See we told you.. Mcdonalds is ordering 7K touch screen to replace cashiers

[candycorn]

Again, we have a consumer based economy.

When consumers have less money, consumption goes down; hence the economy slows.

More money in the hands of consumers equals a stronger economy.

It's not a coincidence that wage stagnation has mirrored a slowing economy.

So you agree that cutting taxes spurs the economy, good for you.

How can the government lower taxes, when the corporations or big businesses of America, are using it for a dumping ground of people who need help because they (companies who can afford to) refuse to do what is right and helpful to America on this front themselves ?

In truth, we need both tax relief for the poorest Americans and tax increases for those doing very well along with FMW increases to $10.00. Freewill isn't wrong on this one.

 

[daveman]

And now all McDonalds needs is a machine to flip the burgers, assemble the burgers, put the fries in the basket, wrap the burgers, fill the cups, take the money and make the change, sweep the floors, empty the trash, etc.......

Then they won't need any employees with the outrageous demand that they be paid enough to live! Why should anybody expect that their job would pay them enough to afford housing food and clothes? Why how greedy of them!

Oh, you're one of those people who thinks people should be able to support a family on a minimum-wage job.

You might want to stop supporting politicians and policies that force businesses to relocate, shut down, or outsource. Then more people would be working and wouldn't have to rely on minimum wage jobs.

So...in part, it's YOUR fault.

 

[The T]

So you agree that cutting taxes spurs the economy, good for you.

How can the government lower taxes, when the corporations or big businesses of America, are using it for a dumping ground of people who need help because they (companies who can afford to) refuse to do what is right and helpful to America on this front themselves ?

In truth, we need both tax relief for the poorest Americans and tax increases for those doing very well along with FMW increases to $10.00. Freewill isn't wrong on this one.

Tax relief for those that don't pay taxes and get refunds anyway? Really?

The only taxing they suffer is upon themselves...and allowing Government to run their lives. WHY do you suppose they don't take responsibility for their own lives? Their liberty? WHY do they loathe it?

 

[Meathead]

So you agree that cutting taxes spurs the economy, good for you.

How can the government lower taxes, when the corporations or big businesses of America, are using it for a dumping ground of people who need help because they (companies who can afford to) refuse to do what is right and helpful to America on this front themselves ?

In truth, we need both tax relief for the poorest Americans and tax increases for those doing very well along with FMW increases to $10.00. Freewill isn't wrong on this one.

How exactly, would you give tax-relief from people who do not pay taxes? Another dingbat!

 

[daveman]

That's right, minimum wage jobs are for kids and with enough of your kids working maybe you can pay the rent AND eat!
After all only the most capable in our society should expect to earn enough to pay their own way. All the less fortunate, less capable and certainly the less intelligent should simply live in a garage or a box with no hope for a life of dignity.

Get off your ass, get some schooling/training, and get a better job.

THE MAN isn't keeping you down...YOU are.

 

[depotoo]

Oh please.....Really now

But once again you are offering solutions that might help an individual and assume they will help all individuals. If there are 60 million workers who do not earn enough to support their families, there are not 60 million supervisor positions, there are not 60 million second and third jobs available to workers

As it is today, our solution is to allow workers to be paid substandard wages and let the taxpayers make up the difference

My suggestion is to start shifting more of that burden back to employers......where it always used to be

show me where 60 million workers are trying to support a family on $7-8 an hour.
Most of those working at fast food restaurants are teenagers, or college students. If the teenagers already have a family, then they should have thought about that before pulling it out of their pants. Do you not think their should be consequences for ones actions in life?

So what is the failing of a young person trying to work their way through college?

Have you ever questioned why public universities have gotten so expensive? They have blown through the rate of inflation. Try examining the contracts of those union educators and now many faculties also are unionized.
They have driven the costs up for that college student - not McD's. Therefore McD's should not be responsible for their plight. If anything McD's should be applauded for helping them in any way by giving them a job! At least they are giving them something while the govenment and unions take their chances away. I tell you what, let's have all McD's make a policy not to hire college students and see what that does for that college student. Rather than give them credit you want to blame them for college being so expensive.

