I think the idea is that $7.25/hr is already that point.
Let's say that each of these robots costs $10k per year, including R&D and maintenance. Let's also say that because of inefficiencies with having people order their own food or with assembly ultimately being done by hand, a store has to install 6 robots to replace 3 workers.
So it is actually less expensive already to replace minimum-wage workers with robots. The minimum-wage issue has very little to do with it besides trying to keep wages low in general.
A blogger created a calculator that allows you to determine (over a 5-year time frame) whether it is cheaper to buy an expensive robot and do automation or to just use manual labor and to save the excess in Treasury bonds. He found that when the minimum wage is at $7.25, it would be slightly cheaper to hire humans, and if the minimum wage is raised to $10.10, then it would be slightly cheaper to hire robots.
The blogger assumes that it would cost $150,000 to build the robot, including R&D and maintenance. This comes out to $30,000 per year (while your assumptions claim that the bots only cost $20,000 per year to replace one human).
I'm thinking specifically in the case of McDonalds and other large chains where the costs of R&D and dedicated maintenance staff would be spread over thousands of restaurants.
You're forgetting Onion2k's point that it's cheaper for companies to hire robot-replacable employees because it loweres the wages of the non-robot-replaceable labor. Under that theory, the reason they can't bring in the robots is that their remaining labor costs would increase.
Personally, I don't know why that would be, given that companies pay what they need to get employees to work there and nothing about the NRR's job would change if the robots came in.
Even if the robot costs more today, that wouldn't change the inevitability of it happening. A $10k robot this year will be a $5k (in today's value) robot in 5 years. While wages go up, tech costs go down. No one will escape that.
Yeah, the only way I would go along with something like that would be if I received a higher percentage than what is currently standard. I would expect something like double the percentage associated with a 4/1 deal.
I remember this style of copy-protection in another game released the same year (1989). Indianapolis 500: The game would ask a question that would be answerable from the manual.[1]
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> rather than cooperating and in their minds speeding their own demise
It makes sense, then, that one of the few large cable companies that uses Open Connect is Cablevision, who's CEO is on the record saying "Ultimately over the long term I think that the whole video product is eventually going to go to the Internet."[1]
He's one of a few that has accepted the eventual fate of cable TV, and so his business decisions aren't biased by a need to delay the inevitable.
That's a nice theory, but the impression I get from the (extra biased against last mile ISPs) DSLReports is that Comcast is continually spreading usage caps and plans to make them nationwide in 5 years, e.g. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/128987
There is no inherent problem with usage capped plans, as long as the price is fair. If you'd like an uncapped plan, pay more.
The problem is that the last-mile providers try to extract money from netflix for a service that the consumer already paid for (deliver those video bytes)
You don't see a problem with e.g. Comcast implicitly charging the consumer extra for using Netflix (by exceeding the cap and paying by the drink afterwords) and not charging anything "extra" for using Comcast's video services?
There is an argument there, in that it costs more real money to deliver video bits the a la carte Netflix way than the cableco broadcast way, but I believe the conflict of interest remains an issue, and the prices I see for exceeding these rather small caps don't strike me as fair.
(Albeit AT&T's, the only choice I have aside from a not so reliable WISP, are particularly ridiculous: 150 GiB/month including I'm not sure what overhead for a continually rising price 2nd from the bottom "up to" 1.5 Mbs down/300+ Kbs up line that currently costs $36/month, each additional 50 GiB costs $10. We'd get a faster line so my father could watch video, at $5/month extra each increment, if the cap wasn't so low and the overages so high.).
That's not a capped plan. A capped plan charges you more if you exceed a specific bandwidth threshold - no matter what you spend the bits on. As long as Netflix, Comcast PPV, Youtube and my private cat videos get charged the same price - I'm fine with that.
The issue you're pointing out is the lack of net neutrality - but that is orthogonal to the pricing.
Or their comcast/xfinity hotspots, which is true.[1] Their lowest "Performance Starter" package does not have access to those hotspots, while the next higher "Performance" package does.
Let's say that each of these robots costs $10k per year, including R&D and maintenance. Let's also say that because of inefficiencies with having people order their own food or with assembly ultimately being done by hand, a store has to install 6 robots to replace 3 workers.
So it is actually less expensive already to replace minimum-wage workers with robots. The minimum-wage issue has very little to do with it besides trying to keep wages low in general.