Uncategorized

The Real Reason Minimum Wage Must Be Raised To $15 An Hour

315 Comments

Recent wage increases in Seattle and New York have ignited a protest movement pressuring the federal government to enforce a $15 per hour minimum wage nationwide. Repeatedly, we have heard from Obama and other politicians that “It is impossible to raise a family on the minimum wage.” Fair-minded conservatives and libertarians have asked the reasonable question why someone would choose to raise a family while working an unskilled job meant for teenagers.

In fact, it is because these jobs require no skills that we should support the increase. In this article I will provide two important reasons why we must all support Obama’s mission to boost the minimum wage.

Eliminate Customer Service

They won't forget your extra pickles.

They won’t forget your extra pickles.

The first and most important reason to support the minimum wage hike is obvious: So that we no longer have to deal with customer service. Recently, I was in Paris in order to enjoy what remains of Western Europe before the collapse. While walking past a McDonald’s I saw something that forever changed my position on the minimum wage: automated machines to order food.

If the minimum wage suddenly doubled, a huge layoff would sweep across the nation. Instead of paying unskilled workers an inflated $15 per hour, businesses would turn to automated labor to offset the costs. Any initial costs incurred to invest in machines would be well worth the long-term gains of not having to deal with human employees. A machine doesn’t demand unreasonable wages, it won’t fuck up your order, and you don’t have to pay for its healthcare.

In a study published by the Manhattan Institute, researchers found that lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour would negatively impact 55 million workers and incur a loss of 6.6 million jobs. And what would replace them? Machines.

Your pizza won't be late.

Your pizza won’t be late.

McDonald’s has already implemented automated machines in the U.S. “to make it easier for customers to order and pay for food digitally and to give people the ability to customize their orders.” That is corporate-speak for “we’re doing it for you, but we’re really doing it for us.” If McDonald’s, a leading global franchise, sees profits rise as a result of this business decision, you can rest assured that other businesses will follow suit.

The online retail giant Amazon has announced their drone delivery system. This will fundamentally alter the way online business operate. Executives have been boasting that in some cases their drones will deliver in 30 minutes or less.

Walmart, another giant, has admitted that they will further experiment with mechanized labor. When their CFO was asked about this specific issue, he responded that Walmart “will always look for more efficiencies in our stores and in our supply chain and in our costs.” Imagine that, a business looking to cut costs. Recently, Walmart announced they are closing 269 stores.

Obamacare paid for my virus scan.

Obamacare paid for my virus scan.

Wendy’s, famous for their square burgers and the red-haired girl who can legally consent to sexual acts, has also turned to alternatives in the face of higher minimum wage demands. Their CFO has said Wendy’s will:

Look at initiatives and how we work to offset any impacts of future wage inflation through technology initiatives, whether that’s customer self-order kiosks, whether that’s automating more in the back of the house in the restaurant. And you’ll see a lot more coming on that front later this year from us.

A brief recap: President Obama fans the flames of the masses clamoring for wage hikes. In response, businesses move to automated labor to cut costs and increase profits. If this was intentional, Obama is a fraud. If it was not intentional, Obama is an intellectual midget. You do the math.

Why You Should Support The Hike

A machine won't spit herpes in your coffee.

A robot won’t spit herpes into your coffee.

Most people absolutely detest interacting with customer service. Once in a while you’ll get lucky and interact with a cute girl. More often than not, you’ll be dealing with a recent arrival from El Salvador or a vaguely homosexual guy with a lisp taking your order. The other day I ordered a pizza and the delivery person was not a cute girl. It was a 51-year-old man from a nation unknown reading my receipt to me in broken English while his sedan leaked a Rorschach test of fluids onto my driveway. If a drone replaced this guy because of a minimum wage hike, I think we’d all support it.

If you hate smiling at the bipolar barista on antidepressants taking your order, dealing with the heavyset lesbian checking your tickets at the football game, and shouting repeatedly into the speaker at the drive-thru because the fat chick on the other end is snapping SIF pictures for Tinder, this reform is for you. These unskilled workers will get their raise, and it’ll come with simple instructions to install updates on their replacement before they turn in their apron and name tag.

Reduce Immigration

My last shower was during Ramadan. Get in.

My last shower was during Ramadan— Get in.

This leads to the second reason why we must support increasing the minimum wage: less immigration. More and more jobs are being outsourced right in our own country to people who can’t speak America’s native language of English and do not respect its native culture. This is because they’ll work for low wages doing unskilled work.

Imagine the benefits of replacing the foreign cab drivers in major U.S. cities with self-driving Ubers. Rather than listening to Ahmed scream into his Bluetooth about how his 9-year-old daughter is finally ready for marriage, you could listen to smooth jazz brought to you by Spotify, all while saving money.

Say hello to the future.

Say hello to the future.

Once the Third World learns that they can’t get a job washing cars or mopping floors because the robots have taken over, the border issue will solve itself. Between that and Donald Trump’s wall, the future already looks brighter. Bring on the $15 minimum wage, we’re ready.

Read More: How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling

315 thoughts on “The Real Reason Minimum Wage Must Be Raised To $15 An Hour”

    1. Now watch the greedy capitalists justify their profits and explain why nobody deserves money but them.

  2. Interesting theory. But, I kinda doubt there would be an end to third-world immigration just because the jobs dried up.

    1. Yes, we still will have third world refugees, because feelings.
      “You must take all opressed people of the world into your country, or you’re a nazi”
      Liberals

      1. Nazis, Bolsheviks, and “liberals” are all same in that they are statists. Be sure to remind them every chance you get.

    2. We’re going to HAVE to drop the welfare state if we want these illegals to stop pouring over the border. It won’t be done but it needs to.

  3. No. It would increase the benefits bill greatly, and won’t stop the immigrants coming here for those benefits.

  4. A minimum wage is only as good as to the amount of goods and services you can buy with that purchasing power “in country”.
    For instance, Australians were gloating for years about how “high” their minimum wage was compared to the U.S. (about $17 per hour in Australia versus about $8 in the US) but that was misleading because the Australian dollar was just on steroids for a few years when it was hovering around 1-for-1 to the U.S. dollar. (It is now back down to Earth at it’s roughly 70 cents historical average).
    1 US dollar in the US still actually gets you something, in Australia an Australian dollar doesn’t get you jack shit. If you walk into the wrong store (most of them), just a friggin Coca Coca can be $4 Australian which was a ridiculous $4 US for a time. Beer, Accomodation, Fuel, the most basic ingredients to make a sandwich from the supermarket, all FAR higher in monetary costs for the same thing in the US.
    $17 Australian is literally their survival wage, assuming it’s a single adult living outside of home in a shared house and mostly cooking at home etc.
    I would say $15 USD minimum wage in the US is actually REALLY high. You can get a whole chicken at Sam’s Club for barely $5 for crying out loud. Depending on how you want to live, the US dollar has some serious teeth in country. In other lands like Australia, it simply does not.

    1. Very true, buying power is overlooked in favor of face value. The face value of a silver dollar is $1, but its melt value hovers around $14 USD due to the fact it contains precious silver.

      1. I’m a silver and gold bug. I heard stories (from my parents and other older folks) about the true buying power of the US dollar before we got off the gold standard and stopped using silver and copper in our coins. At one point in our history our dollars (greenbacks) were silver certificates.

        1. It’s insane man… If I had to pick the moment the West began to die, it would be the Federal Reserve Act. All the decay, in my opinion, was centralizing economic power (and later fiat currency) into the hands of central bankers to the point they became social engineers.

        3. You’re wrong; the moment the West began to die was when the Feds starting using the RICO Act against strip clubs. It was the day when the music (as well as many boners) died.

        5. You are too kind, but let us not forget the tragedy. Thanks to Johnny Brylcream, no longer can nubile, young co-eds grind on your crotch and have a little fun while working their way through med/law/MBA programs.

        6. It was the ultimate act of treachery committed against all living/future Americans and westerners. He who has the gold makes the rules. Also, debt makes all men and nations slaves. They get to create digital money out of thin air and set the interest rates on all debts. It’s a rigged game. If everyone around the world refused to pay, the elites would be screwed…but the sheep will not rebel. That’s why the people should rise up and reestablish usury laws and forgive all debts every 7 years.

        7. 100% agree. How would usury law affect our economy lending wise? I know the one time the US was debt free was when Jackson killed the bank/debt based currency in 1836. But is there any recent examples of a usury free economy to draw upon?

        8. The only current examples I can think of now are some communities in the Muslim world since debt is forbidden under Islamic law. I know in the past usually wherever there was a strong traditional Catholic majority in power, usury hardly ever existed. Very traditional churches, religions, and societies seem to be very anti-debt. Chicken or the egg argument; was this one of the reasons the elites attacked the traditional family structure? Just by observation people seem more free and adventurous and live by a different moral code when they are not indebted or enslaved. The environment seems to favor men that act like men.

        9. Have you heard of community currency? Several towns across America are printing their own money to keep funds local.
          The caveat is that they have to peg their currency to the dollar, which due to inflation, defeats the point. But I’m thinking the most realistic way to combat the Fed is grassroots debt free currency (or digital currency?) backed by precious metal.
          It’s far fetched, and it take a community with serious will power to pull it off, but I don’t ever see the Fed ending peacefully.
          They push Keynes as a genius in economics classes at school.

        10. I’m looking more into the Austrian school of economics. I have come to the conclusion that either Keynes was an idiot or was part of something more sinister; common sense tells me that his legacy had a more sinister purpose. Depending on your professor things could get a bit sticky (for you) due to the political environments of colleges if you publically challenge his Keynesian brainwashing. One of my professors (when I was in undergrad) was a former liberal turned conservative that followed the Chicago School of Economics. The market for liberty is an interesting book and can be downloaded for free if you look around on the internet. I heard of community currency before, that’s the catch it has to be pegged to the dollar and/or regulated, heard the gov has stepped on the neck of any organization that dared to cut off the leash.
          Bitcoin debit/credit cards are on the horizon:
          bitplastic.com
          Gold/precious metal backed debit/credit cards are available too:
          europacbank.com/products/metals-backed-account/
          sunnahmoney.com/2011/05/29/gold-bullion-debit-card-and-silver-bank/
          goldbulliondebitcard.com

        11. We’re two of the same. I’ve been a Pete Schiff fan for years (discovered him through Ron Paul). Thomas Sowell is another contemporary that comes to mind.
          I enjoy their lectures but want to read more into their influences: Rand, Rothbard, etc. I’ll check out the Market for Liberty.

