and have maintenance costs. I am not arguing that machines won’t replace labor, but saying even $1/hr wouldn’t survive is pretty laughable
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Oct 3, 2018 02:41
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Ungratek posted:All of these labor being replaced by machines are ignoring that machines have to be bought. Capital investments are large up front costs. They’re also not cost less to use. They require far more in energy and have maintenance costs. Compare against business-funded healthcare, and in a lot of menial positions the costs become relatively easy to justify.
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Oct 3, 2018 02:50
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I don’t disagree with that. More the assertion that it doesn’t matter what labor costs, they’ll be replaced anyways. The cost of labor is specifically what drives that decision
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Oct 3, 2018 02:57
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Capital expenditures, but also ongoing operational (physical location and utilities), maintenance and upgrade costs means robots hardly work for free. There is a price point where humans are cheaper. Edit: exactly what Ungratek said.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:03
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JustJeff88 posted:The truly sad part about this is that I would have guessed significantly lower, even in a high CoL state like Florida where energy costs are high because one has to run the AC all of the time or risk dying from the oppressive heat. Nothing personal against you or your father, but I've lived in the South and it's like being constantly smothered with a wet blanket that someone just took out of the microwave. Oh the south is terrible and Florida especially so. My second room as a child was a trailers exterior porch, so you don't have to tell me. The Dipshit posted:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement Basically no one means this when they use the word. They're generally referring to the appointed professionals in the bureaucracies of nations around the world who regulate a diversity of things.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:04
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BrandorKP posted:
But that is a core concept of the movement, to rely on such persons if they are experts. It is never make sense to conflate that with just of "make app to fire people" Mark Zuckerbergs.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:37
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baquerd posted:Capital expenditures, but also ongoing operational (physical location and utilities), maintenance and upgrade costs means robots hardly work for free. There is a price point where humans are cheaper. I think people are really picky about which "robots" they get upset at. Like if mcdonalds doesn't have cooks at the mcdonalds forming burgers from on site ground steaks but has it happen in a factory on a large machine that is fine, and if the guy controlling the supply chain with a stack of notebooks is replaced by a bunch of boxes and a barcode scanner or something that is seen as neutral or progress. But certain people are super upset at this new thing 'automation" if the cashier is replaced by a touch screen, like any other job could get replaced and it's no big deal. If someone invented a good self cleaning toilet people would be good with that, but if you can't yell at/flirt with the girl taking orders at mcdonalds it's all over. And that sort of touch screen stuff is specifically the kind of 'automation' that is extremely cheap and dropping in price rapidly.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:48
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I think people are really picky about which "robots" they get upset at. Like if mcdonalds doesn't have cooks at the mcdonalds forming burgers from on site ground steaks but has it happen in a factory on a large machine that is fine, and if the guy controlling the supply chain with a stack of notebooks is replaced by a bunch of boxes and a barcode scanner or something that is seen as neutral or progress. But certain people are super upset at this new thing 'automation" if the cashier is replaced by a touch screen, like any other job could get replaced and it's no big deal. If someone invented a good self cleaning toilet people would be good with that, but if you can't yell at/flirt with the girl taking orders at mcdonalds it's all over. And that sort of touch screen stuff is specifically the kind of 'automation' that is extremely cheap and dropping in price rapidly. I was at a McD's in Trump country PA a month or two ago, and they were basically trying to teach everyone how to use the touchscreens, which is odd, because this is like the birth place of sheetz and wawa. Anyways, the guy comes up to the register and the lady behind the counter is like 'we're moving to all touch screen ordering, let me show you how to use it' old guy yells 'gently caress this, I'm not gunna order from a computer' and walked out.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:57
