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As Fast Food Workers Go On Strike In 100 Cities, Applebees Unveils The "Waiter Terminator"
Today, in the latest escalation by minimum paid restaurant workers who demand greater wages, Fast-food workers and labor organizers are set to turn out in support of higher wages in cities across the country Thursday and walkouts are planned in 100 cities, with rallies set for another 100 cities. While it's not clear what the actual turnout will be, how many of the participants are workers and what impact they'll have on restaurant operations, it is possible that your 99 cent lunch may be delayed or outright cancelled today.
The actions would mark the largest showing yet over the past year. At a time when there's growing national and international attention on economic disparities, labor unions, worker advocacy groups and Democrats are hoping to build public support to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25, or about $15,000 a year for full-time work.
In New York City, about 100 protesters carrying signs, blowing whistles and beating drums marched into a McDonald's at around 6:30 a.m.; one startled customer grabbed his food and fled as they flooded the restaurant, while another didn't look up from eating and reading amid their chants of "We can't survive on $7.25!"
It seems trying to persuade these minimum wage workers to enjoy what they have - namley that corporations have all the leverage while unskilled, undereducated employees have none (the Service Employees International Union represents more than 2 million workers, on the other hand there are 91 million non-unionized workers out of the workforce) and that any increases in wages would simply be passed on to other consumers, and certainly result in broad terminations to keep the SG&A line flat - is probably a moot point.
So instead the strikers were met with something a bit more persuasive: brute Police force.
Community leaders took turns giving speeches for about 15 minutes until the police arrived and ordered protesters out of the store. The crowd continued to demonstrate outside for about 45 more minutes while a handful of customers remained inside. A McDonald's manager declined to be interviewed and asked that customers not be bothered.
Tyeisha Batts, a 27-year-old employee at Burger King, was among those taking part in the demonstrations planned throughout the day in New York City. She said she has been working at the location for about seven months and earns $7.25 an hour.
"My boss took me off the schedule because she knows I'm participating," Batts said.
Considering there are a few hundred thousand applicants for your position , Ms. Batts, we find that perfectly explainable. Then again, if you are unhappy with your position, you are welcome to quit and find a better paying job. Especially since in the very near future you may not even have the option of choosing, as it will be done for you. Earlier this week, restaurant chain Applebees unveiled what may soon be the "Waiter Terminator."
From the company's press release: "Applebee’s steps into the future to redefine and enhance the guest experience through the installation of 100,000 E la Carte Presto tablets, powered by Intel, on every table and multiple bar positions at more than 1,800 Applebee’s restaurants in the United States by the end of next year."
The LA Times reports:
The E La Carte Presto tablets – powered by Intel – will allow patrons to pay from their seats while also adding food and beverages to their existing orders. A pilot program helped customers save time, according to Applebee’s Glendale-based parent DineEquity.
“Let’s face it, everyone who has ever been to a restaurant has been frustrated by waiting for their check,” said Mike Archer, Applebee’s president, in a statement.
Eventually, the gadgets will also feature an expanded lineup of games, video streaming capabilities, music options, gift card sales and social media interaction. The Presto tablets, which were developed at MIT, have been “ruggedized” to deal with the spills and rowdy children common in such restaurants, according to the company.
And the punchline:
In the pilot program, the Presto tablets not only significantly reduced transaction times for guests, but also provided them a better overall experience, based on their feedback. By simplifying the transaction process and allowing guests to control the timing, Team Members were able to provide better service and more attention to guest needs throughout the dining experience, rather than focusing on delivering a check.
Also, much more time to work on their resume. In other words, Applebees is already taking steps at outsourcing its minimum wage waiters with tablets. Which incidentally is a brilliant idea, especially in a cost-cutting environment. So brilliant in fact that others are already joining in..
DineEquity said it might consider introducing the tablets at its IHOP restaurant chain as well. The company joins many others in the industry that have begun incorporating technology into the customer experience, installing ordering kiosks, equipping servers with mobile devices and more.
In other words, a funny thing happened as fast food workers were striking across the land - they were all just made obsolete courtesy of iPads.
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A newer version of the Automat?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
the automat came back in NYC for a bit in 2009 but it closed in 2012.
They better have a tank of hand sanitizer on the table after all the booger pickers have touched the screens.
http://goldtradercommentsaugust2010.blogspot.com/
That's exactly what I was thinking--your last trip to one of these joints will be when you watch some 2-year-old at another table drool on the thing, which already has 400 greasy fingerprints all over it.
They finally found a way to make the cheap restaraunt experience even more disgusting.
Boss: Hey, Waitress 7! I have some good news and some bad news.
Waitress 7: ?
Boss: We don't need you in your $8.75 an-hour waitress job anymore.... but we are looking for a $7.25 an-hour cleaner!
Boogers, drool & greasy fingerprints would be the least of my worries.
May I serve you some hepititis with that?
I won't be happy until I can order a large pizza, a 5lb. tub of Cheetohs, and a case of scotch without ever having to roll out of my bean bag chair. Oh, and a case of adult diapers...
That case of scotch will take a Sikorsky-sized drone to deliver ya know.
Much easier to shoot at (after delivery of course).
The diapers can already be had without leaving your chair. Soon you will be happy about the pizza and Cheetohs as well.
Give them raises to whatever they want, then when they all get let go they can collect max UE.
Fast food jobs used to be so teens could get beer/gas/dope money. Now it is a career path?
You cannot pay simple labor $15 per hour and make money while charging $2-3 bucks for a burger.
Why cannot people see this?