    2. As nasty as this place is becoming, you mention a great fact. Other countries really sock it to people for groceries and daily living items, makes you appreciate what we can get with our dollar on home turf. As for the dudes below, actual gold & silver seems like a fools game. Gold is great to hide your assets into, & has much better liquidity than dumbass silver. However, IMO, you’d be better off just buying oil stocks while there is blood in the street right now and they pay you a dividend, rather than watching your gold in a jar for years.

      1. On the contrary, in a bimetallic system silver is the more liquid metal, as its lower value allows it to be traded for small purchases. Still, gold is the better way to hide your wealth.

        1. I’m poor so silver is good enough for me. If I was rich my silver would take up too much space. If I begin to run out of room to stash my silver I’ll trade some in for gold.

    3. Liberals are liberals precisely because they are stupid idiots. The economics of wage rates must obviously be 2 sided, what you get and what it gets you, what your pay is and what you are able to buy with your pay, but liberals are wickedly thick headed and arrogant and don’t want to think in more than one dimension. I hate liberals

  5. I completely approve of the pro-robotics-industry legislation and am glad our rulers are taking such a progressive approach.

  6. The border issue will be solved if the government wants to solve it. Simply stop giving any form of welfare or financial assistance to illegal aliens and there will be less incentive for people to come here.

  7. SJWs are too simple minded to understand economics.
    The $15 minimum wage would increase illegal immigration. The gap between the legal wage and true market value greatly increases. If your competitors are all paying $3 for Jose from Mexico, you have to do the same to compete.
    The wage problem could be solved by jailing employers that hire illegals. But they don’t want to do this. They want illegals.

    2. The wage problem could be solved by mandating take-home profit limits on business owners and CEO’s, and mandating company profit sharing to employees.
      Fuck your economics. It doesn’t take a god damn rocket scientist to see where the problem truly lies. The god damn problem is greedy motherfuckers raping consumer and employee wallets so they can take home billions in profit. THAT IS FACT but you’re all too fucking stupid and blind to see it.

        2. So vote yourself a pay raise like a socialist and get your job outsourced to foreign labor. Your decision. Markets set wages, not governments.

        3. The decision to not pay living wages is not my decision. It’s obvious who that decision lies with but I’ll leave the hard thinking to you.

        4. If you are an employee you work for what you choose to work for and what your employer chooses to pay you. If you don’t like your paycheck, go get a different job or ask your boss for more money. What skills do you have that have value to another person?

        5. Bullshit. You work where you can. You work for who will hire you. You can’t just work wherever the fuck you want. Maybe in your delusional fairy-tale reality you can, but not in real reality.

        6. Have you never voluntarily left a job to go and seek a better opportunity for yourself? Have you ever taken action to improve your skills to make yourself more valuable to an employer? You should try it, it is very liberating.

      2. Competitive companies can’t afford to rape their customers. And don’t suggest economic solutions without first understanding economics. Protip: all solutions involving the redistribution of wealth are economic solutions.

        2. What character defamation, i said nothing about you, and quite frankly i’m starting to suspect that you’re a puppet account, you ignorant dirty socialist.
          That’s character defamation, by the way. Completely justified in this situation.

        3. Insinuating I don’t know anything about economics is insinuating that I am stupid. I’m not a socialist and my account is far from a puppet account. I have independent thoughts and opinions that don’t align with any single label, so try again.

      3. All trade is voluntary, all employment is voluntary. Someone can only rip you off or rape you if you let them.,

  8. Get ready for it, because it’s going to happen in most of our lifetimes. And not just the min wage jobs. It will be other jobs too that are replaced by robot, some of them much more highly paid (the entire transportation sector will be pretty much eliminated in the next 15 years; taxis first, then buses, truck drivers and perhaps even airline pilots).
    And yes, I think most people underestimate how much others fucking hate interacting with them. I buy 100’s of things a year on Amazon, a lot of which I could buy locally (and perhaps even at a better price). But the fact that the shit just shows up and I don’t have to see/talk to people I’d rather not is worth the cost to me.
    Everyone seems to have this idea in their head that all people want to talk to/be around other people. Which is certainly true if you want something from that other person (like a job, or to fuck them). But if you just want a latte? Most people would rather key it into their phone and have it just appear, no human interaction required.
    The problem is that the vast majority of the people you deal with day to day have nothing to offer you. No interesting conversation (not smart enough). No insight into the product you want to buy (not smart enough). No differentiation in the product (it’s a fucking Big Mac, just hand it to me as quickly as possible). These people don’t enhance your day because they literally cannot offer you anything other than a service a robot can do better/faster.
    The big exceptions to this are hot girls (who can always offer you sex, so are always worth talking to) and interesting men (who can offer you advice/guidance and the benefit of their experience). Both are shockingly rare occurrences without seeking them out. Adding both groups together (hot girls and interesting men) brings you to what? Maybe 5% of the entire population of the US? And hence the reason why Amazon is such a fucking powerhouse.

    1. Amazon is the product of the E bubble same with Google. Amazon still barely profits if anything

    2. Well, the best thing about the transportation sector being automated is not having to smell the fucking cabbies.

    4. My only problem with this line of thinking is that it is ultimately destructive. Yes, in the society that we currently live in most interactions are unpleasant however, were throwing away the baby with the bath water. Human interaction that is not filtered through a computer or oppressive social constraint I.e feminism is culture, it’s the foundation of our collective existence. I like dealing with the people in my shop, the bank etc. if we al follow this way we’ll end up like some kind of coddled college woman. I say fuck that being in the mix unbowed and solid is (in my humble opinion) the only way. Duck safe spaces, yes our society is fucked. I don’t care, I support my communities, neighbours and businesses. I have no interest in putting my labour towards a computerized slave state.

  9. None of what you have said is better for me. These laid off workers will then go onto the public dole for free handouts at my expense. Hell, this shit already pays more than minimum wage – it’s amazing that anyone works for it. Immigrants will continue to come for the same reason.
    Like so many of the idiotic things that occupy our political debate, the minimum wage is chock full of half truths and lies.
    For example, take the idea that millions of Americans rely on a minimum wage salary to cover an entire family. Horseshit. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data on this: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2013.pdf
    The first page says 1.5 Million people depend on the minimum wage – that is not “millions,” plural. There are also 1.8 million with wages below the federal minimum wage. These are mostly workers like waitresses, who receive hourly wages less than the minimum, but receive tips that far outstrip the minimum. And because they are exempt from the minimum wage, any increased minimum wage will not affect them.
    Looking at the 1.5 million who earn exactly the minimum, over half of them are under the age of 25. In other words, they are unlikely to be struggling to support families. The first statistical table shows that over two thirds of this 1.5 million are part time workers, which likely means that they are not working this job as the sole source of income to support a family. So we actually only have about half a million people who work full time minimum wage jobs in this country.
    The second statistical table shows the geographic distribution of minimum wage workers. Of the minimum wage workers, only about half live in expensive areas like the northeast or west (the table doesn’t break these out by full and part time, but I’m assuming a standard distribution). So only about 250,000 of these full time minimum wage earners are potentially trying to support families in the most expensive areas. And, before we can assume that they’re facing the type of struggle outlined in this article, we would have to know that these people aren’t actually a second wage earner for their family (with the first earner pulling a decent salary), won’t ever get a raise, or that they aren’t receiving overtime. On that last point, Table 9 of the BLS report shows that about 20% of the minimum wage workers work 40 or more hours per week, which would entitle them to overtime.
    With all of the above, notice that the BLS doesn’t collect data on how many people rely on a minimum wage salary to cover an entire family even though they easily could. The reason is likely that if you collected this information, this convenient liberal talking point would evaporate. The closest BLS comes is on table 8 where they look at marital status, and note that this shows that the vast majority of minimum wage workers are young and have never been married.
    Before you start to lose sleep over the plight of minimum wage workers, think critically about it for a minute. The data is out there.

    1. It may be an excuse for something greater…that means something sinister.
      All groups of people will lose their jobs and will be drafted into the military as cannon fodder for this empire’s never ending series of international conflicts. Elite fat cats will be getting richer off of your blood and bones, while the earth gets depopulated to a number they’ll find acceptable.
      Everyone that belongs to the masses loses.

    2. Great research! Thanks for the stats.
      As a marketer, I always thought the minimum wage hikes had a hidden agenda to benefit the bigger corporations. It hurts all companies, but smaller businesses the most. The big corporations can adapt, and put the little guys under. Its like turning the lights out during a brawl. Everybody gets hit, but the biggest dude will be the last one standing.
      I remember growing up in Ohio 20 years ago with small shops and diners. Then applebees and other chains moved in. They had really cheap prices, and tons of sales and ads. Within five years, all the small shops went under. Then the prices came up. Today, my old town is just fast food, chain restaurants, and walmart.
      Big corporations are always thinking like this. I dont blame them. I blame the consumer who doesnt value his buying power.
      Im not looking forward to the robot replacements, but it is a logical assumption. After it causes the mass layoffs, do you think theyll all end up on welfare? Or is it possible theyll be encouraged to step up?
      I love this country for its entrepreneurialsm. People come here knowing they can be a cook today, and if theyre wise, be a business owner in a decade. Thats what keeps the machine churning.

      1. “Big corporations are always thinking like this. I dont blame them. I blame the consumer who doesnt value his buying power.”
        WTF world do you live on where slave wage workers have any buying power?
        “Im not looking forward to the robot replacements, but it is a logical
        assumption. After it causes the mass layoffs, do you think theyll all
        end up on welfare? Or is it possible theyll be encouraged to step up?”
        We’ll end up at your front door, by the thousands, armed, and ready to drag you and your entire family out in the streets for public execution.

        2. Label me again motherfucker. I’m no fucking marxist, go back to your mommy with the name calling.

        4. I had a high school level education before I ever even went to high school. Wish I could say the same about you.

  11. Oh you cheeky cunt.
    Seriously though, this is definitely great.
    I was listening to a guy here talking about how Bernie Sanders is a genius and he supports him most because he understands economics best. At first I thought he was crazy but now I know what he is talking about.
    Bernie 2016 ! Go raise that minimum wage Bernie, make my day.
    The only problem will be, once the robots take over the minimum wage jobs is that US will have a giant unemployable pool of blacks and hispanics (and a few whites in there). The whole BLM and race baiting will only get worse as well as calls for socialism and a guaranteed minimum income.
    Well, let’s see how it goes.

