Everyone thought that there would always be a demand for Detroit autoworkers in 1965. So they were able to negotiate really good wages and benefits and so forth. But the world changed, and making autos in Detroit became a "luxury" as compared to making them in Mexico or Japan- and the jobs went away. In the 90s and 2000s everybody thought that lawyers would go on making more money forever and ever, but guess what, you can now get a lot of doc review and discovery work done in India by US trained lawyers for $20/hour, and the law biz is sucking.
The point is that just because a fry cook is a necessity today, doesn't mean he will be tomorrow. If the cost of employing a fry cook gets high enough, the market will find a way to replace him with a machine. The machine will be expensive, but it will also be reliable and guaranteed not to get in fights with the manager or be late to work. The reason that such a machine does not currently exist is because it is currently cheaper to employ a 19-year old kid to do the work, even with all the problems the 19 year old kid causes.
Raising the minimum wage will cause some marginal FF restaurants to close and others not to open. It may cause cashiers to be replaced by touchscreens (I understand some McDonald's in Europe already have these, exactly because workers are so expensive there). I would rather tax society at large and provide a solid, even generous, safety net than load more burden on employers.
i'm pretty sure i understand where you are coming from, and i can't say when the french fry cook will no longer be needed or what will happen economically on any level when that occurs. these are my thoughts as i read ur post:
1) in 1965 it may have been a good idea for the economy to have entered into that agreement with autoworkers. just because the world has changed didn't make it the wrong move at the time. if we start hiking the wages up gradually, and put in provisions for reviewing and changing the agreement between employers and employees we can further reduce the risks of a detroit type situation.
2) imo, none of your examples apply to inc. the FF workers minimum wage in the present. u adequately explained how it could bite us in the ass in a short period of time, but not why in the here and now it isn't a better plan than doing nothing. if you've been arguing the same thing iappreciateit is, then all i can say is i don't disagree, i haven't followed the thread that closely. though i do not know how to fix the problem, i do not think sitting on the sidelines now because of a potential problem later is good enough reason not to intervene. if that was the attitude, society would never get anywhere. the best we can do is try to learn from the problems we're dealing with now wrt the auto industry and lawyers when entering into an agreement with FF workers.
3) machines don't get late for work...but they do need maintenance, break down/parts, and need electricity as well as someone to push at least one button. obviously if u can afford one, the theoretical machine is still better in the long run, but you can't act like such a machine is anywhere on the horizon or that start up costs are the only issue. until you we make actual robots, i don't see how u clean and stock the store, load the machine, press the start button, handle the drive thru and the cash register, and lock the door at night w/o humans (this assuming the machines don't break or need supervision, either). so even if some game changing machines are on the horizon, how many jobs will they really eliminate until they can help unload the delivery truck and turn off the lights at the end of the day?
4)in the last paragraph, job creation and the possible effects of a min wage hike on R&D for FF automation were kind of beyond the scope of the discussion and so i left it out for the sake of simplicity.
i'm pretty sure we actually agree. ur ultimate theme seems to be to help these people out via safety net(s) instead of min wage hikes...I think that is a great idea. i was just pointing out some of the problems people are bringing up with min wage hikes can be dramatically mitigated if implemented a certain way. i didn't really intent to respond on this thread because the specifics of this issue demand a certain level of economic understanding. i just got really irritated by reading the "budgets" proposed with a straight face by people born into the middle or upper classes who are making 2-10 times as much as an MCD employee and have time to post on the msg board from a soft chair with high speed internet while deriding everyone else about how lazy they are. those people are seriously out of touch with reality, even if they are working/worked quite hard at their own educations and jobs.
i think ur general points are in-assailable, but i do not think ur actual examples apply that well to the specifics of this situation--they don't have a union to start, and automation of an assembly line is a whole different ballgame than automating a multi-step service.
of course my POV makes its own assumptions as well. if too many people did start eating crackers and kraft mac-n-cheese, then that would be bad.