The Unintended and Yet Totally Foreseen Consequences of Raising the Minimum Wage
27th April 2024
Whoever could have guessed such as thing? Everyone:
In response to recent minimum wage increases in California, fast food restaurants across the state are shifting to automation to get rid of wage-earning humans.
The move to making customers place orders at digital kiosks alleviates what owners say is the financial strain of rising labor costs after the minimum wage for the state’s fast food workers increased on April 1 from $16 to $20 per hour.
Harsh Ghai, a Burger King franchise owner who manages 140 outlets along the West Coast, is leading the transition to automation. He plans to introduce digital kiosks across all his restaurants within months — a drastic acceleration from his original timeline of five to 10 years.
Note that it was going to be happening anyway, just on a slower schedule.
It’s ironic that progressives, with their ham-handed attempts to speed a future utopia, are actually speeding the arrival of a future dystopia. (Be careful what you wish for….)