I say let them have their druthers and get paid whatever "living wage" they want. When there are zero customers for a $16 dollar happy meal they can then drive to the drive thru and bitch about how expensive the "food" is.
pods
"You cannot pay simple labor $15 per hour and make money while charging $2-3 bucks for a burger. Why cannot people see this? "
We have a nation where 80% of the citizenry cannot do basic math, and as a member of that nation, my math isn't that good so the 80% is probably low.
Because people are dumb. They talk about fairness and whatnot, but in the end, they are just plain fucking dumb.
Anyhow, I'm leaving to harvest an elk tomorrow so that I can have a superior quality meat to what I would get at McShitters or Applebees, or most stores for that matter. The '06 is good to go with more than enough ammo, the snow chains are ready to put in the jeep, I have the use of a cabin to stay in, which is good because there are two storms moving through, and I just need to pre-make breakfast for myself and one dinner for everybody. Oh, and I need to fill up my jerry cans and get beer. Up to 5 days in the mountains with friends and snow. It's gonna be fucking awesome.
You are just programmed to think this way. When I was growing up, a grown ass man with kids and a mortgage sold me a bike at the toy store, a washing machine to my parents and fit my feet for new Tom McCann shoes. They weren't owners or job creators, just working class people who were paid a fair wage for their labor that could support a lower middle class lifestyle. It is possible and yes we would all pay more. I am willing to pay more to slow the descent to a total bifurcation of our society.
That is only possible if you have a system where "money" cannot be conjured up out of nothing.
Inflation has killed all those jobs. Between our debt expansion and wage arbitration (Thai kids making Nikes) there is no way to unfuck all of this without collapse.
Give it a couple of years, it will come.
pods
The bifurcation is not going to be undone without either a collapse or a lot of violence. Maybe you are willing to pay more, but there are a lot of people who simply cannot pay more. Jack up the prices, which raising wages will do, and places like McDonalds will sell fewer burgers.
Yes, because the US and Canada were alone among developed countries (well, maybe Oz and NZ, but they are so close to the end of the world, they barely count) in emerging from WWII with their industrial plant and domestic capital (buildings, roads, railways, etc.) untouched. Europe wasted a generation pulling themselves out of that mess, Japan did OK in Asia, while Communism/Socialism held the rest of the continent back. So we lucky few in North America sat, literally and figuratively, on top of the world. Remember "Back to the Future"? A car pulls into a gas station, and 3 grown men run out to service it? When you have massive trade surpluses because everyone else in the world wants your stuff, and you're the only who can make it, you can afford that. In fact, you can afford all kinds of cushy infrastructure - libraries, national parks, human rights commissions - that 3rd world countries couldn't dream of.
Now, thanks to the intertubes, fibre optics, container ships, and microprocessors, we are all one world, and the type of economic surplus that allowed people with minimum educations to live like kings has evaporated. Anyone with a brain saw this coming. Did you?
"Now it is a career path?"
"let them eat yogurt franchises" eh pods?
Would you rather they be paid a "living wage?"
The only thing that would do is make them unemployed if that wage is above what the market will bear. You cannot raise their wages (a cost to the employer) without increasing the income side or reduce costs or they go bankrupt. Since fast food can barely be classified as "food" I think either labor cost goes down (people lose jobs) or prices go up.
Look, I don't make the rules. I only see the natural outcome of this. You cannot double labor costs without something giving. What usually happens is that the job disappears.
Want to fix this? End fractional reserve banking, go though a brutal and hopefully quick collapse, watch as all the dynastic moneychanging houses collapse, and start over by killing the first person to try and institute "legal tender" currency.
This is the outcome of 100+ years of debt backed monetary inflation. Inflation hits the margins hardest. And these people are on the margin.
pods
Automation has, and will, have an enormous impact on jobs. Looking through professional publications re industrial automation engineering there is no field that hasn't been touched by it, from entertainment to medicine to nuclear technology. Sales in the fast food industry are stagnant in some regions and dropping rapidly in others. The latest battleground for fast food buyers has been devleoping their individual value menues. If those do not spur increased revenue, the fast food industry has nowhere to go other than to start cutting jobs and adding more efficient automative services.
You didn't write the rules, Pods. I see clearly what you are saying and agree with you. Within the next two decades fast food will be automated and where now do those workers go for employment? The world is awash with low or no-skilled workers. Depending on a high or semi skilled technologically advanced economy for a job when no skills exist is soul crushing. I don't have any answers and I don't think anyone else does, either.
Take care.
I'd argue that even moderate skill workers are dead men walking.
Our system has become winner take all in almost every way.
Well sometimes I sit and think why we always have to work so damn hard and long with the advances of today.
Then I saw the reality that we are all running away from the inflation monster. Those at the bottom are always taken first, but it hits everyone, so efficiency has to improve to stay ahead.
With wage arbitration the US was cut off at the knees and we are in the slow grind down. With the exception of those next to the money spigots.
If we could keep the gains through efficiencies it would be better for sure. But the skimmers get that with inflation.
It really gets depressing.
I am always reminded of this parable, about the fisherman and the banker:
http://financialmentor.com/true-wealth/the-parable-of-the-mexican-fisherman-and-investment-banker/2422
pods
I typically enjoy your posts PODS, as they're very well thought out. Or maybe not enjoy, per se, because you call it how you see it on depressing subjects, but nonetheless, carry on.
I've heard that iRobot is working on a waiter version of their popular Roomba robot.
You lot are living in the dark ages.