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BrandorKP posted:Oh the south is terrible and Florida especially so. My second room as a child was a trailers exterior porch, so you don't have to tell me. Try being a British Jew in the Boiling South; in retrospect I think that I should have just basted myself in barbecue sauce and burnt myself at the stake. Ungratek posted:All of these labor being replaced by machines are ignoring that machines have to be bought. Capital investments are large up front costs. They’re also not cost less to use. They require far more in energy and have maintenance costs. baquerd posted:Capital expenditures, but also ongoing operational (physical location and utilities), maintenance and upgrade costs means robots hardly work for free. There is a price point where humans are cheaper. Putting aside the fact that Ungratek clearly doesn't understand hyperbole... since it is a fact that nominal wages will climb at least some, even if real wages drop or stagnate, while the cost of replacement technology drops, I'll take these terse and short-sighted replies to mean "We have no response for the inevitability factor of massive amounts of human labour replacement, so we will reiterate the same trite talking points in hopes that people will get tired and do something else." I understand completely if people are frightened about huge social changes and what's to come, and whether humanity is capable of handling it; I certainly have no faith in human nature given that all of history has been a story of a small, powerful minority being cruel and dismissive to the suffering masses who do the real work. I can also understand some myopia because human lives are short and social evolution, for good or ill, is a very slow process further impeded by the fact that the proverbial 1% have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo regardless of who it hurts. What I cannot understand is how people can see trends emerge for decades and think that putting wooden fences in front of a trundling behemoth is going to delay the inevitable. If your real concern is "I'm only interested in keeping things from going from bad to worse until I personally am dead because I care gently caress all for future generations who will take it up the arse if we do things my way", then just say so. You wouldn't be the first ones to do so, though you're still arseholes.
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Oct 3, 2018 04:01
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Toys R Us lenders cancel bankruptcy auction, plan to revive brands
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Oct 3, 2018 05:05
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Plinkey posted:I was at a McD's in Trump country PA a month or two ago, and they were basically trying to teach everyone how to use the touchscreens, which is odd, because this is like the birth place of sheetz and wawa. Anyways, the guy comes up to the register and the lady behind the counter is like 'we're moving to all touch screen ordering, let me show you how to use it' old guy yells 'gently caress this, I'm not gunna order from a computer' and walked out. I've done the same. If I wanted to spend twice as long loving about with a touchscreen as telling a cashier my order, I could get real food instead of crap. McD's is a purely impulse purchase, and anything that makes it more difficult makes me more likely to come to my senses and eat literally anything else instead.
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Oct 3, 2018 07:35
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That's pretty weird. In practice, you can have more touchscreens than active cashiers, so the increase in time it takes to order is canceled out by there being no or shorter lines to order. Unless you also walk out of any McDonald's that has any kind of line?
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Oct 3, 2018 09:04
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Freakazoid_ posted:Keep in mind that washington state passed a $13.50 minimum (gradual, it's 11.50 right now, 12.00 next year, then 13.50 in 2020) and the cheap/rural parts of the state have yet to show any sign of poo poo hitting the fan for them.
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Oct 3, 2018 09:09
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Cicero posted:Sure, but that's still only 11.50, not 15, and Washington state as a whole has a higher than average GDP per capita. 15 in Mississippi or West Virginia would probably be a different story. Obviously we still need some minimum wage increase since we've been at the current one for a long time with no increase to match even inflation, I don't see why a flat one across the whole country makes more sense than one that would factor in cost of living or economic productivity though. They’re talking about this in the doomsday econ thread as well right now & if you don’t see why 15 should be the nat’l minimum wage I encourage you to take a look. The reality is that 15 is just enough to pay your bills and feed your family and maybe save a hundo or so per month, even in Nowhere, KS.
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Oct 3, 2018 12:59
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But 15 is closer to what I make, and those people don't deserve to be close to my standard of living?  By standard of living, I mean capability of living. Edit: I've heard this argument in person, albeit with in simpler terms, so just for clarity this is a sarcastic post. im depressed lol fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 13:08
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im depressed lol posted:But 15 is closer to what I make, and those people don't deserve to be close to my standard of living? I was presented the argument that "I've struggled my whole life to get to where I'm at now, making $28/hr, and it's insulting that some kid can walk into a McDonalds and make $15." This was by an experienced machine operator at a factory owned my a multinational corporation who oversaw the production of literally millions of dollars worth of product every year. I was sent to assist his crew and ended up running the show myself in two months, making YOU GUESSED IT, $15/hr as a new hire.