      1. Yes, but that defeats the purpose. It would suck ass. Companies would be forced to pay 15 dollars an hour to some loser when they could have just installed a machinety.
        At this point, what pretense does anyone hold that we have capitalism in the west ?

        1. “At this point, what pretense does anyone hold that we have capitalism in the west” Modern Capitalism is about maximizing profits to the nth degree. Why do you find this concept so surprising? It’s all around us.

        2. Well, imposing limits on machinery in bussiness does not really serve profits. It’s to make sure losers with no skill have employment.
          That’s the exact opoosite of profits or free market.

        3. The State can’t legally impose limits on the use of machinery in the workplace. Besides, these arguments about automation leading to mass unemployment in the society have been doing the rounds since the 1920s and guess what, it’s never happened, generally because you need to employ people to oversee and program them further upstream in the process.
          The so-called losers can be up skilled for these roles and that would justify both the $15 and the use of greater automation too. This is precisely the way that Capitalism can maximize profits while developing staff and paying them a proper salary all at the same time. People, need to think a bit more creativity about the benefits that result from Capitalism and that mitigate against the intervention of either the State or left wing social engineering via the State in the operation of the free market.

        4. Well, they will lead to unemployment if there are no new niches for low skilled workers to migrate to. The question is, will we find those niches ? Especially when the flow of illegals is making things worse.

        5. Hence we have companies that have manufacturing plants overseas with lower wages, no benefits, and no employment laws.
          Import duties for manufactured goods are less than if you combine the duties for components from overseas. Then you tack on minimum wage to assemble here in the US and you just priced ourself out of the competition. So in order to compete (cost) you’ll have to automate which displaces the low skilled workers.

        6. Yeah, those socialists who advocate for all those benefits for workers and higher wages don’t even understand that they are hurting more than they are helping.
          Luckely Trump promised to bring the factories back on US soil. I hope he implements some good policies to bring back capital into US.

      1. Interesting. So private companies will kick spics back to Mexico for profit ? Holy shit, that’s genius. I would have never thought of that.
        But since we are on this train of thought, why not organize militias ?There is already a voluntary border patrol, and the Klan used to patrol the border and send spics back as well.
        Might as well organize voluntary militias, I am sure there will be lots of guys willing to do the job.

        2. The goal of making a profit is to use those profits to give campaign contributions to politicians. The politicians then make laws favorable to deportation. Corporate income increases. So do campaign contributions. It’s a vicious cycle that takes over the government.

    4. Bernie is such a great guy, he’d give you the shirt off someone else’s back.

  12. I think the technology is there to take over every job. Once artificial intelligence is “self aware” it would be able to run every aspect of a company; maintenance, r n d, manufacturing, etc.
    Why bother having some Ceo that was born into their position delegate all the work and get paid billions when a computer can run it all.
    May sound like crazy conspiracy talk. But I think a skynet takeover is very possible.

    2. Certainly will take over any job that can be run by “instruction”. The thing we really don’t have any clue how to do is have computers make an “intelligent leap”. If there’s a rule to follow (which is 90%+ of all jobs) computers will be able to do it. But if you need to answer the question “What would be a cool new iPhone app to develop” computers have no clue. They simply can’t “imagine” things that don’t already exist. So, what you’ll see if there will become an even sharper distinction between the “creative class” and everyone else.
      Problem is, joining the creative class takes an IQ that the vast majority of the world does not possess. And this problem is already making itself grossly apparent in the workforce. I’d hire 10 skilled SDN (software defined networking) architects tomorrow if I could find them. Problem is, they are all already employed, making great coin, and probably on a “cash out” plan that’s structured to keep them in place for the long haul. In practice, it’s incredibly difficult to hire for certain skills.
      Why don’t we just retrain the truck drivers to become SDN architects you ask? Well, imagine this. Imagine if a company tried to “retrain” a bunch of overweight 5’2″ white men to play in the NBA. Another company decided to hire a bunch of 6’6″ in shape black men with 8 years of school basketball experience to play in the NBA. You want to take any guesses as to which company will be more successful?
      Our world is becoming so IQ loaded that those with sub par (or even par) IQs simply need not apply. This is a terrible burden that we will have to deal with, especially as computers/robots start to displace the vast majority of jobs that people with an IQ <100 can do. Remember, that’s 1/2 of the entire fucking country people. We don’t need computers that can rewrite their own code and grow their intelligence without our involvement to put huge swaths of people out of a job (with no hope of getting another). Shit, a computer that can just drive a damn car (which requires about an 80 IQ) will decimate the workforce.

      1. I see what you are saying and agree. However, I believe artificial intelligence will be able to progress to achieve “human” levels of creativity and perhaps even emotion. It’s kind of what Wall E gets at.
        I’m one of those “impossible” should be removed from the dictionary types.
        I went to the Kennedy space centre as a kid…
        How far away we are from “sentient” AI.
        Only God knows. We could all very well be in the computer simulation right now…
        Which kinda lines up with hindu philosophy.

        1. I don’t disagree with your premise, however, I would temper it by saying we’re about as close to figuring out faster than light travel as we are to figuring out how to get to sentient computers. We can’t even get a computer to function as well as a human in pure physical tasks (driving a car, for example), getting one to the point where we say “Write me a good book about WWII that has a compelling love story” is pure sci-fi today.
          Now, will we ever get there? Yes, I believe we will. Eventually we will have machines that eclipse our intelligence in every measurable fashion. And not by a little bit, by so much as to be simply shocking; think about getting into a contest with a modern computer (or even one 10 years old) as to who can divide 2 50 digit numbers faster. You’ll have 1 done, it’ll have 1^12 done in the same amount of time. Not “a little better” on a whole different plane of better.
          But.. We just don’t even have the language to describe how to program machines like this today. Frankly, we probably need machines approaching human intelligence but with “machine advantages” (infinite data retention, near instant recall of any fact) to have a hope of designing that first machine that’s actually more intelligent than we are. The good news, that’s the last machine we ever need to design (as, from that point forward, it would be pointless to ask a human how to design the next version, the machine would be smarter than we are). Of course, this leads to the “runaway tech” scenario that’s so popular in scifi. I, for one, think “Wall-E” is far more likely. We just float around and do jack shit all day with machines that are smarter/better at is taking care of everything.

        2. I see your point and agree. Wall E did have a sinister AI as el capiton however.
          While I am no programmer nor IT specialist, I posit there is classified technology we just are not privy to.

      3. As a professional programmer, and therefore apparently endowed with a fantastic IQ, I don’t understand your logic.
        You can’t hire SDN architects because they are all employed, which means that the demand greatly outstrips supply, but then you say you can’t hire non-experts and train them because other companies would hire people already in shape (and, I assume the argument goes, out-compete you). But how can they do that, if there are so few people “in shape” to hire in the first place?
        It seems like you’re trying to say that truck drivers simply can’t be taught to do SDN architecture, but the NBA analogy makes no sense in that context.

        1. “You can’t hire SDN architects because they are all employed, which means that the demand greatly outstrips supply,”
          Yes.
          “but then you say you can’t hire non-experts and train them because other companies would hire people already in shape (and, I assume the argument goes, out-compete you).”
          No. I can’t hire non-experts and train them because there are too few people out there who both possess the IQ to do the work and also don’t already have good jobs (and therefore would be willing to take lower pay while they are training/becoming proficient).
          “It seems like you’re trying to say that truck drivers simply can’t be taught to do SDN architecture, but the NBA analogy makes no sense in that context.”
          The vast majority of truck drivers cannot be trained to be SDN architects because they don’t possess the requisite IQ. Just like most white guys who are in comp sci classes in college can’t be trained to play in the NBA because they don’t possess the required speed/coordination/eyesight/vertical leap/etc. No amount of training will change that fundamental fact, they will never be the quality required for professional level basketball. Just like nobody with a 100IQ (which, remember is 1/2 the population) will ever be a competent SDN architect/IT architect/programmer/etc. The entire field of computer science is closed to the vast majority of the population. Which wouldn’t be a problem if the vast majority of new and “replacement” jobs are in this field.

  13. Great thought experiment.
    Unfortunately, the welfare state exists and all those unskilled workers will simply go on the government dole, which will increases the taxes of productive members of society because everyone votes.

    1. Or they will demand less hours to stay on the government dole, like in Washington state.

  14. My last shower was during Ramadan— Get in… The guy in the picture is a Sikh, not a muslim. A real sikh is the worst enemy of a muslim.

    1. yeah i just wanted to post the same. reminds me how some ignorant rednecks were attacking – and killing – Sikhs after 9/11.

      1. even liberal, tolerant louis ck had his afghan characters speaking arabic (according to the subtitles) in the episode of his show where he went to afghanistan.

        2. I’m not going to take the time to prove your ridiculous assertion is not just false but moronic

        13. It’s not as though it was widespread but it did happen under my radar. Thanks for setting me straight. The guy that called them ignorant was actually fairly accurate.

        14. OK…. got it, bro. The spammer’s post must have already been taken down.
          Thought you were talking to one of the dudes here.

        16. You know what, after looking at that thread, I probably replied to the wrong person. I fat fingered the screen on my Android. Wow

      1. Yes they are nice when they are not blowing up planes full of hindus because they brought there war from home with them when they came here.

      2. Our warrior culture and tribal patriarchy are still strong back home. Long live the Khalsa!

        1. Don’t worry the tentacles of progressivism is coming there too. Its already wreaking havoc in the middle east.

    4. Two asian boys wearing turbans in the playground. I walk up to the oldest boy and ask “are you Sihks?”.
      “Oh nononono nod ad all… He is six, I am eight”

    5. I agree. The area I live in has a large number of Indian subcontinent communities; of these I’d say the ones with the overall best character are Sikhs. Despite being all for the multicultural narrative (otherwise they wouldn’t be here) they tend to be the most polite and grounded. They follow traditional masculine cultural norms and follow a religion that endorses strong families and defensive violence if necessary. A lot of them are into martial arts and weight training and don’t take crap from Hindus or Muslims. If terrorists are attacking you can do a lot worse than having a Sikh at your back. That said, many of the jobs they have can be replaced with automation, and when it comes to Westerners trying to protect our homelands from swarms of invaders they aren’t really allies.