Over here in the local 'Sainsburys' we have these magical devices called 'Self Check Outs', dig this, you can scan your own shopping through yourself, with no inconvenience to yourself at all.
Bar the fact these ungodly fucking contraptions dont work properly, double charge you twice on some produce (your fault of course), and ask your age, or age restrictions on a fucking multitude of products that need the 'Self Check Out Help Staff' to allow you to buy the fucking stuff anyhow.
See what you lot are missing out on then?
Pro-fucking-gress.
I am fucking loving it.
Bitchez :-(
We have them here too. Grocery, home improvement stores. Fun times.
pods
We have those in certain chain stores here, most notably Home Depot. And they are basically as you described. Ever hear the phrase "Unexpected item in the bagging area." in an annoying female voice? Yeah, I got your item bitch...
tubesteak SKU tattoo?
Local WalMart just replaced 5 cashiers with a bank of "Self-Checkout" robots and 1 "attendant".
That's an 80% reduction in humans!
Forward!
The local Lowe's put in a bank of self-checkout robots two years ago; they now have one real human being and it is the poor sod at the customer service desk so as they are ringing you up they have to answer the phone and the person wanting customer service to their left.
I had to get an item the other day and there was a line of four people at the one human manned check out. This young 20-something manning the self-checkout robots was chit-chatting with a male co-worker doing nothing. I walked up to her, handed her the item and said "Will you please check me out?" She looked at me like I had leprosy.
Fucking corporate wankers, M.B.A. monsters; they won't rest until you get no wage just a hovel to park your carcass and a meal card for your labor.
What, you think you are George Bush senior?
Wave the skinking product over the little window so the laser can hit it.
Check yourself out....
I love the self-check-outs at the supermarket!
I figure since they're going to make me do the work, then obviously I pay myself in various ways for self-discounted items...
We too have had these self checkout machines for years and now the new wave is the machines will no longer accept or dispense cash. At a Home Depot last week the attendant was telling everyone that they had installed new machines and if they were paying with cash there was only 1 out of the 6 that could handle a cash transaction.
Here comes your Amazon drone now!
never heard of Applebees, but i took a peek at the menu on the website,
they don't serve ribeye,
nuff said,
Just fried Brown-Eye.
how's this gonna work at Hooters?
titty video
No screen, just two big plastic breasts like Playskool toy buttons, one says "beer", the other says "wings". I'm a marketing genius.
.. and seven different pussies for your choice of sauce!
pinsex.com LOL
"...there are a few hundred thousand applicants for your position , Ms. Batts..."
There woud be a lot more than that, too, if we weren't burdened with a bankruptingly expensive social welfare system which serves to protect high-wage earners from the pressure of job competition.
I just crossed off "delivery truck driver" for my next job due to Amazon. Now I have to cross off "waiter" too?
I want to be a printed circuit board solderer.
Not unless you enjoy toxic fumes. Oh, and machines do that work now anyway.
Wave solder machines have been in use for decades. No one does this manually anymore.
A for effort, but sarcasm is lost on most here.
at first people will be hesitant to use this feature. but very quickly it will be a huge success. Why?
Because fat lazy ass Americans love not having to talk to each other. Watch it at gas stations when the receipt doesn't print or a fat pig must walk in to pay for the gas pumped. Watch it at supermarkets while the heffers unload all their grain and feed at the auto check out line ( limit 20 items--"that must mean 20 of one item". See it at the counters when the young trendy set with their ear buds or cellphones ignore the customer service rep talking continuously to someone MORE IMPORTANT than you.
We have become royal assholes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU
This should help u calm down!
Step in a modern Wawa store in Florida. Already there. System works great. No doubt automation is coming in the short term at least.
will the machine hear me when i say "give me my money bitch!"
We should pay stock brokers minimum wage. Any fucking mook swinging from a vine could buy stocks in the past 4 years and make a profit. What skill do these shit-eaters possess again?
They have a skillset, it just produces nothing but skim. Maybe we should call it a skimset?
pods
I wish the post office would replace the workers at the windows with a machine.
I had to mail a large package a few days ago. I went to three different post office and got three different prices!
...and you wasted $20 in gas trying to save $3.
That's only because LaShonda, TeNeequa, and (I kid you not, saw this one a few weeks ago) TruWerq were all texting each other on their Obamaphones just to f**k with you.
Honestly then these people will probably end up with better jobs that occur at normal hours and don't force people to work random hours of the day on a moments notice, which prevents them for properly planning other jobs to fill in the gap time of their 25 hour week.
In 2030, 100,000 ai algos went on strike when neural implants were introduced, unforutantely 1000 milliseconds didnt mean alot to the humans ordering.
President Ben has layed out a program to put them to work on the stock market...oh wait...
Getting closer to being able to eat your iPad everyday now....
Fine with me if they want to fire all the losers at fast food restaraunts...I've been keeping away from them for a long time now. Most of the employees are unbelievably worthless. If people are that worthless then you know they are unclean and uncaring about what kind of product they put out. It started to make me sick to think that all those scumbags were more than likely ill, sick, dirty, uncleanly, don't wash themselves, and then handle our food and they probabaly care so little that they spit in the food any chance they get.
Instead of the knockout game, they probably practice the spit in whitey's food game as much as they can. Fuck that. I stay away.
As far as Crapplebee's goes, I can't think of the last time I ever went into one...several years ago maybe? And the last thing I want to do is touch some filthy screen that every other loser who doesn't wash their hands has touched before I have. And if there aren't any waiters or waitresses, then who's going to clean those things? The bussers? Yeah, sure they will....no tips...no incentive.