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Oct 3, 2018 13:33
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JustJeff88 posted:Putting aside the fact that Ungratek clearly doesn't understand hyperbole... since it is a fact that nominal wages will climb at least some, even if real wages drop or stagnate, while the cost of replacement technology drops, I'll take these terse and short-sighted replies to mean "We have no response for the inevitability factor of massive amounts of human labour replacement, so we will reiterate the same trite talking points in hopes that people will get tired and do something else." I have a few issues with this argument. Replacement technology costs can only drop so much - they will always cost money to purchase and upkeep. If the costs of labor are less than the cost of the machines to operate, then labor will win out. I don't think it's inevitable that all labor will eventually be replaced with automation. Suppose we provided a sturdy and robust societal safety net to provide the equivalent to a "living wage" and eliminated the minimum wage entirely. If a person is willing to work for less than the cost of electricity and maintenance on the machines, even though they're working for pennies (perhaps out of boredom) they would not be automated out of a job. The core of my argument is that while increasing the minimum wage today benefits some of the remaining workers that still have jobs and that still have the hours that they used to, many others are hurt because price-sensitive consumers are driving labor cost-cutting measures.
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Oct 3, 2018 13:56
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Reynold posted:I was presented the argument that "I've struggled my whole life to get to where I'm at now, making $28/hr, and it's insulting that some kid can walk into a McDonalds and make $15." It's like $15/hr for a high turnover, undesirable McJob with nearly zero opportunities for growth (personal or professional), is possibly.... good? It's so apples and oranges. (Edit: but they are both fruit and should pay a living-fruit-wage as a baseline) It's nearly impossible to distinguish fast-food employee who should be fired (beyond simple clock-in metrics), someone who is performing their tasks adequately and someone who is putting in the extra 10% effort. Pretty much anyone who has worked in these type of jobs recalls their manager calling them in for the equivalent of a 'review' and basically not even acknowledging their existence before saying 'hey here's an extra nickel an hour'. Compare this to the value that your reliability, experience, loyalty and punctuality in a manufacturing environment should be worth and rewarded. I believe this is where your $28/hr co-worker is coming from. And it's not invalid. But people in this country are really, really into taking away from others in the name of fairness rather than thinking "Jeeze, I deserve(d) that too". im depressed lol fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 14:07
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BrandorKP posted:Oh the south is terrible and Florida especially so. My second room as a child was a trailers exterior porch, so you don't have to tell me. I was linking it to explain when somebody was using it in that sense to a poster who is 100% in the tank for the whole notion of "technology as capital-S Savior". It's almost perfectly aligned to his worldview. Why wouldn't I be surprised?
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Oct 3, 2018 14:27
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Cicero posted:That's pretty weird. In practice, you can have more touchscreens than active cashiers, so the increase in time it takes to order is canceled out by there being no or shorter lines to order. Unless you also walk out of any McDonald's that has any kind of line? Cashiers are also expo, so eliminating them makes service even slower. Taking orders faster does not get them through the kitchen or handed off faster.
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Oct 3, 2018 15:17
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Cicero posted:That's pretty weird. In practice, you can have more touchscreens than active cashiers, so the increase in time it takes to order is canceled out by there being no or shorter lines to order. Unless you also walk out of any McDonald's that has any kind of line? Every time they try this dumbass touchscreen thing it just confuses everyone and makes the line take twice as long. My local McDs has them, and offers coupons for using them, and still nobody does.
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Oct 3, 2018 15:34
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Rent-A-Cop posted:If I want to order from a screen I can use the app. But that poo poo is way more complicated than shouting "Gimme a double cheese and a sweet tea" at a box from my car. What if in the future they make a robot you can yell at?
