April 1, 2015

Neil Cavuto and Fox News weren't very happy on two fronts today. Firstly, McDonald's are raising wages for their company owned workers:

McDonald's says it's raising pay for workers at its company-owned U.S. restaurants, making it the latest employer to sweeten worker incentives in an improving economy.

Secondly, the city of Seattle's wage hike goes into effect today which immediately affects the food service industry.

Tens of thousands of workers in Seattle are getting a boost in their paychecks starting Wednesday as the city's new minimum wage kicks in, rising to $11 for most workers. It's the first stage of a law that eventually will raise the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Neil Cavuto ran a couple of segments on these developments, which are great for workers, but not so much for businesses. Later in the show, Neil brought on Fox Business' Lauren Simonetti to playfully fearmonger the horrible consequences that might befall food service industry workers like waiters and waitress. She explained that by upping the wage to 15$ an hour, Mensa-type college grads would be flocking in to steal their jobs. And lo and behold she's heard whispers that restaurants would hire "robots" to serve food. I'm serious.

Simonetti: There are many concerns surrounding this (wage hikes) #1,higher wages attract more skilled workers, making the industry more competitive and possibly more difficult for the unskilled and the uneducated to keep their jobs. # 2, higher costs mean businesses look for creative ways to save money. There are whispers that some restaurants are looking at ways to hire Robots instead of people to take your order. That could mean layoffs.

Speculation is that these robot order takers are being designed by Cyberdyne Systems, and while the Schwarzenegger T800 is a bit out of date now, the much jazzier T1000 unit is just around the corner from being ready to roll off the assembly line. Don't worry though. They're not programmed to kill you just yet.

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