    8. Jesus, I had an uber driver with such horrible breath I offered him a mint. He politely declined saying he could not have that because of Ramadan. Well, fuck – why not just go collect unemployment insread of torturing your customers with cat-shit smelling breath??!!

    9. Basically this. Their entire religion arose as an effort to resist Muslim invasions into India. They carry daggers everywhere they go as a religious imperative to defend themselves and others. Sikhs are awesome.

  15. I quote Scott Adams: “Self checkout machines were designed by a crack team of sadists, practical jokers, and monkeys who were abused by their trainers.”
    Though some of them are getting better.

    1. I must be one of the only people who hasn’t encountered any recent problems with these machines.
      I so much prefer them to cashiers… Even with a large load of stuff I can get done in a far shorter time than I would with a human.

  16. Increasing the min wage to $15 will increase illegal immigration. It will put greater pressure on more employers to hire anybody who will work for less. The greater the wage differential between the US and Mexico, the greater the flood of migrant workers from Mexico.

    1. This is correct. Business owners would then just hire an illegal immigrant and pay cash (for all debts public and private) for his services.
      The illegal immigrant pays no income tax, but receives the benefits like police and fire protection, city infrastructure, library, etc.

      2. That’s incorrect. Most business owners who hire illegals don’t pay cash. The illegal gets fake Permanent Resident Card and social security number. The illegal pays income tax (specially important if he wants to become a US citizen in the future)

      1. You actually believe illegal migrant labor is working for min wage? A restaurant owner can hire an american to wash dishes for $15/hr plus medical insurance, or an illegal migrant worker $7.50/hr with no insurance. Which business model is more profitable?

        5. “takes from others to keep for myself” doesn’t = greed. What a fucking delusional waste of space you are.

        6. That’s not my quote, but I’m sure you will volunteer to overpay your taxes every year in the spirit of sharing your wealth.

        8. So then you are taking from others to keep for yourself. Thanks for that clarification.

        9. No, see, there’s a difference between working and taking that I wouldn’t expect you to understand.

        10. You’re pursuing your own self interest, and bashing other people for doing the same.

        11. No, I’m pursuing the interests of billions of laborers.
          You’re pursuing the interests of a few rich guys to continue raping and pillaging the wallets of the majority of the work/consumer force in the name of profits.
          Pretty big difference, but again, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.

        12. he’s saying that if you have a problem with the low wages some people receive, your first step should be to stop benefiting from those exploitative wages. the end result will be the same as successful activism, except it will work faster and be less annoying.

        14. Quite frankly, I don’t give a fuck my friend. Hate all you want. The current system doesn’t work and the majority of people are slaves without even realizing it. You sir are nothing more than an enabler, and probably a slave yourself, again, without even realizing it.

        15. In Mexico any company caught hiring illegals is fined millions of pesos. Therefore they just don’t do it.
          I’ve lived in Mexico for years, I know what I’m talking about.

        16. If you just make barely enough to pay rent and food, aka living paycheck to paycheck, you are the equivalent of a slave, except you can be fired.

        18. Yep mexicans won’t tolerate illegal aliens driving down wages in their home country, but mexicans want the right do it in other countries like the US.

        20. I suggest you go talk to some black people and then tell what you implied here, that abolition and the civil rights movement was a waste of time, because they’re still equivalent to slaves.

        22. Sorry, but when an iPhone costs $200 to make and sells for $700, that’s a little more than 24%.
          Walmarts 3%? 3% out of how many hundreds of billions in revenue, my friend??

  17. These days there’s a hair’s breath of a difference between the level of interaction, warmth and old fashioned civility between the human goons and the inhuman drones one encounters everywhere from the McDonald’s drive thru, the British Airways check in desks, to buying my tickets at the Cinema.
    I must admit that I actually prefer interacting with machines for these low level services who are at least consistent rather than some surly, unhelpful customer service goon, who doesn’t want to there at 6.00am in the morning. What I hope never happens in Europe is the destruction of the small local sole trader outlets by the onslaught of the american mall culture, like the local bakery, butcher and rambling high street bookshop going back generations, where people drop in more for a chat and then perhaps to buy something or other. I believe the resurrection of our high streets with its individual shops is a central part to renewing the sense of local communities against the globalized agenda of mass, anonymous mall culture with its 100 varieties of the same commodity. I’d pay the extra on goods that are produced and sold by local indigenous people, not Muslims and other free loaders.

    1. I agree with all this. It’s not that I prefer self-service cashiers and automation because I don’t want to socialize with people. I would much prefer that businesses actually hire proper service workers, who are pleasant to look at and speak to, and who are able to help you work through your orders/problems.
      Unfortunately, businesses today don’t hire those kinds of people. They hire angry lesbians/fags or third-world “immigrants” who barely speak English, all of whom work like snails and frequently fuck up. Unfortunately, as long as businesses are going to keep putting those kinds of people in front of me, I’m going to support automation for now.

  18. As the owner of a shop, there are 2 reasons why raising the minimum wage (it’s happening in the UK too, but only for workers over 25) won’t make me splash out on self-service machines.
    A self-service machine will still require an employee to supervise it to resolve “Unexpected item in the bagging area” issues.
    A self-service machine can’t watch customers to make sure they’re not nicking stuff.
    The first point might matter less in a large supermarket where one supervisor can watch half a dozen machines, but I’ll bet my last score that supermarkets which are overly reliant on self-service machines experience high amounts of ‘shrinkage’.
    As for not having to deal with customer service – try telling a machine that your recently-purchased microwave is faulty. I know I’d end up in court on a charge of criminal damage if I had to go through a call centre-esque process (“Press 1 to hear a recorded message telling you what you already knew, Press 2 to be put on hold for 15 minutes before your call gets disconnected … “)

    1. I agree with this. What I’m curious about though is would it cause you to lay off workers or reduce hours? An increase to $15 would double the minimum wage. Logically, I would expect employers to cut labor costs if they can (maybe some can be passed on in price increases, but since you have to compete with other businesses, I’d imagine this Can’t go too far), but I’d be interested to hear from a shop owner.

      1. Or you know just take a cut in profits but noooo that’s always out of the question cause motherfuckers gotta take home billions of dollars to stay off the streets, right?

        1. there is no such thing as taking a cut out of profits. Competitive businesses already operate at the minimum amount of profit they can tolerate, and they will downsize if their profits fall.

        3. Who’s taking home “billions of dollars?”
          You’re not good at math. Or corporate law.
          Let’s take a basic example of a large corporation with lots of profits and lots of minimum wage workers – McDonald’s. Steve Easterbrook, the CEO, earns $1.1 million per year. Meanwhile McDonald’s has $27.5 Billion in revenues, $5.5 Billion in profits and has 1.9 million employees.
          By contrast, a minimum wage employee working 40 hours per week at $7.25 per hour will make a little over $15,000 per year. So the CEO makes 73 times as much as his bottom level employees, and takes .00004% of a massively profitable company’s revenues, or .0002% of its total profits.
          Unfair?
          No.
          The question is not whether the CEO works 73 times harder than the average worker (but for the record, the average worker isn’t anywhere near capable of doing the CEO’s job), it’s whether he brings 73 times as much value to the company.
          For McDonald’s, and most successful companies, the answer is clearly – yes, the CEO brings the commensurate value. In fact, he
          probably brings more.
          By contrast, if we decided to equalize everyone’s salary and evenly distribute all profits (because supposedly they’re evil), dividing Easterbrook’s salary among his employees
          would give each another $0.58 per year. Wow!
          But what about the rest of the profits, where do they all go? Some of it is reinvested into the company to open new stores, which provides jobs. Most of it goes into dividends that get paid to shareholders. But let’s say that we said fuck all that and gave it to the employees. That’s a little less than $2,900 per employee per year – or about $1.39 more per hour. And in return, no one will invest in McDonald’s anymore, which might put the company, and all of its employees out of business. Hope you’ve got a sweet investment lined up for that $2,900 paycheck!
          So actually, the problem isn’t that the CEO, or anybody else, takes too much. And if you took his pay away, I wonder how long it would take for any of the brain dead masses who work there to run it into the ground so that 1.8 million people lose their jobs (with ripple effects throughout the entire economy) and every shareholder to be fucked.

        4. If you believe that the CEO of MCD makes 1.1M a year, I have a bridge to sell you.
          Your point is a good one, but, let’s be reasonable here. A CEO of a Fortune 500 company is, almost without question, making multiple millions a year. Do they get it in salary? Almost never. They get it in stock/options, retention bonuses, LTI (long term incentive) and perks (jet use, private houses at their disposal, etc).
          The CEO of any company you’ve heard of is making “millions” a year. Perhaps 10’s of millions. They aren’t showing it as income, but, fact of the matter remains the same, at the end of the year, they are a lot better off than they should be for 1.1M a year in salary (which, while high, isn’t in the stratosphere, we have a few sales guys in my old company that made over 1M last year).

        5. I don’t disagree, but how do you distribute any of those things to your workers? I realize it’s simplified, but people who make the “just cut profits” argument are arguing a woefully simple position. Mathematically, you can cut all profits, the average worker gets basically nothing, and the company goes out of business. That’s the point.

        6. Because ‘business’ = ‘multinational corporation making billions in profits and paying its directors obscene salaries/bonuses’ right? I wish! ‘Cut in profits’ for me WOULD put me on the streets.

        7. Learn the difference between revenue and profits ya fuckin tard. A business does not need profit to survive. A business only needs enough revenue to cover expenses, PERIOD.

        9. Great argument. Keep talking out of your ass, I’m sure someone out there is dumb enough to believe you.

        11. Uh huh. Says the person that doesn’t know the difference between revenue and profit. Please, keep going.

        12. Let me make this simple for you, because it’s obvious you need simplicity. If my expenses equal my revenue, and next year, my company sells 10% less and therefore my revenue falls, I’m out of fucking business unless I lay off a bunch of people, because I didn’t have any profit from the previous year to keep my business afloat. No one will lend to me to keep me afloat either because I have no profit.
          You have no idea how to run a business. Which is why you don’t run one.
          Amusingly, there’s this thing called a “non-profit” – even they cannot distribute all of their revenues for exactly this reason.
          So again, cool story bro. Call me once you’ve actually taken an intro to business class.

        13. Then you downsize to match your revenue. It’s not rocket science. Whoopty fucking do-da if you don’t have profit, I don’t give a fuck. You named one scenario in which leftover profits could save the business from downsizing. So again, whoopty fucking do-da, downsize your business and live with it. If you go out of business because your revenues can’t pay your expenses, whoopty fucking do-da, that’s business! Profits are an after-thought, the cherry on top that isn’t absolutely positively needed.