And the standards of education are dropping every year. Yet it costs infinitely more...

 

[candycorn]

How can the government lower taxes, when the corporations or big businesses of America, are using it for a dumping ground of people who need help because they (companies who can afford to) refuse to do what is right and helpful to America on this front themselves ?

In truth, we need both tax relief for the poorest Americans and tax increases for those doing very well along with FMW increases to $10.00. Freewill isn't wrong on this one.

How exactly, would you give tax-relief from people who do not pay taxes? Another dingbat!

They take taxes out of the paycheck every week regardless of what is made. Have you never received a paycheck?

 

[daveman]

Oh these right wingers are hilarious. They think of themselves as "millionaires currently without funds". Which is why they have no empathy for someone making minimum wage, even when most of them are making minimum wage. Because they are sure that one day, their ship will come in.

You mean it won't? That the asshole repubs on here aren't already worth at least 10 million dollars. How can they spend all day on a message board if they aren't rich? Why don't they have to work like I do?

I hear that some are unemployed, most are un employable ( I mean really, can you imagine having to work everyday with some of these hateful assholes?)

No, I think you are correct, these right wing turds on here are the proverbial "millionaires currently without funds".

But they are working hard at finding a job. If McDonald's will hire them.

You two need to get a room.

 

[daveman]

Detroit Police officers start out at $14 per hour. McDonalds employees should make more?

No, that just proves that Detroit Cops are grossly underpaid for what they are asked to do.

You can blame the union and Detroit's liberal leadership for that.

 

[daveman]

LOL! You really ARE completely clueless, aren't you?

Automation has been an issue with unions for DECADES.

Businesses have long sought to replace workers with machines. One of the most noticeable examples of that trend in recent years has been replacing cashiers with automatic scanners in grocery stores. You've seen those, haven't you?

The companies save money when you do the work yourself, but you don't get a discount on your groceries because you self-scan, do you? Hell, you're actually working without getting paid.

So, go ahead and scan your own groceries. Bag them up too while you're at it. You've just helped the company with their bottom line, and you haven't been paid for your work, and some other poor slob has probably lost his job.

This is actually incorrect. My time is extremely valuable, and the 10 minutes I can save is much more savings than the hourly cost of a checkout clerk.

LMAO. Sure it is dude. Thats why you spend so much of it (time) ******* around on a message board.

Yea your time sure is valuable. And wasted to.

It's funny the way you ridiculously believe you have the authority to make that decision for others.

 

[Synthaholic]

Anyone who believes that McDonalds put this into action due to the recent strikes is a moron. Or a Right-Winger.

Corporations do not move this quickly.

 

[alan1]

OK

Let's define a living wage first. A living wage means you pay enough so that the taxpayer doesn't have to support your employees food, housing or healthcare. In effect, that welfare is going to support those employers.....they get a low cost workforce and the taxpayer makes up the difference

How does any employer pay his employees? Some are supporting families off the salary, some just use the money to party every weekend. It's not relevant is it?

Yep. The problem is the nature of the work and the value the employee brings to the employer.

There are going to be far fewer McDonald's employees supporting a family on their wages than Apple, for example. The obvious reason is skill set. I asked before, and I can never get a straight answer, how many people are really trying to support a family at McDonald's?

You folks are simply refusing to honestly address three critical questions:

Why is it the responsibility of a corporation - whose only objective is to maximize shareholder value -- to base pay on some arbitrary "living wage" that varies wildly from employee to employee?

Why do you not acknowledge and promote the fact that people are capable of improving their own lives via workplace advancement, new employment, and/or improving their own skill set to make themselves more attractive on the employment market?