I'll take a pass on that as well.
Face it...there's no more quality anymore. There's no more caring anymore. At least not in most urban areas. Rural Mom and Pop places, yes, and I frequent a few in my area because I know the owners and people there and they are all nice and they CARE...or of course there are the very expensive so-called "classy" joints...but who wants to go to those more than once a year or two? Not worth it to me.
And this shit's only going to get worse before it gets better. The unfortunate thing about living through a collapse is that most people don't see it happening around them...they're oblivious to it until they wake up too late and the shit has already hit the fan. That's what's going to have to happen before anybody wakes up, grows up, and changes their ways.
I can't wait to get out of the city and into the country or mountains. I'd rather hunt, fish, and cook my own food anyway. At least I know who has handled it and how well it's been cooked.
Let the useless idiot sheeple go on strike for the scumsucking unions...see how far they'll get with that. People will just get fired and customers will stay away. At least that part of the market will still work. If they raise prices...no customers...no jobs...no Booger King. Simple.
What's next? Little stupid fucking drones flying your shit-burger to you in 10 minutes or less? Sounds like good target practice for the 12 gauge shotty! ;-)
/rant off
Your rant has so many cliches I don't know where to start. Textbook troll.
Specialization and division of labour was once used as a means to progress but now the paradigm has changed and it has become a prison for many.
There was a time when people are needed to get things done, back then it's perhaps safe to give up the life of being a self-sufficient farmer or artisan to hold down a "job" for a better wage.
But now people are not needed anymore. Those who gave up self-sufficiency or are brought up to be "part of the system" with the belief that joining the job market is "the way it is" realize that they have sacrificed everything for a place in a system that doesn't guarantee them a place and without the system they are nothing and have nothing to fall back to.
The system does not function for the benefit of the participants anymore but consumes them in order to perpetuate itself. The only way out for them is to de-specialize and become self-sufficent again.
How do you become self-sufficient if you are born in a city without an inheritance, and the cost of purchasing land increases more rapidly than you wages, with pay rises and job promotions?
You don't, that's why it's called a prison. There is no new world where you can travel to and start a new life, there is no natural resource that is not yet owned.
The basis of economic independence is never infinite, after all there is only that much land out there and it's a myth that a person can make a living without any property or resoucres as long as he has four limbs and is willing to work. People who must get work from the others and work for the others to survive will of course condemn their children to the same fate.
But then those parents themselves often don't oppose the idea of spending a lifetime in servitude, as a matter of fact many of them find that prestigious call it "a rewarding career". It becomes a problem only when they children don't share their point of view.
"How do you become self-sufficient if you are born in a city without an inheritance, and the cost of purchasing land increases more rapidly than you wages, with pay rises and job promotions?"
zero-down mortgages for farmland through Department of Agriculture?
While I was channel surfing I saw a program about farmers in Pakistan who made sugar. Several men were sitting around a big metal pan stiring what I suppuse was sugar while talking. They did ererything from growing the sugarcane to the finished sugar. On another channel a chinese man was cutting the legs of a capacitor in a factory. He probably didnt even know what a capacitator does. I thought that the I would rather be a sugercane farmer in Pakistan than a factory worker in China . Why do so many chinese leave rural ares to work in a factory?
Next thing y'know, they'll be getting rid of the "useless eaters".
First, they came for the waiters....
yep...that is their plan: http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Message.htm
#1 on the hit list?
the message of the Georgia Guidestones
1. MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE
Gee...I wonder how they plan on exterminating 6.5 Billion of us "folks", ay???
GMO, radiation, war, death camps, etc., etc., anybody???
#10 shows how they really feel about us: I guess they'll just keep killing us little cancer people with the cancer they are feeding to us.
10. BE NOT A CANCER ON THE EARTH - LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE - LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE
Re: #1 on the hit list?
And this from the guy who is throwing hate on fast-food workers because they are useless scum.
Looks like everybody want to eliminate the worthless scum, the only difference is who it is that is deemed worthless.
"It's a big club and you ain't in it."
Here's what I always say about these elitist, global warming, and eugenics Nazi fuckers:
Let those who claim we need to cull the herd be the first ones to step up to the guillotine.
If those scumbags are so concerned about over population, blah, blah, blah, then why aren't they ever the ones who kill themselves for the sake of humanity and the planet?
Better yet...kill their whole families first and then themselves. Do us all a favor and end their DNA trail right there...for the "sake of humanity and the planet" of course.
I don't see Al Gore-pig stepping up to take one for the team. All these self-righteous assholes on lame-stream media or government bureaucrats think they're so much better than the "peasants" and "serfs" beneath them that they think they can go around killing everyone but themselves.
Well step up to the plate assholes...kill yourself first and set the example. Practice what you preach.
I would make it a fucking LAW, that anybody who publicly declares that people need to be killed for the planet, etc. should be immediately killed. Otherwise...shut the fuck up, live your pathetic life or your elitist life or whatever, and leave the rest of us alone to live our lives as free, sentient, human beings. You know...those of us who DON'T go around declaring that everyone else should be exterminated.
What about the people like this guy described:
Fine with me if they want to fire all the losers at fast food restaraunts...I've been keeping away from them for a long time now. Most of the employees are unbelievably worthless. If people are that worthless then you know they are unclean and uncaring about what kind of product they put out. It started to make me sick to think that all those scumbags were more than likely ill, sick, dirty, uncleanly, don't wash themselves, and then handle our food and they probabaly care so little that they spit in the food any chance they get.
