Raise minimum wage or not MACHINES are going to replace those workers (and most of YOU, too) sooner rather than later.
Just not true. I mean, we've heard that for almost a century now. If that was actually true, then we should have all been replaced by machines, several times over by this point. I'm not. Millions are not.
The truth is, labor is replaced by machines, when labor is too expensive. That's all there is to it.
Now in some cases, when the natural market supply of labor is low, and the demand for labor is high, then people are replaced by machines through market forces.
That is inherently the least damaging method of replacing people with machines, because there is inherently few people being replaced. The whole reason the price of labor is high, is because the supply of labor is low. Thus if the supply of labor is low, fewer people are being replaced with machines.
But the other method that labor costs go up, is through the non-market forces of government.
When government drives up labor costs, with minimum wages, and with mandated costs of health care, or unemployment compensation, or other things.... well then even thought the supply of labor is high, and thus many people need those low-skill jobs, those jobs disappear, which drastically harms the economy. Now those people are unemployed, and have few opportunities to get even the lowest skill jobs.
But companies do not replace workers with machines, unless the cost of labor goes too high, regardless of whether the cause is market supply and demand, or by force of the government.
For example, my uncle is an engineer, that works for a company that makes automated glassware machines. Glass cups, glass jewelry, glass plates.... so on and so fourth.
He was sent on a 3 week journey through China, to pitch the automated glassware to Chinese glassware companies. He returned from the trip with zero sales. He explained that currently the price of labor is just a few dollars lower, than the cost of running the glassware machines. Thus, even though one machine could do the work of 5 men, because the price of labor was low, they didn't replace their employees with machines.
When the price of labor increases far enough above the break-even point of the automation machines, they will buy them. Now that can either happen because of supply and demand, in which case the way supply of labor drops (because more workers move on to better things), or because government makes a minimum wage the kills jobs, and those workers are unemployed.