Isn't it the fundamental responsibility of an able-bodied adult to make a higher income than their monthly costs so that they can avoid needing public assistance, a drain on our tax money? How could that possibly be someone else's problem?

.

Conservatives always resort to this.....offering an individual solution to a problem with a population. Yes, an individual can improve his lot in life.....a population can't. Supply and demand apply.
All societies require a certain percentage of low level labor. They cannot all be executives. The question remains....what standard of living should this part of our population have and who should pay for it?

If you don't want employers to provide a basic standard of living, then the taxpayers must

I beg to differ.
As a taxpayer it is not my responsibility to provide a standard of living to some other person. If they want the comforts of life such as housing, clothes and food, let them earn it for themselves and their family. Again, it's not my responsibility to support them, that is their own personal responsibility.

 

[Synthaholic]

Detroit Police officers start out at $14 per hour. McDonalds employees should make more?

No, that just proves that Detroit Cops are grossly underpaid for what they are asked to do.

You can blame the union and Detroit's liberal leadership for that.

Is that what FOXNEWS told you? You lapped it up - there's still some on your chin.


How Wall Street — not pensioners — wrecked Detroit

While clueless elites continue to blame "reckless public pensions," a new report tells a very different story





In its house editorial yesterday, USA Today retold the now-accepted story of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Railing on “reckless public pensions,” the newspaper told its readers that the Motor City is “Exhibit A for municipal irresponsibility” because it allegedly “negotiated generous pensions” that were too lavish. In this fable, the average Detroit pensioner’s $19,000 a year stipend — which many get in lieu of Social Security — is somehow defined not only as excessive, but also as the primary cause of the city’s financial problems. Detroit, thus, becomes a weapon in the larger Plot Against Pensions, as the right holds it up as a cautionary tale supposedly showing that A) police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers are greedy and B) America cannot afford to fulfill negotiated agreements to pay public-sector workers a subsistence retirement benefit.


No doubt, there is a tiny grain of truth in this otherwise inaccurate story. Yes, it is true, Detroit is a cautionary tale for governments about financial management and legacy costs. However, it is not a cautionary tale about allegedly greedy employees living the MTV Cribs life off taxpayers. As an eye-opening new report from a former Goldman Sachs executive documents, it is instead yet another cautionary tale about Wall Street’s too-good-to-be-true schemes that end up being, well, too good to be true.


Commissioned by the think tank Demos, the new report out today from former investment banker Wallace Turbeville shows that contrary to the myths about a bloated municipal government overspending on lavish social services, Detroit’s “overall expenses have declined over the last five years” by $419 million thanks to the city “laying off more than 2,350 workers, cutting worker pay, and reducing future healthcare and future benefit accruals for workers.” Today, Turbeville notes that “Detroit has a significantly smaller workforce per capita than comparable cities.” Yet, those draconian cuts still left the city with an annual $198 million shortfall because of three big problems — none of which has anything to do with supposedly greedy public workers and their allegedly overly “generous” pension benefits.


*snip*

You can ignore the rest of the facts at the link.

 

[The T]

Oh these right wingers are hilarious. They think of themselves as "millionaires currently without funds". Which is why they have no empathy for someone making minimum wage, even when most of them are making minimum wage. Because they are sure that one day, their ship will come in.

You mean it won't? That the asshole repubs on here aren't already worth at least 10 million dollars. How can they spend all day on a message board if they aren't rich? Why don't they have to work like I do?

I hear that some are unemployed, most are un employable ( I mean really, can you imagine having to work everyday with some of these hateful assholes?)

No, I think you are correct, these right wing turds on here are the proverbial "millionaires currently without funds".

But they are working hard at finding a job. If McDonald's will hire them.

You two need to get a room.

 

[daveman]

Because you are an asshole, you want to do away with this kids job? WTF is wrong with you?

A professional in customer service doesn't **** with people. He does his job to the company's standards, being polite and pleasant to the customer, or he goes home for being an asshole.

That you support such assholery means you're an asshole, too.