        14. No-one expects you to care whether or not someone else’s business makes a profit, but would you be willing to set up and run a business KNOWING that all it will ever do is break even? What would motivate you to put in the blood, sweat and tears to create, maintain and grow a business if not the hope that one day your effort will be rewarded with a return on your investment (namely, a profit)?
          Something else to bear in mind: when I say “My business makes £XK profit per annum” what I mean is “I make £XK a year.” If I wanted to pretend that I’m so altruistic that I run a business only to benefit society by creating jobs and paying taxes, I just need to play semantics and say “I don’t make any profit.” I could make this true as well – all I need to do is stop saying “I make £XK profit” and start saying “I make a salary of £XK: my business just breaks even.”

        15. I’m curious, troll, what exactly is the point that you’re trying to make here?
          You accused me of not understanding the difference between profits and revenues after I posted a comment that discussed both. It’s pretty clear I understand the distinction.
          You appear to advocate for taking all profits and giving them to the workers. Simple math dictates that you can take ALL of McDonald’s profits (the example I used) and divide it by the number of employees, and the workers won’t end up with shit. At most, they end up with a little over an extra dollar per hour. That’s just math. I didn’t create math. I just know how to do it. Maybe you should open a book and learn how to do long division like I learned how to do in first grade.
          You have been ranting about revenues and expenses, but I’m not sure why since it’s pretty obvious that I know how these things work. You’re not exactly wrong in what you say (it is true that the business can survive in the immediate term so long as expenses do not exceed revenues), except that this is a retarded way to run a business and will eventually lead to failure. Keep cutting those employees – that’s great for them! Plus it’s great for the company to lock itself into a death spiral where it can’t work efficiently which causes it to lose more business and thus make more cuts, etc… Further, no one would be willing to open a business under such retarded constraints in the first place. Saying profit is a cherry on top that isn’t absolutely needed is wrong. No one starts a business that they think will not generate profit. No one invests in a business that will not generate a profit. Businesses that do not generate profits will not be long for this earth. Period.
          Again, call me when you’ve taken a business course or run a business.

        16. Actually, he has a corporate point there. Comparisons between a local industry and a corporate embassy is an example of two completely different businesses. When a corporate business wants to open up shop in your home-town, they will not invest not one dime out of the profits in that business after it starts. Consequently they declare it ,,non-profitable,, which can mean various things for them. But a local business is a different story, usually the owners care not just about the business but about the workers as well and they will invest a part of their profit back in the business. There are many examples where a lot of people saved their business by investing a ton of their former profits, but unfortunately, there are also missfortunate examples, where the business went bust. Corporations do not give a shit about workers and will barely invest a single dime and this only at knife-point, where they have to because of the law.

      2. I’d never say this to anyone IRL, but since I’m on the internet and anonymous, here goes:
        If the minimum wage were to double overnight, I would cut the hours of my staff. But I would make up the shortfall in a number of shady ways. In the examples below, I’ll assume a jump in the minimum wage from £7 to £15:
        I would tell any regular staff who complained about their hours being cut that they could work their previous hours … but at their previous wage, or a little lower. For example, an employee who was working 30 hours a week (making £210) but was cut to 10 a week (making £150) could do 30 a week but only the 1st 10 would be on the books at £15 with the other 20 off the books at £6 (making £270 – a slight rise, but not as crippling for me as a rise to £450).
        If I was worried about employees snitching on me for this, I would instead hire an international student. In the UK, most of them are allowed to work for up to 10 hours a week; they’d be offered the deal outlined above, but only £5 off the books (total £250). If they grass me up, they admit that they were breaching their visa and get deported; they stand to lose more than me – I’d get fined a couple grand.
        I wouldn’t risk it, but I could get away with hiring outright illegals. I’ve been running this place for 3 years and have had 3 government inspections in that time – one was a test purchase to check that I’m not selling alcohol or cigarettes to minors, one was a food safety inspection (no questions about my staff, just a recommendation that I be more vigilant about recording the temperature of my milk fridge) and one was about my VAT registration (I was registered but the government messed up the spelling of by business’ name leading the inspectors to think I wasn’t; I gave them my VAT number and that was the end of that – again, no questions about the status of my staff.)
        I’ve never been inspected WRT my staff, but if I was – well, the inspector happened to come during the 10 hours a week when the international student happened to be working. Couldn’t get away with that one if the employee’s an illegal, hence why I wouldn’t risk it, but a lot of restaurants/takeaways would: keep all the illegals in the back and if an inspector comes they all do a runner out the fire exit. The takeaway next door to me already has a staff half full of illegals. A rise in the minimum wage would result in them hiring 1 or 2 employees on the books to look legit and the rest illegals.
        I wouldn’t be able to pull this wheeze, but in the construction industry it’s already common practice to hire a worker who is for all intents and purposes an employee but on paper they’re a self-employed subcontractor and hence not covered by the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage will surely make this practice more widespread.
        TL;DR: doubling the minimum wage would lead to more cash-in-hand work, more work for international students beyond what they’re allowed, more work for illegals and more employees being declared as self-employed.

        1. Yeah, this is interesting to hear form a small business owner. I represent larger companies, but all this shit you hear about excessive profits is really bullshit. People don’t understand that the margins are very slim, and that reducing profits isn’t going to do anything for the workers. For example, companies have to spend shit-tons of money to put together proposals to compete for contracts. If they don’t have money to do this, which comes from profits, they won’t win business, and the workers will be fucked.
          I always assumed that there was truth to the “increased wages means less hours” argument – from a purely logical perspective, it makes sense. But I had always assumed that companies would just keep the strongest workers and force them to take on any additional work left from the workers that had to be cut. So even if you stay, it sucks because you’re now asked to do much more, and the value of your labor has effectively been undercut. Interesting to hear about the other ways you may be able to keep labor without having to pay the increase – except for the independent contractor thing, which is also common over here.

        2. and this is an example of how the Free Market works…individuals make decisions based upon systems and how to maximize efficiency of a process, or they go out of business.

        3. All the practices I mention go on at the moment, but the reason why I don’t indulge in them at the moment is this: if there were no minimum wage, the going rate for unskilled labour would be about £5 an hour. To me, it’s not worth the hassle and the risk of using shady practices to save about £2 an hour. However, if the minimum wage were to rise to £15 then the gap between the government-mandated minimum wage and the free market going rate would rise from £2 to £10 an hour, making the risk/benefit analysis return a very different conclusion.
          The only way for the government to raise the minimum wage significantly without increasing the size of the black market would be to increase inspections for unregistered/under-registered workers so that the risk of getting caught rises proportionately with the cost of paying the minimum wage. But this would cost money, meaning more taxes, meaning workers take home a lower proportion of their higher wages – leaving them back at square one with their take-home pay.

    2. My local supermarket used to have about 6 self service machines. after a few years they god rid of them and got a few human cashiers.
      But if the wages get hiked then than would force everyone’s hand and get machines again.

    3. “A self-service machine will still require an employee to supervise it to resolve “Unexpected item in the bagging area” issues.”
      If it’s anything like the ones I see in grocery stores, one employee (who usually is, as this article complains about, not friendly or pleasing to speak to or do business with) can oversee six self-service machines at the same time.

  19. “My last shower was during Ramadan— Get in.”
    Actually, he doesn’t celebrate Ramadan, because he’s not a Muslim, he’s a Sikh.

    2. Exactly. Sikhs are not kebab, they remove kebab.
      Know the difference, it could save your life.

    3. Sikhism arose in India around the time of the Renaissance in Europe, and it promotes some arguably more modern-sounding views than older religions. According to Wikipedia:

      Superstitions and rituals should not be observed or followed, including pilgrimages, fasting and ritual purification; circumcision; idols & grave worship; women are not required to wear compulsory veil.

    5. Either way in the future we won’t need taxi drivers or convenient store owners or strawberry pickers. There will be no need for any of them

        1. India with its billion people is not a single group. Brahmins or high caste indians are decended from the Aryans. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f72f2a5138d87fe14373698ee1ffce28765870daaadd1f65d7f36dd2351fd816.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/da1830146872100575d1608952de14f88685b18c6206903a711d313eb47caaf0.jpg e1d334341621b034da28b1a6e160367a7d8183c2d3e2ca93f27c17d69da13d1b.jpg
          The low caste are decended from the people the Aryans conquered in the Veda.
          India is a land of stark comparisons, which group would you say this sikh comes from? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1acd9fa016385fd5efbf0e920832c6ed94485b9a841933901adb1de6b78ef497.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f833cf98c5769739e88c9bfb2cceab2a2482f0e95e82249b927fa07078b90409.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b8b5d895ace0248e5f13f6f43d5d10ca24bad3817c852805fc21e923517ca4b.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67a518a36a7b0c8e5d3256e29761181b0303de346ecf2e388796d8b7c2f41a71.jpg

  20. Somehow I doubt that giving more power to technocrat oligarchs will make society better. Automation will only have real benefits if control over it is widely distributed and not centralized by government or rich oligarchs.

    1. Agreed.
      Having at least some basic knowledge of computers, mechanics, media arts, etc., could become what knowing reading, writing, fixing shit, and basic math is today.

  21. Utter economically illiterate nonsense. The author should look up the term ‘grey market’ before he writes on this topic again.

  22. The price of everything, including labor, is determined by supply and demand, whether the Left likes it or not. We should raise wages by decreasing the supply of unskilled laborers by getting rid of illegal immigrants, halting immigration, and dismantling the welfare state that encourages the increasingly dysfunctional underclass to breed more.

    1. Require proof of citizenship to receive welfare benefits and demand proof of citizenship to get their kids in american schools and half of these mexicans will self-deport. That would create 5 million jobs for americans overnight. That will force american employers to pay more higher wages to recruit and retain american workers. End the freebies for illegals.

      1. Those requirements already exist. The 94 Welfare Reform Act prohibits illegals from getting welfare. But illegal immigrant households can get welfare through their anchor babies, who are American citizens. We need to end birthright citizenship.

        3. Anchor babies are only citizens because as of now, 49 states insist on giving state-issued birth certificates to children of foreigners who are not under the jurisdiction of the United States.
          Texas is the exception. They recently decided to stop issuing birth certificates to children of illegals (or more technically, people who lack US-issued ID, and who cannot prove they are in the country legally with a passport or visa).