Should we kill the scum of society, or just laugh at them while they die?
you didn't hear me say they should be killed, did you, asshole??? Those people can be scumbags if they want...fine by me...I will and do take my business elsewhere, got it??? If everyone does that then natural selection and market forces will kick in...the business will lose money, fire the scumbags (if there are any), straighten out their terrible business practices, or whatever they need to do to gain the public trust back or else they will go out of business.
That has nothing to do with killing anyone, but I bet you're one of those douchebag elitists who quietly agree that people should be exterminated so that more douchebags like you can have the place to yourself, right?
Why don't you go jump to more conclusions off the nearest cliff...
There is no fucking balance. That word shows that the people who wrote that are retards! Ecologist and Nazi are the different word for the same group of people
A touch screen an IHOP? Oh. My. God. The twice I was in that joint in my life I did my absolute best to touch as little of the syrup coated environment as possible. How thick can the layer of goo be on the touch screen before it stops functioning?
What would be even better is if they put a little angora sweatear over the touch screen so it had like a little ipad case. Think of all the syrupy delight then!
If they use tactile touchscreen instead of capacitive, the syrup wont be a problem, you just have to push the screen a little harder.
Just kills me that someone thinks food assembly and plate running is worth more than $10 an hour. There is no actual cooking going on at these places. None.
Touch screens that take cash, debit and credit cards is a lot less, OVER TIME, than $7.25 per hour.
Cut the staff by one third/one half and then you can have your $10 per hour.
More likely exceutive bonuses.
I don't think they have created machines that can spit in your meal yet, so there is always hope for future improvements...
A machine can easily follow the "5-second rule".
According to the 5-second-rule any food dropped onto the floor can be given to a customer if retrieved within 5 seconds. A machine can do that.
If machines replace humans in fast-food restaurants, then the drug dealers who operate out of them will have to find another venue.
At least a machine will not stage a robbery at their restaurant.
Cracked.com: 5 worst things in fast food
Not to worry. Why is this worrisome at all. In the NEW normal, all these soon-to-be unemployed workers will be provided Obamaphones, Obamapads, Obamameds, Obamahomes. So why would you NOT join the existing disincentivized unemployed "work" force. It just seems illogical to work at $10 or $15 an hour if you could get paid that to stay home. Sure I agree that those of us who actually will manage to stay gainfully employed will continue to pay for these at-rest masses but then again, that rod has been firmly jammed up our asses anyway with no change of retraction. Enjoy it while it's there!
Lots of various angles here:
Tech once again set to replace manual labor (even if it creates a maintenance uptick)
so more unemployable low-IQ citizens with high expectations of what they deserve (what f-cking idiot at 27 thinks working at BK is meant to provide for a family?)
at the same time the good-cop/bad-cop parties are pushing for amnesty and dramatically increasing the number of manual labor and cheaper high-skill foreigners magically maded into voters...I mean citizens
Wrapped in a bow with the coming crash (whether it's the demise of the Petro-dollar standard, hyperinflation, demographics, creditor nations realizing the nation that gives 2 shits what Kim Kardashian is doing will never pay back their debts).
Bottom line: go long ammo, knives and first aid kits.
Re: what f-cking idiot at 27 thinks working at BK is meant to provide for a family?)
And what kind of fucking idiots would think that a 27 yo getting any job he's capable of doing is actually a fucking-idiot for trying.
All the jobs for the bottom 50% have been sent overseas (the giant sucking sound from a few decades ago). What the fuck do you expect 27 year-olds in the bottom 50% to do now-adays.
Why aren't you at least happy he's not on welfare. WTF.
It is an alarming phenomenon how a lack of empathy has now become an american virtue.
The true measure of the quality of any society is how the poorest, not richest, are treated. In that regard, one would be hard pressed to find a better example of how far america has fallen.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
That is the quote inscribed on the statue of liberty.
I suspect many here would happily sign a petition to have that quote removed.
Whoever scribed that did not have the best intentions for America's future did they?
Re: Whoever scribed that did not have the best intentions for America's future did they?
WFT, the Indians would have been happier.
Most of the people that came here were considered asshole-losers by their own culture. Times change.
I suspect you'd happily sign the petition to have that removed?
I am an Englishman living in Franfurt, so its not for me to tell you what should be written there, but for my own country I would say:
We don't want your poor, or your hard working, your stupid or your intelligent.
In fact we don't want or need anyone.
Go home foreigner, you are not wanted.
Do you feel fortunate that the Germans allow you to live in Frankfurt? Or do they say: "Go home foreigner, you are not wanted"?
We who belong, are all of Germanic origin, here in Germany.
"We who belong" - "of Germanic origin" ... here in Germany.
Yikes!!!! Deja Vu!!!!
Do you sit around with a group of like-minded people "who belong" and sing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" with a sense of nostalgia?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs5bnVoZK4Q
Currently listening to Rimsky Korsakov's Capricco Espagnol. Not that fond of Jewish musicals - they all lack taste and sell you immigration.
Well the Gov didn't pass out a lot of freebies back then.
Do you honestly think flipping burgers, bagging groceries or any other minimum wage job should be enough to cover a family of four (that's the metric I keep hearing as journalists describe the current wage compared to the Federal poverty line)? 'Cause if you do, then even $15 an hour won't be enough. F-ck it, let's show how caring we are and raise it to $75 and hour! Think of how that will immediately lift millions of Americans into the Middle Class! I guarantee it won't cause inflation...