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Oct 3, 2018 15:39
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:What if in the future they make a robot you can yell at? Though given a choice I would prefer to order my food from a person, and would expend some small amount of extra time/money to do so.
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Oct 3, 2018 15:56
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Cicero posted:That's pretty weird. In practice, you can have more touchscreens than active cashiers, so the increase in time it takes to order is canceled out by there being no or shorter lines to order. Unless you also walk out of any McDonald's that has any kind of line? Like many of your arguments you are technically correct. Humans are dumb and greedy and the most efficient way of doing things is often not the path of least resistance. Everyone who turns their time into labor to have its profit extracted deserves to be paid more. Period. I don't care if its less efficient for capitalism and consumers are price sensitive, I will literally fight you over it.** **I'm a dumb stupid human and that's my argument.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:31
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Also: yeah I will def walk out of a fast food place if there is a line
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Oct 3, 2018 16:44
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tbh if i see a line at fast food it's my last opportunity to bail and i take it. i can't be the only person who rationalizes the quality of food to the time spent acquiring said food. that's why that business model does all it can to keep lines moving, like the past decades implementation of those two-at-time order speakers  fake edit: actually i lied, i'm smarter than those sheep. here's a post about it. i'm above the marketing genius multi-billion dollar corporations whose whole point of existence is to find ways to make me part with my money.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:49
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im depressed lol posted:tbh if i see a line at fast food it's my last opportunity to bail and i take it. i can't be the only person who rationalizes the quality of food to the time spent acquiring said food. I hate those things for revealing how insanely petty people can be when they want their num nums and they want them now.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:52
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BlueBlazer posted:Humans are dumb and greedy and the most efficient way of doing things is often not the path of least resistance. Basically this, for me. I'm stealing the words of another goon here but, in short, I see that humanity has the ability to alleviate so much human suffering and doesn't for a variety of reasons of which greed is the primary, and it just cuts me like a knife.
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Oct 3, 2018 17:06
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Rent-A-Cop posted:If I want to order from a screen I can use the app. But that poo poo is way more complicated than shouting "Gimme a double cheese and a sweet tea" at a box from my car. Interesting. I wonder what the differences between our markets is that I see everyone going hardcore for the touchscreens. I'm downtown in a major city. I love that I am no longer stuck behind people who can't order in a timely fashion to save their life.
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Oct 3, 2018 18:05
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The Costco near me recently deployed a kiosk ordering system for the cafe and you only have to stand in line to talk to a cashier if you’re paying cash. When they deployed it, they had employees walking people through using it and I definitely heard multiple times that “we aren’t employing fewer people because of this system; the same number of people are still behind the counter.” It’s true, too. It’s the same amount of people working back there but now there isn’t a giant line of people waiting to order a single slice of pizza each.
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Oct 3, 2018 18:17
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im depressed lol posted:It's nearly impossible to distinguish fast-food employee who should be fired (beyond simple clock-in metrics), someone who is performing their tasks adequately and someone who is putting in the extra 10% effort. Pretty much anyone who has worked in these type of jobs recalls their manager calling them in for the equivalent of a 'review' and basically not even acknowledging their existence before saying 'hey here's an extra nickel an hour'. Is it though? Or is it that managers at that level aren't given the tools needed to actually manage their workforce, or alternatively, that they are not skilled enough to do so? If you as an employee can differentiate, why can't management? HEY NONG MAN posted:The Costco near me recently deployed a kiosk ordering system for the cafe and you only have to stand in line to talk to a cashier if you’re paying cash. Once people get used to it, what happens to those instructor positions?
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Oct 3, 2018 18:20
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baquerd posted:Once people get used to it, what happens to those instructor positions? Oh those folks aren’t there anymore but it’s not like they hired them just to show people how to order. They’re employees I see regularly walking around doing other work now.