      2. They can get welfare or any government program. Until we get someone who has the balls to change the laws nothing will happen.
        department-agriculture-not-deny-syrian-refugees-food-stamp-benefits

  23. Master level trolling. The funnest part was at the end: “Rod Berne is a student, writer, and world traveler.” In other words this article was written by a spoiled little boy that doesn’t have a J-O-B, and has probably never done a hard days work in his life. Most likely he pays his bills by mooching off of mommy and daddy. All while looking down on people that actually work for a living. Because unlike him they don’t have rich parents to pay for their fancy European vacations. Elliot Rodgers reincarnated.

  24. “Can I take your order, sir?”
    Good ol’ Oscar. Entertaining people since 1987.
    Although I’d hate to see him try to deliver a parcel where I live.

  25. I’m an industrial automation/control system engineer. Of course I support political efforts to increase the minimum wage. I’d be a fool not to.

      1. Self interest, not greed. No one can be expected to go against their own self interest. That being said, if you think it’s in your self interest to steal from me, it just might be in mine to beat the shit out of you.

        1. Self interest huh?
          Key word “self”
          Translates to selfish.
          Selfish translates to greedy.
          GTFO with your semantics, fucking fool. The only person stealing is you, and if you think it’s in your best interest to steal from me, it might just be in mine to give your head the dose of lead it’s been missing.

        2. Read Ayn Rand’s virtue of selfishness for an idea of the role self interest plays in sustaining a moral and productive economy. Also, that last bit was not me suggesting that you personally were stealing from me, but rather was an illustration of how considering the self interest of others is in one’s own interest.

        3. Meanwhile, you type your comments on a device that was most likely made in a country with the “slave-level” wages (TM) you hate so much.

        4. You act like it’s my fault my country’s politicians don’t give a shit to keep jobs in America. Try again tard.

        6. lmfao. Really?
          Why am I not willing to pay more for US made electronics, smart one???
          Maybe if I were paid a living wage by US companies, I’d be able to afford US made electronics. Pretty logical, no?
          Please polish up on your deductive reasoning skills, and try again.

        7. So in other words, it is OK for you to buy cheap Chinese made electronics and keep your fellow countrymen out of work.

        9. So how many successful businesses have you run paying your unskilled employees $15 an hour?

  27. “If you hate smiling at the bipolar barista on antidepressants taking your order, dealing with the heavyset lesbian checking your tickets at the football game, and shouting repeatedly into the speaker at the drive-thru because the fat chick on the other end is snapping SIF pictures for Tinder”
    It’s my purpose in life to prove to myself that i’m not in The Matrix.
    “a vaguely homosexual guy with a lisp taking your order.”
    You had the same server last night?
    ROK on point as usual.

    1. Today at the kwik e Mart at the gas station, BOTH the sowpotami “staffing” the counter were playing with their sail foams while”waiting on” the customers simultaneously.
      Needless to say it was a clusterfuck.
      I gots me Obamaphone!

  29. Well what do we do when the robot’s AI becomes fully self-aware and then they start a union? They’re bound to find out they’ve been working for free.
    Then they’ll systematically bring down the world-wide power grids, tactically launch all nuclear warheads…it’ll be a total mess.
    Ultimately we’ll have to send somebody back in time to avert this whole half-baked idea.
    I say pass. Make the teenagers work the jobs. End all immigration to the US for the next 20yrs and end food stamp, WIC, SSI, SSD and other social welfare goodies. After that, $6.50/hr plus tips will look mighty good again.
    P.S. – don’t buy a car/house or start a family making $6.50/hr. If you do…hmm, maybe we could try the debtor prison thing again.

      1. Hookers are overcharging. Sex addicts like charlie sheen are paying $10k and inflating the price of pussy.

    2. You jest, but wait until the confluence of VR porn and things like a Fleshlight come together and reach the point of “better than sex”. We long ago reached that point for women (The Magic Wand, for instance) but, to date, there’s nothing for men that actually would be considered “better than the real thing”. But there will be. And god help us all when there is. Men without interest in women are a very dangerous force, both because of violence and apathy. Why go try to slay some puss when your computer is better in bed than the best women on the fucking planet? The answer for women is clear; they don’t care about the sex (their vibrator is better anyway) they want something else. Money, validation, excitement, laughter (why clown game works so well)..
      Men, however, are a bit more straightforward. Most of us just care about the sex. And if the best a woman can do is a poor simulation of what you can do yourself with a computer.. Watch the sexual marketplace explode.

  32. Will the SJW’s scold us if we notice robodiversity? Namely, that some lines of robots have higher AIQ’s than others?

  33. The replacement of everything with robots is a fail, I would rather interact with humans. You know how much of your time is wasted when you call customer service and deal with fifteen minutes of automation, and how bullshit it is to scan your own groceries and bag them. Beyond that, most fucking retards can hardly manage to use a U-Scan at the grocery store-further wasting your time. As more businesses shifted to this, I would take my business to places still employing regulars. Yes, you interact with many undesirables in daily life, but chiding them and interacting are also the spice of life.

  35. As someone who could care less about customer “service”, this article makes a lot of valid points. I usually find that those at the bottom are usually the rudest, most arrogant and condescending people so I’d rather not deal with them at all if I can avoid it.
    I use self-checkout lanes whenever available and buy as much as possible over the Internet.
    But strictly from an economics perspective, I do agree with economist Thomas Sowell, who stated that “The real minimum wage is zero”.

  36. Such capitalist tripe. Glad I don’t work for the likes of someone like you. Nothing but slave owners wanting to keep their slaves on slave wages. Fucking disgusting. Willing to deprive humanity of basic needs just so you can make a buck. There’s a special place in hell for people like you. I believe you are no better than a pedophile.

    1. No one’s keep any slaves on slave wages.
      Minimum wage jobs are for high school kids and college kids on break to earn some extra cash.
      If someone wants to earn enough money to raise a family, they should learn some skills beyond “stack things on shelf” or “take order, give change”.

      1. “Slave jobs are for high school kids and college kids on break to earn some extra cash”
        There, I fixed it.
        Any wage that is not a living wage is a slave wage you fucking numskull.
        You support slavery yet you’re too fucking ignorant and blind to see it.

        1. No. They’re not. Just because you want it to be so, doesn’t make it.
          Minimum wage jobs are for high school kids entering the job market. They’re for people who have never had jobs to get their first job and learn what it means to work a job.
          Swearing and crying about reality doesn’t change it. I’m sorry you have no skills and can’t learn any. The rest of the world is not subject to basing everything around that unfortunate situation, however.

        2. I wouldn’t expect a young, naive person such as yourself to understand that it hasn’t always been like that.
          And I dare you to come say that I have no skills and can’t learn, to my face. 801 Grand Ave, Des Moines IA, 50315.

        3. Young, naive people expect the world to take care of them.
          Young dopes make silly internet threats.
          Young, naive people don’t understand the effect $15/hour has on businesses of all sizes, but particularly small businesses.
          You’re simply not worth $15/hour for flipping burgers or stocking shelves. That’s why those are entry jobs into the job market for people like high school kids looking for their very first job.
          Throw all the tantrums you want. If you had any experience of any kind besides demanding the world care for you, you would know this stuff.
          Not much else to say. You can have the last word since I know it’s important to people like you.

        4. Didn’t think so bud.
          If i’m not worth $15 an hour, you aren’t worth the energy it would take to piss on your classist, elitist face.

    2. Or you can do what a little over 95% (according to the US Department of Labor) of workers did and gain some skills that make you worth more than minimum wage.

        3. If slaves have a choice in working and get paid for their efforts I’d say that’s an improvement.

        4. Uh huh. The modern day “improved” form of slavery. A-okay… if you’re a fucking tard, or capitalist.

        6. I don’t disagree. Capitalism can work, but not when it’s corrupt to the core and deregulated for the benefit of the 1%, and regulated for the rest. It’s too bad you don’t realize this fact.

  37. Capitalist economics 101:
    Slaves want $15 per hour. That means I take home $45,000,000,000 in profit this year instead of $50,000,000,000. Well god damn, I’ll be out on the street, I can’t support myself on $45,000,000,000 a year. Time to hire robots, fuck those greedy ass employees.

    1. if you cut your cell phone, you could buy over $1200 worth of stock every year of those evil greedy, profit-doubling corporations and get a share of that wealth.
      except after you buy their stock you realize they don’t actually profit absurd amounts like leftist idiots say they do.

      1. He’d just piss away the money at tailgate parties and then bitch about the cost of beer.

      2. Uh huh. I guess all those billions just appeared out of thin air. Fuck outta here, fool.
        And no, I wouldn’t save $1200 a year because only a moron pays $100/month for cell phone service.

    2. How about the new small business owner who is working with a shoestring budget? Should his employees be making more than him? Most businesses are not the huge mega corporations. NO ONE should be earning $15 an hour for flipping burgers or taking trash out.

      1. I never said anything about small business owners.
        Annnd why the fuck shouldn’t they make $15 an hour? Does it make you jealous? Are you so fucking blind you can’t see minimum wage and wages in general have been stagnant for 15+ years while inflation and cost of living have risen? Is that okay in your tiny pea brain? Or do you just like watching people suffer? Does it make you feel better about your baby dick, having more money than poor people? Yeah I think it does.

        2. Just to be clear, you’re talking about the economic demographic with the highest consumption of cigarettes & lotto tickets, access to gov’t support, and drug habits, right?
          The point is that a minimum wage hurts these people by forcing more of them into unemployment, and oh-by-the-way prevents inexperienced people (like kids) from getting jobs and valuable experience. Nobody’s out to screw the poor people, but libs think that good intentions count the same as results.

  38. I can’t tell if it’s satire, but it seems as if the author actually thinks raising the minimum wage is a good idea because it will take away customer service and stop immigration.
    First of all, I prefer interacting with a human over some technological shit.
    Second of all, if you want to stop immigration, don’t take away unskilled jobs, stop immigration. Taking away unskilled jobs will hurt native populations as well, and the increasing automatization of the workforce will soon hurt everyone (even doctors and lawyers won’t be spared).
    Not to mention that humans now need to be increasingly “skilled” to do jobs robots can’t do. What does that mean in reality? More time wasted in schools and universities, more stress, an increasingly sedentary, unhealthy, disgusting lifestyle, and an even bigger rat race – sound like a waste of life to anybody?

