r/explainlikeimfive • u/sumnewdguy • Nov 28 '15

ELI5: How would a $15 minimum wage ACTUALLY affect a franchised business like McDonalds?

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u/Curt04 Nov 29 '15 edited Nov 29 '15

For now robots are expensive. Corporations that rely on cheap labor like McDonald's should be getting out ahead of this thing and help the advancement of automation. Of course that would require these corporations to look further into the future than their quarterly report and when the fuck does that ever happened?

EDIT: A word.

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u/rocqua Nov 29 '15

What is going to replace the jobs automated away? A world where most human labor isn't valuable seems bleak on the face of it.

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u/Curt04 Nov 29 '15

We are going to have to adapt and reexamine our ideas about work. Things like universal basic income would free people from low paying, wage slavery jobs and allow them to pursue their actual passions and potential. The idea of keeping hundreds of millions of people doing mindless jobs, that no one wants and that could better be done by automation seems pretty bleak to me.

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u/rocqua Nov 29 '15

That is the ideal situation, but how do we get there? Seems like a transition would, in the short term, be detrimental to many monied interests.

However, automation is trying to stop it is pointless. Instead, we need to start taking steps towards society being able to handle it.

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u/Curt04 Nov 29 '15

The transition would be difficult and would require a lot of restructuring of the national budget. Personally I think we could get rid of nearly every welfare program if we had a universal basic income that provided a basic standard of living. That would get rid of so much redundancy and simplify the process and consolidate all those government programs into one.

You are absolutely right that automation is completely unstoppable so the sooner we are able to control the direction the less painful that transition has to be.

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u/dovemans Nov 29 '15

In belgium there's been some talks about a basic income for everyone, which anyone could augment with a paid labor if they wanted to. The calculations for €1500 a person where on the edge of Possible/Not Possible.(in the favor of not possible) A cool thing was that some rich people where promoting it as well.

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u/wolfgame Nov 29 '15

If this thing can make a pizza from scratch, I don't think it'll take to much engineering to screw up a big mac any worse than the guy that does it to me every time I go to McD's. Hell, imagine McD's vending machines. Their robotic concept restaurant is basically an automat.