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Higher wages might make it easier to make a business case for installing kiosks, but it does nothing to lower the price of the kiosks. I don't see how it qualif

• dredmorbius 7y ago
  It's a market shift more than a subsidy. Given a constant demand for, say, fast-food ordering services, there are two competing supplies addressing that need: minimum-wage labour, or automated kiosks. By raising the minimum wage, you're shifting the supply curve up, which if sufficient, kicks the advantage to the kiosk manufacturer(s). Advantage: automation. The kiosk vendors get a windfall benefit as they can now capture this share of the market. The restaurateurs may wish to consider what their new market position vis-a-vis suppliers is. With minimum-wage labour, any one unit of input (worker) is fungible for another, and the employer has considerable leverage over the supply in that whilst a worker is out of a job, the employer need only find another replacement worker. Up against a (likely) automation oligopoly or monopoly, the restaurateur is now at the short end of the market stick, and may face future price (or other) demands or concessions from the automation vendor(s). At least to the point of substituting back in human labour.