Seattle Hikes Minimum Wage to $15 Per Hour
June 3rd, 2014Researchers Carl Freyand and Michael Osborne recently tried to figure out the likelihood that automation will replace humans in a wide variety of jobs:
According to our estimate, 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category, meaning that associated occupations are potentially automatable over some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two.
If you click through and look at the chart, the farther along to the right you go, the more automatable the jobs get.
Cashiers and food service workers: You’re pretty much screwed.
So enjoy any higher minimum wages while you can because the Rise of the Machines grinds steadily onward, and the goal is to eliminate as many human workers from corporate payrolls as possible.
Notice how companies in Seattle have between three and seven years to start paying the $15/hour rate? *wink*
Will this be a ready-the-robots phase? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what happens, at least to some extent in fast food:
Funded by San Francisco’s Lemnos Labs, it has developed a robot designed to take the place of humans in burger restaurants. Its creators believe their patty-flipping Alpha robot could save the fast-food industry in the United States about US$9 billion a year. Designed to entirely replace two to three full-time kitchen staff, it can grill a beef patty, layer it with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and onions, put it in a bun, and wrap it up to go – no less than 360 times an hour. Momentum believes kitchen robots are not only more cost-effective than human staff, they are also more hygienic.
Silicon Valley technology industry watchers believe businesses will be early adopters of 21st-Century robotics technology.
“Like PCs, we’ll likely see the first wave in business because it can handle the costs more readily and then move to the high end of the consumer market,” says the Rob Enderle, the principal analyst at the Enderle Group, based in Silicon Valley.
Ok, so where does all of this wind up?
Something like a basic income could emerge, but it will probably only be enough to survive in a setting akin to a favela. The purpose of the basic income will be to prevent a disorderly societal collapse as machine labor really takes off. Even if a basic income does come into play, I think that large swaths of society will increasingly struggle to get by. Some displaced by machines will become entrepreneurs while others will look to the underground economy/System D in an attempt to eke out a better existence.
Via: Washington Post:
Seattle activists celebrated a successful campaign to gradually increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 by calling for a national movement to close the income and opportunity gaps between rich and poor.
The Seattle City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Monday that would give the city the highest minimum wage in the nation.
…
The measure, which would take effect on April 1, 2015, includes a phase-in of the wage increase over several years, with a slower process for small businesses. The plan gives businesses with more than 500 employees nationally at least three years to phase in the increase. Those providing health insurance will have four years to complete the move. Smaller organizations will be given seven years.
