McDonald's hits all-time high as Wall Street cheers replacement of cashiers with kiosks

As surprising as it might be I currently make $12 at the franchise I work at. Granted that isn't $15 but if I pushed through to shift manager I probably would be close. But I'm leaving this position for better pay and some travel elsewhere

It's really gonna suck for them when no one has any jobs and thus money with which to buy their products.

@kewldude007

Crickets....

High unemployment, large prison populations, and rioting aren't in anyway a burden on the taxpayer.

I have no scientific evidence to prove this, but I'm guessing the majority of people who become technologically wiped out from the work force, that end up in jail, or riot don't immediately perish from this condition, or "just die off." In fact, it probably leads to a prolonged struggle of human suffering for the individual, their family, to the community and to society, as a whole.

To put myself on the chopping block - I'd offer the following as "intelligent automation:" automating all railway traffic would improve safety, reliability and wouldn't unemploy so many people it would damage society. Trains move in two directions, their routing is preplanned to the minute, which in all likely hood is put together by an application, which keeps lines open and trains from running into each other head on. This keeps decision making and planning to a minimum. Therefore, automation of the engineer, conductor and brake operator might make sense.

However, this won't happen because these positions are unionized - and GOOD for them to protect their jobs!

However, to stay on topic and pull this all together - I still don't see how the automation of the fast food worker is going to be helpful. Why? For the guy who wants to unemploy a ton of people because "he can't be inconvenienced by having to pick the pickles off his burger when he CLEARLY said no pickles."

Remember what I said about us being pathetic? I'd like to add we're wimps too. It's clear respect was either redefined and incorrectly taught us or is no longer a value, plus our self-intitlement is unbelievable. Use the creations, knowledge and technology developed by our grandfathers to kill our brothers, and by that I mean we didn't invented any of this shit that we're using to exploit others, harm them and slowly deteriorate societal security, but we act like hot shit with it.

That compiler the automation dev uses to make their bots - yup, that was brought you by the generation that got us to the moon (courtesy military service-person who served during a very big war, and in addition was recalled to service). And let's not forget about accurate network routing and reliable data transmissions protocols. Those came from real true and accurately titled computer scientists which designed and engineered the network control protocol.

Our heroes...
owe everything to...

And so do we.

Human sexbots in hotel rooms, like on the movie Soylent Green.

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Don't kid yourself, that is getting automated too.

You won't get 30 to 40 dollars an hour wiping off the screen after someone with a cold sneezes snot all over it yet.



No one ever looks at who is funneling millions into efforts to raise the minimum raise, most people just react to the headlines they are shown.

Reducing the US's population and mass automation are both bad ideas and combined is like the worst idea ever.

Both of these conditions have the following concequences:

  • deminish society stability,
  • disadvantages future generations ability for wealth accumulation, decreases their standard of living, and reduce opportunity for success,
  • deminishes national security, and
  • accelerates the transfer of the large, albeit deminishing, wealth base of the middle class into more increasingly consolidated industries and their owners, the capitalist class.

Firstly, I don't think the government is going to need to enact a one child policy. I think you'll notice the birthdate is going to decrease on its own.
However, a one child only policy sure would hasten the conditions we are already headed for: an upside down triangle in our populations age groups. In other words, a larger aging population at the top than working age and their youth at the bottom. This analogy is great because it visualizes a triangle where the base is on top and the point on the bottom. It's not fit to stand.

And I don't think our society has prepared for this situation properly.

Please stay with me this all does tie to the McDs automation. I just think it's important to see where I'm coming from.

Here's what I suspect is our fate:

There is going to be a heavy cost burden on our generation to support the previous generation in their "post production" phase. Our previous generations did not properly prepare for the notion they will be living to their 80's and the cost that incurres. Simply put, not enough of the boomers have the private equity for that future. Compounding the issue of that generation's insufficiency in private capital, many of our public pensions have not honored their agreements to invest, grow, and retain their pools of capital.

The government is likely going to step in to bear some of the burden of this, which means siphoning our generation's tax dollars from improving current infrastructure. That not only harms us, but more importantly is a set back for future generations. It sucks but it's necessary to sacrifice these dollars, despite having the return value to our society literally equal to throwing that money into a fire pit.

On a global stage we're caught with our pants down and now, in order to play catch up, we are channeling the tax monies that should be investments in strengthening our infrastructure and to further cementing our place as top spot, in order to sustain our aging population.

However, the amount of aging people will overrun this generations tax base and much of this burden will fall on this generation middle class's individual private capital.

Therefore, many of the private wealth accumulating vehicles and assets we have accrued and obtained in the middle class now, will be liquidated to help support the aging population - reducing the passing of the future earnings of these assets wealth to our youth.

This entire public and private expense is a complete sunk cost for this generation's middle class and a loss possible future earnings for the next generation's. Money put into this system does not reenter or expand the middle classes money supply. In fact, as I'll try to argue next, it will deminish it.

The money from government and middle class private individuals will be pushed into highly consolidated industries, such as "high efficiency" healthcare and aged individual service industries. "High efficiency" does not prioritize proper or highest quality care for delivering the best services at sustainable resource useage. Rather, it aims to achieve the neo-capitalist priority for doing what's in the best ingress of the owner. Which is, of course, obtaining the highest profit while meeting the enforced minimal standard. In this scenero and industry, this form of mass neo-capitalism is going to have zero concern for the societal moral hazard their business decisions will have on the stability and sustainability for the nation. In other words, they'll have no consideration in how their model fits into. how it adds value to society, or long term consequences for middle class:
rather the only concern is how to deliver service with the most value added to investors (increased profits).