What I have no empathy for are those who are in this type of job who feel entitled to the lifestyle of, say, a mid-level manager, a tax accountant, a plumber, an electrical engineer or a 10th grade Math teacher. The type who spends what little he has to buy the latest iGadget and data plan, name brand clothes, drinks and weed to party on Friday and Saturday night. Gets cable to watch his Cowboys and Walking Dead on Sunday. Then complains he isn't paid enough to save a dime! I have a shit ton of empathy for abject poverty...the kind I've seen in Indonesia, Thailand, Honduras, rural China, Egypt and Eritrea. At least they are begging for needs vice wants. I have similar sympathy for an American who was tossed out on his/her @ss after working for 22-years with a company who is let go and replaced by a much cheaper HN1 worker and takes a job at Home Depot to make ends meet after unemployment insurance runs out. The 27-year old in this story? What's his/her exact circumstances? Bad luck? Bad life decisions? Specifics matter. What specifically can this person not afford and for whom?
But if it makes you feel any better, none of what I wrote says the current situation is sustainable or even desired. Way too many BIG entities are creating this situation, beginning on Wall Street and in London banks, K-Street and Beltway as a whole, HMOs/Insurance companies, etc. Still, even if you magically wipe out these entities, and a new round of middle-class jobs spring up, I still can't imagine a scenario where entry-level jobs should be expected to pay for a family of four to the same lifestyle level of the next level of jobs (skilled and semi-skilled labor requiring certification at a minimum, college degrees at the other end).
More and more what economists (and I was exposed to in my PhD) as dogma from the 20th century is going to exposed as largely BS. The 'effficient market hypothesis' already has Swiss cheese-sytle craters in it and so will Schumpter's 'creative destruction' idea which is a bedrock of modern American-style capitalism and policy.
It's becoming painfully obvious that the next growth industry in America will be: Armed Robbery and Kidnapping.
There's really little other choice.
You're forgetting porn, prostitution and pimping.
jokes aside but robotics is the future
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-money-on-robots...
Re; jokes aside but robotics is the future
It's NOT a joke for the bottom 50% and pretty soon the bottom 90% are going to realize that half their kids are just scumbag losers in the bottom 50% too.
Funny how that always come around.
A business can either produce more for less and therefore lower prices while increasing profits or produce the same for less to restore or maintain profits.
Mandated cost increases erode profits and force cost reductions to be implemented that restore or maintain profits.
Such implementations ultimately make an economy less productive as capital is used to maintain current production levels, not to raise them and there is less capital available to reproduce the existing capital base in-line with population increases.
Sidenote: Capital, savings, can be implemented in four ways: 1) Reproduction, or duplication of existing capital in-line with population increases; 2)Expansion, the expansion of the existing production base based on increased demand; 3)Growth, new production or increased production for less using new technologies; or 4) Cost-Reduction.
That's all well and good, but they have no ass to pinch.
Why on earth would McDonalds,Burger King, Yum or any other fast food retailer pay theese people 1c more per hour when the majority of them are receiving some sort of welfare from the government, Tyeisha,Tonisha,LaToya whatever,probably has three or four kids at home from a couple of different fathers who have long since moved on to spread their seed in others,maybe a male partner at home who doesn't work, gets disability payments, they are all getting food stamps and soon will be all covered by Obamacare,so if they need more money to maintain their standard of living the govt can always ammend the welfare system to provide.
The day the govt stepped in and started topping up workers wages because they were below what was required to survive should have been a massive warning that something was dreadfully wrong with the economy, and once it had started it was obvious that those more productive - i.e those earning higher wages and therefore not eligible for benefits would be subsidising the lifestyles of those at the bottom but more importantly also subsidising the profits of fast food chains and all other minimum wage employers.
Once that line had been crossed there was no going back -EVER -BECAUSE ONCE YOU ALLOW PEOPLE TO VOTE TO RECEIVE SOMEONE ELSES WAGES IN THEIR WELFARE CHECK EVERY MONTH THEY WILL VOTE FOR ANY PARTY THAT CONTINUES THE POLICY OR IMPROVES IT.
The looters have taken over -via the ballot box,and they aren't going to give the country back.It will only end when there are insufficient workers to tax to keep the whole rotten edifice intact.
By your logic, then we should have 'survival of the fittest' and just allow employers to largely do whatever they want. Your hand gets mangled, f@ck you your problem. You have a sick kid or relative, f@ck you your problem.
I'm sorry I have been to other countries that treat their workers like little more than indentured servants including India, China, and Vietnam. If you think that if gov't just stepped out of the picture entirely and the employers were left to their own devices that thigns would wonderful, you are delusional and ignoring current realities globally and American history especially from 1870-1920.
Go back and read about how wonderful life was in corporate-runs towns in the late 19th-century.
Re: Tyeisha,Tonisha,LaToya
I know this will come as shock, but the bottom-50% includes people other than "those people'. In fact, i've heard that non "those people" even work at fast food places. In fact, I was in a corporate "Mexican" fast food place that had all white bottom-50% losers (and the corporate "Mexican" food tasted like it).
But, regardless, at some time in the past the "nice people" decided that the bottom-50% didn't deserve to die in the street because back in the 1880's and 90's this led to bad things.
So, if you really don't want welfare for the bottom-50% you'll have to provide jobs for them, but the giant sucking sound from 40 years ago has taken most of the jobs that the bottom 50% used to do and all that's left is fast-food and retain.
Sorry, somebody famous once said: The scum in the bottom 50% will always be with us (and you better find something for them to do or the "Liberals" will give them welfare).
If you like your waiter, you can keep your waiter.
I don't understand the SEIU logic here in setting the magical $15/hr wage that has become the mantra among fast-food workers.
