… for McDonalds.

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

In short, a major corporation has concluded that machines are better than no-skill humans, even at minimum wage. And here’s the thing: as time goes on, the machines will get better, more reliable and cheaper… while no-skill humans will remain the same.

This to me is a pretty good argument for reducing the minimum wage to something nearly trivial… say, $3 an hour.  Min-wage burger flipper jobs are *supposed* to be entry-level temporary work, work that helps teenagers learn the ropes of responsibility. Show up on time, do decent work, learn to take orders, figure out how to advance. But if the minimum wage is raised so high that minimum wage jobs simply go away, then what will unskilled kids do to get skilled? Go straight from Junior High to jobs making $30K/year? I don’t think so.