I was a little surprised to see that semi automation in the fast food business is well underway. Macdonalds is claiming they have reached the fifty percent point. Many other corporations are implementing semi automation as well.

Since I suspect the fast food business is probably the largest employer overall in North America. The semi automation will represent yet another very serious hit on available low end jobs .

Generally speaking the wife and myself avoid the fast food business sector. Also of some interest. How has it managed to becomes such a large employer percentagewise? Has to be a few hundred employees in our local town of only ten thousand alone working in it. I do not think we have an individual local industry that employs as many bodies.

I'm 78 and have seen massive automation during my lifetime. For example, when I was a kid, every telephone call went through a local telephone operator; long distance calls had at least two human telephone operators, one on the local exchange and another on the exchange in the locality where the call went. A real person was employed to operate every elevator; if an elevator was in service 24 hours a day, every day of the year, it required five or more employees to keep it in operation. Big office buildings in large cities also had a person in direct charge of every bank or elevators as well as starters who told the operators when to leave the lobby.

Every entry made on every ledger for every bank account was made by hand. That was true of records of every business in the country. Computers and word processors and electronic files have pretty much eliminated whole categories of office workers, including clerk typists, file clerks, and many secretaries.

Public transit companies (buses and subways) no longer employ people to collect fares, Machines do that.

In the markets I use, about half the food is checked out at self-service check-outs.

This barely touches the surface. We have eliminated massive numbers of jobs in the service economy even larger numbers of jobs through automation in industries and agriculture.

Fast food is such a large employer because we're too lazy to make breakfast, pack a lunch, and cook dinner when we get home (myself included, something I'm trying to work on). I have no doubt that the obesity epidemic is related.

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1963 Ford Falcon Convertible
1972 220D 4-speed
1986 190D 2.5 5-speed
1999 300D

don't forget how many IT jobs it created too.

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BENZ THERE DONE THAThttp://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...c/progress.gif
15 VW Passat TDI
00 E420
98 E300 DT
97 E420 Donor Car - NEED PARTS? PM ME!
97 S500
97 E300D
86 Holden Jackaroo Turbo D
86 300SDL
(o\|/o)

Remember those folks demanding $15 an hour that worked in FF?? Here's their future...

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1987 560SL
85,000 miles

The young peeps in this country figure they have to have two main things, The toy phone and the accompanying apps, and the dollar menu.

Followed by a cheap set of--or a free set of wheels, like all the old forsaken Benz's ~that are older than they are.

I think that what can be semi or totally automated will occur regardless of the wages. To me it really is a problem in any country when only the bottom line matters to corporations. Plus we should have little doubt that corporations have the means to eventually buy and control almost everything. Actually if you are already large enough you can get control of even more with no risk. Or direct cost.

As for minumin wages. I have had a look over time. I really think they have to be seriously elevated. There are more things risked than not by keeping them too low. I no longer think the factor of what they are will effect things to the extent we thought they would in a negative fashion.

Like one poster said. I too am an older guy and well remember the elimination of far too many jobs. Also todays systems allow any one person or group to extract far too much money out of the economy. Although I have no ideal of how to stop it.

Will it become only serfs and masters ultimately I wonder? That is if things do not change.

I do think that many things that have happened and will happen. Could not have occurred without the application of computors. Without them todays larger enterprises would be uncontrollable. They alone enabled size and growth to not be an issue.