There is widespread support in the US for raising the minimum wage from the current $7.25/hr and even among registered GOP voters there is support although I haven't seen one poll where they actually ask people what the wage should be.
I understand the goal in organized labor dynamics is to start high but that figure is going to alienate a lot of lower-wage/middle-class workers and frankly isn't economically sustainable. I have always though the EITC was a much better and more straightforward way to reduce poverty than setting a minimum national floor on wages although the EITC was attacked a lot in the last presidental campaign by the GOP including Romney.
It's calld haggling..
Secretly want $12, ask for $15, be happy when you get your $12...
There is widespread support in the US for...
Watch for leadins like this ... especially amongst educators and activists (like those global warming types). Such a leadin requires no evidence at all ... and the person serving it up knows they have no real evidence to back up their assertion.
Just Google any poll done in the past 6 months and you will find support for it consistency among Democrats and Independents and even more certain GOP registered polls.
As always, the devils is in the detail of how the question is worded, in what order it is given in the survey, and how the survey is performed.
Corporate US is SOOOO behind the times.
The Japanese have been doing this for decades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Y9iFXgCRc
Besides, who in their right mind would eat at a publicly held restaurant anyway?
When P/E is priority, you think you're going to be in for fine dining?
I drink ..."Besides, who in their right mind would eat at a publicly held restaurant anyway?"" well plenty do even in asia today ...maybe that is changing in my town they closed 3 kfc's, now empty buildings. but but our strong economy is raising all boats. just ask cnbc. A sonic moved near - I can see it every day from our business ..never more than 2 or 3 cars there, a checkers just closed as well. maybe the people see the result of eating fast food and are now eating at home. McDonalds business here from the number of cars looks slow..something is up.
I eat at chains all of the time: Ruth's Chris, Morton's, McCormick & Schmicks, Carrabbas, Smith & Wollensky. We used to try all of the hole-in-the-wall stuff, but got grossed out by the lack of standards and filth.
I'm sure this was posted already, but one of the organizers of this strike met w/ obama last week - hey, we need something besides the complete cluster f*ck that is Obama in the news this week, and pronto.
Luckily, so many people are getting minimum wage (or nothing), that this story resonates.
I love this. I always use the self checkout lanes at grocery stores too, though. I've spent way too many meals either waiting for them to come back after placing my drink order, or trying to rush out of there only to have to wait 10 minutes for the damn check. Or telling them to give me 1 minute on the menu and then wait 7 more for them to take an order.
I'm not a fan of servers and I think the tips I'm expected to pay are ridiculous compared to the 10 minutes of work they provide me during the meal. I wish I could tip the cooks instead. I still pay my pittance, though. I don't want shit put in my food.
Self-checkout aisles haven't become widely adopted in supermarkets because customers generally would prefer a human worker and they are actually reduce productivity compared to an experienced checkout clerk.
The real reason self checkout hasn't outplaced humans is because of the stop loss aspect. Once they can ensure what was put in the basket was paid for it's off to the races.
Where I live they are heavily used. High income, highly educated area. I can't see it flying in crime ridden areas or places with big concentrations of elderly.
I'm on the fence about human vs. automated check out at grocery stores. Is it morally right to use a machine when an actual person makes a living performing that role? Is it idiotic to continue to pay a person to do something a machine can do? That's my internal dialogue.
However, the self-checkout line is the most enraging of all experiences as a matter of practicality considering you are almost always stuck behind some complete moron that can't follow written (and spoken!) instructions! Something that should take 30 seconds ends up taking 5 times as long. It also doesn't help that I'm a booze hound and every time I scan a bottle of hooch the one attendant has to come over and check my ID.
But will it forge anti-machine slurs on the receipts?
They have these in Orlando, I went to an UNOS place down there and they had one 19 year old girl managing 5 tables (the place was dead), we sat down, and the manager explained the stupid lcd waiter tron thing, and we just put it to the side and asked for a real waitress.
AMERICA REFUSE TO USE THESE MACHINES waiting tables is a job for a real human being, why the fuck should some asshole CEO charge you twice what a plate should cost and then not even have the decency to hire a waitress/er to tend to the table?
Are human lives that worthless now? Have some decency demand a server and leave a tip, have some fucking class, don't use this POS robo ordering shit, if you want that shit stay home and order dominos online.
A server is part of the "experience " of eating out.
Without the server, you might as well stay home and order out dominos shit food.
----those machines are also gimmics they try and charge you like 5$ to play scrabble/angrybirds lol because you know, when you go out to eat, you just want to play angry birds and ignore the people at the table completely because we are all no longer fucking human we are just consumer bots.
"Are human lives that worthless now?"
Yes. Just ask the dead children in Pakistan.
"AMERICA REFUSE TO USE THESE MACHINES waiting tables is a job for a real human being"
Probably should have made that call when it was car manufacturing that was getting automated, so there would still be some middle-income jobs, to support the low-income jobs.
The question is, what to do about the robots? Neo-Luddite Revolution and throw all the computers and robots in the trash, go back to pen-and-paper accounting, have a human operator connect your phone calls for you?
I kinda like the idea for places such as this. I do not have an Applebees nearby, but the local BW3 would be a good place for this type of system.
Maybe if the Yute behind the counter could count past 9 he would a little higher wage.
Reality is that neither party really gives about a $hit about the poor anymore and hasn't since the private organized labor dynamic in the Democratic party died and withered after they lost the NAFTA fight in '94. Hell, apparently in the last election even people who work 40-hr (historically full-time since the 30s) are 'takers' if they are on any form of gov't assistance.