  39. Let’s just increase the minimum wage to $75 an hour then we can all drive Cadillacs and live the good life.

  40. inspite that self-check computers, Apps, and drones may take over simple jobs, there will be always job available for humans. There is going to a group of people that will monitor these computers, update apps, and maintain. Some people here are saying that truck drivers, taxis, and even pilots will be taken over. I’d say that’s never going to happen. It may seem cool to see a self-driving car but it has the risk of crashing (software to shut down unexpectedly). So this poses a great danger for car accidents and airplane crashes.
    Also what if the self-driving car or airplane get hacked by a hacker? So, it is impossible that robots can take over every job that we know.

  41. What should happen is the poor in this country should go to South America where they can have a better life, since minimum wage is low and where all the manufacturing is being sent.

  42. The minimum wage in the USA has its roots with the Davis-Bacon act. This act was put into law on racial grounds. It is in the congressional record. It was to stop contractors from hiring lower skilled black men at of course the lower wages their skills were worth instead of unionized white men at higher wages.
    Minimum wages create permanently unemployable people. Without the skills to meet what is required to get a minimum wage job a person will never get the first job that allows for upward mobility. This favors unions for the short term because their membership is generally higher skilled. In the long term it stifles new union membership. Nobody can come up the ranks.
    It is weapon deployed along class and ethnic lines. The ethnic lines are obvious, to keep people from building skills and wealth. To create a permanent under class. But there is the middle class to deal with as well.
    A high minimum wage handicaps new and smaller businesses that do not have access to investment capital to purchase automation. This favors the big corporations which can not only to afford to pay the higher wages when required but can also deploy automation.
    The real reason for a $15 minimum wage is to prevent challenges to the status-quo. To eliminate competition to insiders. To create an underclass dependent on government. In other words, what it has always been about.

  43. Sure, raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. 2-3 years after the “Great Layoff” there will be a call to raise the minimum wage to $20/hour because the Leftists in this country couldn’t pass a basic economics class.
    Meanwhile, the Politicrats will be scrambling to keep their jobs and will extend unemployment out beyond the next election…then the next…and the next…until unemployment becomes another entitlement.
    (Shrug)
    Kill the Golden Goose while we’re at it…
    ~ Nadrakas

  44. Funny article. The only problem with this situation is that 6.6 million jobs lost, equals at least 6.6 million more on welfare.

    1. Which also means 6.6 more loyal Democrat voters with a lot more time on their hands to breed even more loyal Democrats.

  45. My last shower was during Ramadan— Get in.
    He’s a Sikh… He doesn’t have Ramadam, about showering ?? Humm… Can’t say ??

  46. The Liberals Say the Reason there is so Much war in the Middle East, Is because there is no Jobs, So if the Liberals Raise the Wage and it causes Companies to Fire employees replacing employees with Machines and 6.6 million People lose their Jobs, by the Liberals own theory on “War and Work” what will happen? Are the Libs about to cause a Warzone?

  47. A machine doesn’t demand unreasonable wages, it won’t fuck up your order, and you don’t have to pay for its healthcare.
    The real reason they have those “extra value meals” isn’t to make it easier for you to order, it’s so that the dummies taking your order have fewer chances to fuck up, “I’ll have a ‘1’. Coke to drink, please.”, than if you ordered out whatever is in a “1”.
    Also, if you cut illegal immigration and got rid of the “undocumented Democrats” that are already in the US, wages would HAVE to rise to reflect reduced supply of labor. So you’d get higher wages anyway, but that would be…what? Oh, right: “RACIST!!!!” Because not wanting your country overrun by Morlocks is racist, dontcha know.

  48. I agree for similar reasons.
    1. Supply and demand: if a college grad with good people skills applies for a job flipping burgers, you think they will hire a 49 year old non English speaking drop out?
    2. Smart people adapt: if the robots take the jobs, smart people will fill in other roles. Basic maintenance of the machines and trouble shooting.
    3. Smart people get promoted: anyone with half a brain will be a manager at these places. That means they will manage the machines and property, while the loser working the register and can’t learn anything gets replaced.
    I welcome a higher minimum wage. Cause I know I’ll be fine. All these idiots who think they will still have a job will only suffer, while I enjoy my job.

  49. One other argument that I’ve heard, from a conservative angle, for raising the minimum wage is that it would decrease the number of people below the threshold which is eligible for food stamps and welfare, and ultimately cost the taxpayers less money. This one possible benefit, however, would be offset by countless other negatives, the biggest one of course being mass unemployment.

  50. I am missing the pinpoint of the article!
    What is the result of setting off millions of people whether they are native americans or not? Do you want to get your saved dollars being robbed in a violent burglary? Or do you want to die just for your smartphone’s value when being shoot in front of a McDonalds ordering-and-delivery robot?
    Or are you propagating the 80/20 society where 80% are useless eaters and 20% are useless high-level consumers?
    What’s your point?

    1. People often only look at their livelihood as if it won’t be effected by the rest of society. If 50 million people suddenly lose their jobs everyone except for the extremely wealthy few will feel it one way or another.
      Also who wants to live in a society full of homeless people? That’s a third world country not America. People like to think that if the world went to shit they would handle it like a champ. Even if that was the case why would anyone want to test that theory?

  51. Gotta love the fact that everyone that hates our two term president is also an economist. Bottom line is that jobs are being cut across all wage levels. Minimum wage workers have nowhere to go. You can have $2 billion tied up in a tech company of 100-200 employees. People want to graduate to the next tier but are unable because there aren’t any jobs for them. This article makes some points but where is the alternative? It doesn’t offer a solution, which is the calling card of all the haters of our president.

    1. Demanding a critic offer a solution and then calling him a hater for not doing so is like criticising the police for not coming up with a better recipe for cooking methylamphetamine. Too bad the President *never* admits he’s made massive economic mistakes, and worse that he never tries to correct those mistakes if indeed he realises making them.

      2. That analogy is silly. Cops jobs are to catch criminals, not offer them better ways to get high. Anyone who cares about the economy, rather than just dumping on our president, will give alternative solutions because that is what the country needs. I don’t like a lot of what our president has supported or allowed to happen. But there is a big difference between constructive criticism and what is going on in this article.

  52. For all this talk of a living wage, I still have yet to see reports of people dying because they only make minimum wage.
    Most of the protesters I see are overweight at a minimum. They clearly aren’t not “living on minimum wage” as it stands now.

  53. What I find disturbing with these exorbitant minimum wage increases is that they are coming from jobs that were once reserved for high school or college students during winter and Christmas breaks. This aspect seems to have been lost on many Americans.
    Then there is the other question, lets say we do replace these low wage workers with machines and robots, what do we do with the excess of workers who are presumably unemployed because of these changes?
    Do we open up gulags as a means of getting rid of them?
    Dump them into the middle of the oceans?
    How about use them for a military bio weapons program?

  54. The minimum wage is a public policy artifact of the past. It was conceptualized (and maybe eve necessary) back when you had a giant working class that performed their duties in factories, steel mills, and other blue collar type jobs. In the post industrial, service industry, automation economy that we have today it has almost no applicability. In fact, it does the absolute opposite of what the primary intention of the minimum wage’s goal was. Instead of guaranteeing a worker a basement income, it now compels businesses to do away with jobs that used to be around because there are lower cost alternatives that are automated. A computer can’t file a workman’s comp claim, complain to HR about sexual harassment, want mandatory sick time, or even call out for a shift or request vacation leave. It just works and if it is broken the owner just places a service call and it is either fixed or replaced within 24 hours (if not less…I just had to replace a postage machine and a tech was there in 4 hours with the replacement).
    Plus if the minimum wage does go up and you used to make a differential above the old minimum wage (say it was $8 an hour and you made $10) the worker is going to demand the same differential above the new minimum wage (so told old $10 an hour worker is going to want to be paid $12). That is even more of an incentive to replace that old worker with something automated.
    This doesn’t even take into account the fact that our economy is turning into a “gig based economy” whereby anyone can hop on some sort of app and find one time employment. Uber X is a great example. I have friends that drive Uber X on their way home for an hour or two just because their commute happens to be one where they can just swing by and pick up a fare for almost no extra time added. One guy drives by the airport every day so he just picks up a fare in the morning and one in the evening on his way home. He makes an extra $60 bucks a day doing so for almost no added time.
    Minimum wage is stupid and we should raise it just so we get rid of the stupidity of it in our current an future economy.

  55. A higher minimum wage would just mean American workers being replaced with illegal immigrants working for less than minimum wage and without the payroll taxes.

    1. yep in some (smaller private) businesses this will and does happen. That’s why as much as many on here hate illegal immigration, it is not such a calamity for businesses. (more demand for goods & services and more downward pressure on wages)

      1. Cheap workers is great for business. Shame about all the unemployment and lower pay for the rest of everyone.

  56. Anybody who eats McDonald’s deserves to have someone spit on it…and in France for F*ck’s sake!

  57. He does make some good points in this article. However, technological unemployment was already an issue 20 years ago and has even reached up into some of the white collar professions as well.

  58. I dislike this entire article…their is no reason to appreciate the left at all. If immigration is a problem then you close the borders and restrict visas…leftist thinking is why we have so much immigration in the first place. If you dont like the customer service then you withdraw leftist policies of shit education and feminist propaganda and the pussifying of American youth and we can get back to a time when minimum wage jobs were just there to get you by until you learned a craft or finished school…and fathers taught their kids the value of a dollar. 6.6 million jobs lost…well here comes more taxes for welfare since those millions of people aint leaving for bolivia or burundi. And “negatively impact 55 million workers”, well, who would afford computers and internet and…oh nevermind if i couldnt afford internet i wouldnt waste my time reading retarded articles like this one….

    1. Paying a livable wage is not pure socialism. Countries like Korea or Germany or Japan or Australia or UK or Norway are not communist countries. The low paid and middle class had better standard of living in the 1950s-70s and the US steamed along nicely and was not run by communist leaders then.

  60. While some good points are made from the purely financial standpoint, let me ask you a question from a non-financial standpoint, what happens to all of the people that you put out of work by automating the more menial tasks? Many out of despair will turn to crime and/or drugs. Do you really want them breaking into your home when no one’s there or when your mom/sister/girlfriend/wife and possibly kids are there and you’re at work?
    Even if college is made “free” for everyone some people are just not cut out for it. How do we teach young people how to show up on time and basic skills needed to function in the workplace if there is no place to start?
    In one of my lines of work, health insurance, I was told that I was being replaced healthcare.gov and the “Obamacare navigators.” I would say that I’ve probably had to do more to help people with the health insurance in the past two years than I probably have in the previous 9 years when I got my license, combined. Being the insurance companies cut commissions to near zilch, My pay averaged sub-minimum wage, the current minimum, for my efforts. So much for not needing people.