To pull this all together and begin to wrap this up.

Each generation eventually becomes the steward of their society and nation. Part of this is the responsibility to adequately maintain the needs of the aged and to ensure we pass a healthy, strong society on, which they will be able to maintain. There's a lot that goes into each of those, but really for this thing to work we have to be able to properly address our elders, ourselves, for the sake of the future.

We are now the stewards of this society, and yes - we were not passed an optimal hand off. But it's our job to start to get this thing back on track.

Here are some of the things I think we should try to achieve or at least put in place for the next generation.

  • structure society and our economy which substantially increase the net wealth of the middle class.

It's funny to hear the argument that automation is going to "free people" to be innovative. Nah man, that's going to stifle them because none of them will have the capital to support any venture. You know what will though? A robust middle class that can pass wealth through inheritance that can by infividuals of the future middle classes as the capital and private investment and ownership of innovative products, company's and people. Think about the majority of people being able to use inherited wealth to open up shop without seeking outside capitalist investment or resorting to having to go public for growth. That's how you make a country strong.

However, right now what we have is a society structured where you are forced into employment, many times into positions that some people even argue that by working it, rather than stepping aside for robot to do it, hurts others or is "wrong." Essentially saying "we'd be better off if you just would stop doing what you're doing and become unemployed, it would be better for us all." This leads to suggestion 2:

  • Reject mass automation for the time being:

Maybe one day mass automation may be a good thing, but for now I don't think we can adequately handle/support a large unemployable class of people, navigate the waters of shouldering our boomer aging population, both of which are a suck money from the middle class's wealth and money supply. We are going to need more tax payers, not less.l because I don't expect the capitalist class to start to pay more in taxes. So, the only other way is to get more middle class people paying taxes.

  • We need to encourage more reproduction, not less in the next three generations (in the US at least because I don't care what anyone else does. They're sovereign I have no stake, care or right to suggest what they do for themselves).

You know if we do this right by making smart choices in regulation and values, make the necessary sacrifices in the post-productive portion of future, a growing middle class accumulating wealth preparing to pass that on, within two generations we could have a totally different situation for the middle class.

In fact if done really well by the next two generations, we could have a society where the middle class has reaquired enough of the pie to privately own most of business, rather than the current state of business which is mostly publicly owned or privately by the capitalists. In that scenario mass automation won't be destructive because the majority of people are wealthy middle class business owners who wholly own their businesses out right.

Look, automating things right now is very "cart in front of the horse" thinking. Yes, automation will put people out of work and give them the time to be creative and innovative. You know there is another approach to "freeing people" and actually empower them to be able to act on their discoveries, privately finance their ventures, which keeps others who bear no hard work or intellectual contribution out of their pockets, all of which allow them to fully bear the true fruits of their hard work and creativity. You do that by movin society in the right direction, which I've done my best to outline in what may be the longest post in L1T history.

There I did it! I've solved the world's problem over the internet. Thanks for reading!

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I knew and infowars would make an appearance here somehow.

@cotton I wish you were as inspired in our Code section like you were on that post !

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Fine, I'll go bang out a crappy PHP script which automatically updates the statuses on our sites "Service Status Page" and post it here. Which is probably something I should have done along time ago.

But it's going to be extra crappy with no comments and poor indention.

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Indentation can be fixed, comments can be created and extra-crappy is actually a feature.

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Alex Jones gave @cotton a segway to an awesome post that the"sexbots couldn't :slight_smile:
Which in turn can lead to either:
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-economists-minimum-income.html
Either guaranteed minimum income or universal basic income which they are already trying out


which will allow people to explore their dreams


My money is on mankind solving the problem the same way it always does. 1913 saw allot of automation and change and upheaval. 1914 seems so obvious to us now but back then they really had no idea things could get so bad.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-02/new-report-warns-nuclear-war-inevitable-unless-cooler-heads-prevail
Heads it starts in Syria
Tails it starts on the Korean Peninsula.......I'm guessing Syria, but it's above my paygrade:)
Then again:
http://www.debka.com/article/26125/Syria-declares-truce-before-Trump-Putin-talks

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WW1 had nothing to do with automation, it started as a diplomatic conflict caused by the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The motive behind that assassination was an attempt to break off Austria's South Slav provinces.

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Your talking about the fuse, I was discussing the bomb it was attached to.
Europe was ripe for WW 1,2 and now 3


Back to Food :slight_smile:



Forget the burger flippers, this could put Bobby Flay on the public dole

I skimmed thru your post. One thing I think we [society] need to think about is a steady-state solution. The worlds population cannot grow indefinitely. We need a new economy that doesn't promote growth or we'll fail as a species.

That's just it. There won't be any jerbs for kids anymore. Those jerbs that kids used to do, McDonalds, newspaper delivery boy, lawn mowing service, etc. are all taken by [illegal] immigrants.

Now in the great automation apocolypse, under the auspices of 'living wages' the unliving (robots) are going to take all those jerbs too.

Eliminating the minimum wage is the only way to preserve the ability of the young and underclass to have jobs.

Immigrants are doing contract work now because of e-verify, They can't get jobs at places where this is a thing, and It's a Federal mandate for this. So when you go to Mc Donalds or the like, those are probably legal resident aliens who are working.

LOL. e-verify is a joke. They just use their cousin/friend/someone they killed ID and nobody is the wiser. There is great incentive for the employer to suspend disbelief also.

I'm gonna leave that as is. Yiou are free to believe what you want

I'll agree that my statement was a bit hyperbolic, but exactly why do you think otherwise?

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