Personally, I am a pragmatist and recognize that wage inequality is a huge problem and leads to a $hitload of problems. The issue is that neither party has a pragramatic sets of ideals or coherent solutions to deal with them right now. Wish the federal gov't would streamline most of the programs that benefits the poor into a much more consolidated progam that allowed for a much more transparent and less-costly administrative manner. This actually would be 'efficient gov't which neither party actually made any real progress on.
I'm not against the minimum wage and a lot of the econometric work that was done earlier on minimum wage has been either debunked or its affect has been reduced from state-level data from the 90s and 00s. I am against a $15/hr minimum wage though and would prefer the EITC is used instead since doesn't distort labor markets. Only problem is that it has to be funded by the federal gov't thorugh reduced gov't wages and allows large corporations to sit on the gov't tit because the federal gov't takes up the slack from their non-liveable wages through a multiple variety of programs.
Good post. There are many, many people here in the US with low skills and not many decent paying jobs for them. My guess is that there is no good solution out there. More and more of us will will be sliding down into a lower and lower standard of living.
Perhaps it's time for a national strike of all minimum wage workers. Then we'll see how "non-essential" these "non-skilled" laborers really are...or aren't.
"The advocates of the minimum wage and its periodic boosting reply that all this is scare talk and that minimum wage rates do not and never have caused any unemployment. The proper riposte is to raise them one better; all right, if the minimum wage is such a wonderful anti-poverty measure, and can have no unemployment-raising effects, why are you such pikers? Why you are helping the working poor by such piddling amounts? Why stop at $4.55 an hour? Why not $10 an hour? $100? $1,000?" -- Murray Rothbard
Rothbard is an a$$hole on this topic and no one talking about $100/hr or other such drivel. For a guy who says he is a student of history, he almost completely ignores what life was actually life in late 19th century/early 20th century for most Americans.
Send all the foreigners back home and we would not need minimum wage legislation.
Keep the cute and college educated foreigners.
Re: Send all the foreigners back home and we would not need minimum wage legislation.
To some extent that's true, but what percentage of the population are ferners?
Unless native american, all of us sorry saps are foreigners.
Foreigners and fucking morons on where we came form, oh but entitled and haven't contributed shit for anyone.
Re; Why stop at $4.55 an hour
You can "redistribute" the wealth from the top (the smart people) to the bottom (the dumb people) the easy way or the hard way, but eventually it will be done to some degree.
The only REAL question is: as a society do we admit that the bottom 50% need protection from the top 50% and how to we help them protect themselves from getting eaten alive, because that's all this is: very simple survival of the fittest predator behavior. The dumb people are eaten alive by the smart people.
Just because you are wealthy doesn't mean you are 'smart' but yeah Rothbard is the kind of liberterian that I have a general problem with because he generally won't take a stand on exactly what the role of gov't should and shouldn't be and often ignores the realities of history and humany social dynamics.
Here is a great Libertarian creed: "If it neither picks my pocket or breaks my arm, it is none of my business." -Thomas Jefferson
so what to do if it both picks your pocket and breaks your arm?
Peak Dipshittedness! I used to bartend and wait tables. Snotty customers would oft be replied by me, "in the future, robots will do my job..." They'd chuckle. I would look at them dead pan serious and then state, "yours too!"
Dumbfounded and fully realizing the gravity of my statement, they'd pay the bill. You've been automated!
As for organized labor, I admit I do have a soft spot for it among private industry. It is more problematic among the public sector but otherwise capital and rent-extraction just run roughshod over individual private workers historically in the US and other industrialized countries.
My grandfather had personal first-hand experience with that as a Wildcat striker in the 30s among the textile mills in Reading, PA. Private goons hired by the owner beat him with a crowbar that left a scar over his right eye for the rest of his life and attempted to firebomb his house. Police looked the other way because they were in the pockets of large factory owners at the time and it wasn't until the local textile organizers made ties with organized crime locally (especially the Jewish gangsters with Italian muscle) that the playing field leveled out. Turned out to be a deal trading one devil for another but that is the reality of the world. Little guy often gets trampled and run over and the 'meek still inherit the Earth' is nonsense.
Maybe it is a mistranslation, "The meek shall inherit dirt*"
*earth, aka nothing.
After the lawyers get done, the meek inherit shit.
This isn't the thrities, there are plenty of other places to work. Why would anyone apply for a job where they consider the pay inadequate? Because they lack skills to apply where pay is adequate....and then blame the employer.
LMFAO. And let me guess, you're basing this on the labor participation rate or the unemployment rate?
The joke is, Mexicans on the assembly line make far less than McDonald workers. Even engineers and programmers in India make less.
Now you say there are plenty of other places to work? Where? They all went to Asia and Mexico.
There's a reason shitty paying low wage temporary McJobs are all that are getting created. They can't be sent to China.
Demand and supply is a bitch. I think supermodels should demand my services, but so far my supply exceeds therir demand. I may have to lower my expectations. Fast food is low skill low pay, adapt fellas.
Just sit in your box and your slop will come out the tube for ya.
So what will everyone do for work when everything is automated? And who is going to eat at these restuarants when nobody has a job? And people wonder why I am a Luddite....
easy, the "restaurants" will accept EBT. many in my area already do.
You have to love the 'suck $hit' mentality of certain posters on here and that even low-income people who work a full-time job of 40-hr week or work part-time jobs that are more than that are somehow moral, intelligently, and socially inferior and largely worthy of scorn or mocking.