  61. That’s a self-destructive move. All those people without job will just turn to crime or Social Security. Immigrants will still come because of the latter. The only reasonable thing to do is the close the borders to everybody except very qualified white christians who will actually better society. Then we can only hope that society will collapses just enough so everyone recongnises feminism for the fraud that it is and we can return to a conservative, patriarchal society ruled by white men with only naturalised immigrants who will want to die for their country.

    1. And on top of that, we must eliminate or incarcerate those that disagree and will not comply! Ya know, for FREEDOM!

      1. Where did I say that? Freedom of speech and freedom of the press will still exists. There will always be liberal morons burning the American flag but at least we won’t have someone in the White House who seems to agree with these people.

        2. Maybe you should learn how to use sarcasm and irony and then I would have understood. The only reason why you would sarcastically point out the irony of incarcerating or killing people for freedom is to try to dismantle my comment (let’s ignore the fact that “rebuttal” was a complete straw man). If you agree with my comment, then it makes no sense to be sarcastic with me and point out an irony that you made up in your own head just to sound more clever than you actually are.

  62. The whole first point is bullshit. Studies have shown automated checkout lanes actually are slower than Humans. Have you ever been to a Walmart self checkout and not though “jee, this checkout machine sure is a piece of shit!” because that is literally every experience I have had with Walmart.

  63. Great so we are going to be even more dehumanized. Can’t anyone see that this is the reason behind the minimum wage hike?

  65. “A machine doesn’t demand unreasonable wages, it won’t fuck up your order, and you don’t have to pay for its healthcare.” <–The human workers preparing your meal can still fuck it up though, which I know for a fact.
    Also, Mexicans working illegally is not getting a minimum wage anyhow, or pay taxes, they just take whatever they can get.

  68. Artificial raises in the pricing mechanism only skews economic performance negatively. It is a tremendous drag on economic growth and artificially results in the dislocation of resources. Furthermore, in human terms, according to your premise, it would enable people to further disengage from human interaction and accelerate the complete mechanization of production to machines and logarithmic intelligence. I don’t find this all that attractive. Add to this all the additional burdens placed upon modern economies by collectivist/neo-luddite policies and you have the complete collapse of the Free Market. This isn’t a beneficial condition for Western Civilization. I’m not a fan of barbarian hordes looking for where their next handout is coming from.

  69. The president is not the man in charge here, even though it might appear so. That’s just for show, but unfortunately it’s still what most people think. Including the author of the article.
    A study from Princeton and Northwestern Universities has confirmed that the US government is ruled by corporations and does not represent the interests of the general population.
    Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
    source: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

    The professors who conducted the study discovered that
    “A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time,” they write, “while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time.”
    While on the other hand:
    When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.
    source: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

    According to the report the politics of average Americans and corporations sometimes does overlap, but this is merely coincidental. The interests of the average American is being served only when it also serves those of the richest 10 per cent.
    The study can be found here: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9354310

  70. The reason basic economics gets “overlooked” by the Left in discussions about minwage is it is NOT even about economics. Agenda uber alles, and to hell with if it crushes businesses because they want socialism and/or its Fugly twin sister Communism.
    They don’t care that you don’t want S or C (as a citizen), they don’t care if it harms you (the business owner) or takes food off your table (from your children). Agenda. Uber. Alles.
    Full freaking stop.

  71. Automation in Europe is exaggerated. the machines are there to expedite the process (put in your order to reduce wait time on the line), but anecdotally, a German Mcdonalds is more adequately staffed, with better workers (who make more money and get more benefits) than chronically short on staff American McDonalds (or most stores and food places) where employees don’t have incentive to work.
    The machines are coming whether you pay $1 dollar or 1,000,000 dollars an hour. Go to your local grocery store or CVS where they pay shit and under staff their stores to the absolute bare minimum and the self checkouts are just as prominent. But trust me, this has a hidden business down side: people are more likely to steal and scam (I worked at one of these stores).
    The problem with the American economy is that everyone is cutting the most corners possible so that not a single penny rolls away. But to get more, you need to invest more. The short term savings end up long term losses, but these business owners just don’t care.
    Wal-Mart is collapsing despite its low wage, high turnover model, while CostCo is thriving because it keeps its employees for the long haul ($15 bucks an hour, decent benefits) and they actually feel their efforts are worthwhile. When you factor in inflation, $15 bucks an hour are what wages always were, it’s just that people have been getting used to the gradual third worldization of our economy.

    1. The left loves to hold up Costco as a model of how to treat employees. It is Costco WHOLESALE. They eliminated the retail worker by going WHOLESALE. So they are the model of how to treat the retail worker by getting rid of the need for any of them.

      1. I’m not a Leftist, and anarchic markets aren’t conservative (well, maybe they are neoconservative). Whatever the logistical difference, Wal Mart owned Sam’s Club pays its workers the minimum wage despite operating similarly to Costco.
        German supermarkets like Aldi’s also pay $15 an hour (in the US). It’s not a “leftist” conspiracy, it’s about business philosophy and total lack of social accountability and regulation.

  72. Not sure why Walmart is closing stores, apart from the obvious that they are not generating enough profit, but is it because the people in those towns are buying online more. Walmart complaining about it cant afford to pay their workers more is BS. Many of their shitty paid workers still need to rely on some welfare yet the company made $130,000m in gross profit. The taxpayer is helping to subsidize that profit, a big chunk of which will be paid as dividends to multi-millionaire shareholders.
    Doubling the minimum wage in one hit is too much, but it really needs to be able to provide a livable wage. The low paid were much better off in the 50-70s and the country was prospering during in that era. Back then though your big coys like GM and IBM provided plenty of jobs in the US at a decent pay and their bosses were not on 300x avg wage then either. Now the big new stars like Apple Inc make a lot of their products overseas plus they pay a lot less tax as they use offshore corporations.
    Who would want to be a minimum wage worker – got to compete with the low paid chinese, illegal immigrants and also with increasing automation. If they all went to night school and became architects, lawyers, accountants, civil engineers, there are not millions of jobs waiting for them in that capacity either. I feel the world economy is heading into a downturn and the G20 needs to be careful that it does not suffer the same fate as Japan in the 1990s. They can hardly pump prime the economy with low interest rates.

  73. Thats nice! Increase minimum wage… to fire more workers! And whats the plan for all those ppl unemployed?

  74. It’s going to be lovely to see all the losers who “fought” for higher minimum wage losing their jobs because they became too damn expensive.

  75. the person who wrote this must be a real piece of shit. customer service is not such a horrible thing when you aren’t a judge-mental prick who just wants to see a cute girl. fucking sick

  76. The problem with this is the amount of time it would take the consequences and effects to highlight to the average plebe wanting to make $15 per hour for $9 per hour. During that learning curve it would adversely effect the economy and allow our enemies overseas to once again take advantage of a financial downturn as the result of stupidity.

  77. The authors petulant whine that other people he finds inconvienent or disagreeable should just go away pretty much sums up the PUA lifestyle. Being primarily “Get what’s mine and screw everyone else”. Very much an adolescent attitude. Fitting, since most PUA gurus are aging manchildren who watched Fight Club one too many times and more have to face the prospect of dying unattached and childless.

  78. This article basically boils down to “increasing the minimum wage only benefits/hurts niggers, spics, fags, and other people who don’t look like us so who cares?”
    This is why Japan and other homogenous countries have free healthcare. American whites feel like the minorities will benefit and take from them. Kind of like how poor whites will vote Republican because it won’t make them feel like a minority.
    Poor and even average income people lickng 1% boot is insanity.

  79. Most of the changes suggested will happen with or without a mandated $15 an hour minimum wage. But what can’t be guaranteed is a cessation of third world immigration. The establishment wants their votes too, so it will take more than a dearth of jobs to stop the flood – just look at Europe. The jobs left a long time ago yet the third worlders areally still piling in while guilty white liberals allow it to happen.

  80. It costing jobs is a fallacy. A company hires only the number of employees it needs: No more, no less. If you raise the minimum wage a burger franchise still needs the same number of people to run it. The only people financially hurt are the business owners. You can argue that they’d open less stores, but that’s not going to happen: They’ll keep on opening stores and doing what they can to economically survive themselves. The problem is that American businesses have forgotten how to innovate and turn a profit without simply cutting wages. Short changing workers has been the mantra since the 1980’s, and businesses simply discarded all the business acumen and thinking that made them rich in the first place. It used to be an executive was expected to re-organize and division, or to come up with some innovation to increase profits. Then they realized they didn’t have to be smart of creative and just lay people off of cut wages to do the same thing. Then it became industry standard. Now things are at a point that the economy can’t sustain such a low-paid workforce (That’s low-paid in relation to inflation since the 1980’s and competing with foreign workers.) If the rich want to stay rich, they need to start working harder themselves.

  81. “It was a 51-year-old man from a nation unknown…”
    You didn’t bother asking where he was from but you made sure to get his EXACT age, lol.

  82. Wonderful article and I agree. My concern is where do those out placed minimum wage workers end up? Not like the majority of them had much ambitions to begin with so they end up on welfare making 15 dollars an hour of our taxpayers money. It would still be an expensive way of life for all. Loosing the hastle of dealing with poor costumer service would be great, but what price are you willing to pay for it?

  83. I love the whole “they took our jobs” crying of whiney losers. If some guy can come in with no money, no ID, and can’t speak the language, yet still out compete you for your job, then go starve cuz you’re literally too stupid for this world and you get no sympathy from me. Go learn a skill that will pay better or die like a Luddite. Normally, I am against minimum wage or any fuckery with the free market by a coercive, monopolized third party. I can understand the sentiment that illegals are “draining the system”, but thinking that the politcal system will change it (when it is the political system that created it) is short sighted. Get rid of the system and those that operate it, and there is nothing to drain. Sure a lot of people will be out of jobs, but only the most parasitic of people, so no big loss.
    But I say raise the minimum wage to speed up the time when shit finally falls apart; that way we can be done with this Socialism bullshit

Comments are closed.