At least Robots will get your name right. 15 an hour and the coffee business

Just when I thought I might get a brief reprieve from pointing out how galactically stupid the concept of a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage is AP reports that Seattle is facing a push for the increase. With this in mind I thought it would be worthwhile to look at what this would mean for Seattle's biggest contribution to society Starbucks.

If Starbucks were forced to pay it's hourly employees 15 dollars an hour it would only hasten the downsizing of the human workforce. . Why pay a team of baristas 30,000 a year each if you can eliminate over two thirds of your hourly staff by putting this machines in? Not to mention that I am sure that the service provided by these machines would be superior to that of the human employees. Seriously can you really trust your average Starbucks employee to use skim milk instead of whole milk when you ask? A machine would most assuredly dispense the correct milk after all that is what it is programmed to do.

If you are one of those people who loves to complain about Starbucks eating up all the market share and running the mom and pop coffee shops out of business just imagine what happens if those mom and pop shops have to pay 15 dollars an hour to their employees. Seeing employee costs double would most assuredly drive those shops out of business. If those small businesses somehow managed to stay open you would be looking at 10 dollar mochas and 3 dollar bagels.

A minimum wage increase would not only lead to consumer price inflation it would also lead to an even more homogeneous business environment. There would be no incentive for anyone to attempt to compete with the big coffee corporations when they could simply invest in a couple of vending machines. Provide all the service with minimal employees and have brand recognition. It sure beats spending 30,000 a year to give baristas something to do until their band gets huge.

It is not just Starbucks that is going in this direction. Seattle's Best also has an express coffee system.

Someday soon it will be a robot that is making your cafe latte that you pick up on your way to see a movie.

Oh who am I trying to kid? You won't be going to a movie you will be watching it at home as Movie Theaters are on their way out as well.

The Leisure Economy or Let the strike for 15 usher in Idiocracy the choice is yours

This past week Mary Kay Henry the International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) went on the Colbert Report to discuss the "Strike for 15". It occurred to me while watching her interview that the main issue in this strike is the hatred of large corporations such as McDonald's and Yum Brands not the concern for the workers themselves.

Much like with the anger aimed at GMO's which I sincerely believe to be more about Monsanto making large profits off of the GMO's not the perceived dangers of the GMO's themselves this is about hatred of profitable companies. If GMO's were open source and Monsanto weren't making so much money I don't think people would care about them just like if the only restaurants were family owned dinners you wouldn't hear the outrage at the wages fry cooks receive. 

This is the real issue here, if the minimum wage were to be increased to 15 dollars an hour you would see economic collapse. Family owned dinners and cafe's couldn't afford to pay 30,000 dollars a year to their full time employees and stay in business. Increasing the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour would lead to record inflation and job loss. The cost of the increase in wages would be passed on to the consumers much like what has happened in Australia where the minimum wage is over 20 dollars an hour.

Consumer prices are 50 percent higher in Australia than they are in the United States. This is the outcome of an increased minimum wage. The reason wages are low is about supply and demand. We have larger supply of workers than jobs. This, not greed, is why wages are low. If you force employers who are already employing more workers than they need to function efficiently  than you will simply hasten the downsizing of the workforce and the rate at which human workers are replaced by machinery.

It comes back to population size. At one point in time we needed a large workforce to plow land. At another point we needed a large workforce to build goods then we needed a work force to sell those goods. Now the land is plowed by a one worker in a large piece of Caterpillar machinery 

and the manufacturing is done by these awesome dudes

As for the selling of products that is now done in this manner. Every time you order a product online you are eliminating retail jobs in the same manner in which the occupation of travel agent is now only seen in movies from the 80s and in the museum of Natural History thanks in part to the Roaming Gnome and Travelocity. This lowers the price to the consumer and gives the consumer more freedom. These innovations improve the quality of life and have created a leisure economy.  

As more and more people choose to be childless

the population will eventually decrease and the workforce will level out and wages will go up.

No longer is wealth created through arduous labor. It is now created through providing travel and entertainment. This is a golden time to be alive because the costs of leisure have gone down. What creates the most wealth in the United States today you might ask? The NFL not only do the players receive lots of money but they spend it on luxury items such as Ruby's, Lexus', Porsches and Mercedes. They also spend money things other than strippers. The sole reason why cable companies and the Networks haven't had to cut their workforces drastically is the amount of money generated by NFL television contracts. These jobs will vanish once the NFL goes to a subscription based streaming service that doesn't require Direct TV. Bars make up for the down summer months the minute the NFL kicks off. Included in this the merchandise and vendors in the stadiums. This is the new economy, It is based on leisure activities and as the population decreases everyone will have a better life.

Of course it really does matter who is having children and who is not. For if the only people have children are those that have four of them when their only source of supporting their family is a retail job than the future of this planet is extremely bleak