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Oct 3, 2018 18:23
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HEY NONG MAN posted:Oh those folks aren’t there anymore but it’s not like they hired them just to show people how to order. They’re employees I see regularly walking around doing other work now. I'm trying to explain this behavior, do you have other possibilities to add to the below? A: Costco is not being run for-profit (obviously false) B: Costco didn't hire other workers they would have if these repurposed workers had not been available C: Costco puts enough value on employee satisfaction and loyalty that they are willing to eat the additional costs until option B would have come true
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Oct 3, 2018 18:59
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baquerd posted:I'm trying to explain this behavior, do you have other possibilities to add to the below? My understanding is that Costco is a pretty decent place to work at, they pay decent wages and provide actual benefits for their workers.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:09
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BlueBlazer posted:Like many of your arguments you are technically correct. As far as pay goes I'd be fine with a national $15 bill anyway even though I'm skeptical, because in practice they increase incrementally so you could always roll part of it back in the case that there really were negative economic impacts in some places.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:12
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Spring Heeled Jack posted:My understanding is that Costco is a pretty decent place to work at, they pay decent wages and provide actual benefits for their workers. Yes, but they're not a charity. Eventually, if they don't actually need the workers and the workers aren't providing value, the workers will either be let go or will take the jobs of workers who would have otherwise been hired, per my option "C".
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Oct 3, 2018 19:14
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baquerd posted:I'm trying to explain this behavior, do you have other possibilities to add to the below? E: It works like that time mcdonalds replaced it's car hop restaurant with a much more "automated" drive through window. And this let them massively expand both individual restaurants and their chain to become one of the largest employers on earth to the point that both the company and individual stores employee more people than when they used more labor intensive car hops.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:23
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baquerd posted:Is it though? Or is it that managers at that level aren't given the tools needed to actually manage their workforce, or alternatively, that they are not skilled enough to do so? my core point was more along the lines there being little distinction between doing a 'good' job and doing a 'bad' job. if you do a horrible, terrible, obstreperous job... you'll get noticed right quick and fired. if you do a bad job, might back up but maybe you don't do a bad job all the time.... so nothing happens. if you do a mediocre job.... nothing happens. if you do a great job, and everything goes smoothly.... nothing happens. there's no buzzer for your management when you're operating excellently. it's probably one of the following: -busy putting out other fires to look into individual performance of their sub-ordinates -the cost/benefit of that level of micromanagement just isn't there also, to assume that an employer like mcdonalds would want to give their easily replaceable employees hard data to point to and say 'hey look see here, i did a great loving job, better than average i deserve a loving raise!' is a bit naive. plus i'm sure whatever metrics they use would just be a moving goalpost until excellence was nearly impossible to achieve.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:26
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:E: It works like that time mcdonalds replaced it's car hop restaurant with a much more "automated" drive through window. And this let them massively expand both individual restaurants and their chain to become one of the largest employers on earth to the point that both the company and individual stores employee more people than when they used more labor intensive car hops. This is an interesting take. What is the real impact though? Obviously, for a small town in isolation, jobs have been lost. Just as obviously, across the nation, employment by the chain is increased. Can we draw conclusions about overall employment numbers of retail employees based on this though? Are these jobs being taken from competing businesses in some fashion, possibly mitigating or even reversing the overall job growth at a national level? im depressed lol posted:my core point was more along the lines there being little distinction between doing a 'good' job and doing a 'bad' job. if you do a horrible, terrible, obstreperous job... you'll get noticed right quick and fired. if you do a bad job, might back up but maybe you don't do a bad job all the time.... so nothing happens. if you do a mediocre job.... nothing happens. if you do a great job, and everything goes smoothly.... nothing happens. there's no buzzer for your management when you're operating excellently. I agree completely that this is how it works in practice, and I've worked for multiple fast food chains growing up. I would argue there is simply no company infrastructure in place to give retail managers the ability to actually award high performers, but I haven't been involved in retail management myself. I think you nailed it in that the companies do not want to actually provide employees the ability to differentiate themselves and actively embracing the high turnover/"stick only" method of behavior reinforcement.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:36
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