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Or and more likely, the cash register allowed more people who could not previously be cashiers due to poor math skills or whatever else, become cashiers. This

Or and more likely, the cash register allowed more people who could not previously be cashiers due to poor math skills or whatever else, become cashiers. This in-turn increases the supply of cashiers, while making the job easier, ultimately leading to downward pressure on cashiers' wages. Which brings us to where we are today, the lack of need for any cashier, please tell me you've used a You-Scan before. What do the wages look like for the cashiers who have been replaced by robot and self-service?

sokoloff 11y ago
Of course I have, and in many cases, I prefer the You-Scan. This is just an application of the general principal that if the most valuable skills you can bring to a job are trivially replaced by an inexpensive self-service kiosk, you have terrible wage prospects. I don't see any reasonable way around that. Raise the minimum wage and you'll see a lot more robots and kiosks.
- intopieces 11y ago
  >Raise the minimum wage and you'll see a lot more robots and kiosks. Good. Humans have no business doing what robots can do anyway. The question remains: How do we adapt the humans who lost their jobs? And before you write them off as 'unskilled,' remember that your job could just as easily be next.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    With a minimum wage high enough that there is nothing they can do that's worth that amount in the employment market, their options are to be unemployed or to work as an entrepreneur, independent contractor, or some other arrangement (possible quasi or not legal) that works around the minimum wage law. In that way, they can use the skills and effort they have to a productive end, even if no one will bid the minimum wage rate for those services. If the job I'm doing now is "next" (I don't think the job is "mine" in any possessive sense), I would have to step back and figure out what my next best option is. I'm quite sure that absent the utter collapse of civilization, that I'll figure something out and be fine.

sokoloff 11y ago

Of course I have, and in many cases, I prefer the You-Scan. This is just an application of the general principal that if the most valuable skills you can bring to a job are trivially replaced by an inexpensive self-service kiosk, you have terrible wage prospects. I don't see any reasonable way around that. Raise the minimum wage and you'll see a lot more robots and kiosks.

intopieces 11y ago
>Raise the minimum wage and you'll see a lot more robots and kiosks. Good. Humans have no business doing what robots can do anyway. The question remains: How do we adapt the humans who lost their jobs? And before you write them off as 'unskilled,' remember that your job could just as easily be next.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  With a minimum wage high enough that there is nothing they can do that's worth that amount in the employment market, their options are to be unemployed or to work as an entrepreneur, independent contractor, or some other arrangement (possible quasi or not legal) that works around the minimum wage law. In that way, they can use the skills and effort they have to a productive end, even if no one will bid the minimum wage rate for those services. If the job I'm doing now is "next" (I don't think the job is "mine" in any possessive sense), I would have to step back and figure out what my next best option is. I'm quite sure that absent the utter collapse of civilization, that I'll figure something out and be fine.