And that's not at all surprising.

 

[The T]

No, that just proves that Detroit Cops are grossly underpaid for what they are asked to do.

You can blame the union and Detroit's liberal leadership for that.

Is that what FOXNEWS told you? You lapped it up - there's still some on your chin.


How Wall Street — not pensioners — wrecked Detroit

While clueless elites continue to blame "reckless public pensions," a new report tells a very different story





In its house editorial yesterday, USA Today retold the now-accepted story of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Railing on “reckless public pensions,” the newspaper told its readers that the Motor City is “Exhibit A for municipal irresponsibility” because it allegedly “negotiated generous pensions” that were too lavish. In this fable, the average Detroit pensioner’s $19,000 a year stipend — which many get in lieu of Social Security — is somehow defined not only as excessive, but also as the primary cause of the city’s financial problems. Detroit, thus, becomes a weapon in the larger Plot Against Pensions, as the right holds it up as a cautionary tale supposedly showing that A) police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers are greedy and B) America cannot afford to fulfill negotiated agreements to pay public-sector workers a subsistence retirement benefit.


No doubt, there is a tiny grain of truth in this otherwise inaccurate story. Yes, it is true, Detroit is a cautionary tale for governments about financial management and legacy costs. However, it is not a cautionary tale about allegedly greedy employees living the MTV Cribs life off taxpayers. As an eye-opening new report from a former Goldman Sachs executive documents, it is instead yet another cautionary tale about Wall Street’s too-good-to-be-true schemes that end up being, well, too good to be true.


Commissioned by the think tank Demos, the new report out today from former investment banker Wallace Turbeville shows that contrary to the myths about a bloated municipal government overspending on lavish social services, Detroit’s “overall expenses have declined over the last five years” by $419 million thanks to the city “laying off more than 2,350 workers, cutting worker pay, and reducing future healthcare and future benefit accruals for workers.” Today, Turbeville notes that “Detroit has a significantly smaller workforce per capita than comparable cities.” Yet, those draconian cuts still left the city with an annual $198 million shortfall because of three big problems — none of which has anything to do with supposedly greedy public workers and their allegedly overly “generous” pension benefits.


*snip*

You can ignore the rest of the facts at the link.

But the leaders that negotiated it ALLOWED it to happen didn't they?

Nice try skippy.

 

[Synthaholic]

Here - a little more:


First and foremost, Detroit suffered from an unprecedented loss of public revenue. As I’ve previously reported, this was brought on by many factors. The most obvious of those were the recession and free-trade-related deindustrialization, both of which decimated the city’s manufacturing job base and drove population out of the city. On top of that, the state of Michigan reduced its revenue sharing with the city.


Second, the city and state spent — and is still spending — big money on wasteful corporate subsidies to politically connected private interests. That includes a reaffirmed commitment to spend $283 million — or more than the city’s entire annual budget shortfall — on a new professional hockey arena. Such profligate expenditures have drained revenues out of city coffers.


But perhaps the least discussed factor is the financing cost associated with a series of Wall Street-engineered debt deals back in 2005 and 2006. These schemes crafted by UBS and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch were supposed to reduce pension fund obligations by using derivatives to try to “synthetically” convert variable-rate interest instruments into fixed-rate contracts.


A few years ago, these schemes were all the rage, as the financial industry’s Masters of the Universe swooped into places like Detroit, Denver and Jefferson County, Ala., throwing so-called certificates of participation, campaign contributions and graft at school boards and city councils, all with the promise that the interest-rate swaps were the key to financial nirvana. Predictably, it was a jackpot for Wall Street and their bankrolled politicians, but it was the opposite for taxpayers.

 

[alan1]

Let's look at it this way. The taxpayer is subsidizing their profit margin by allowing them to pay an artificially low wage. A wage where their own workers could not afford to live in their community

Market based wages are not artificially low, bub.

Well toots...

They are artificially low when the taxpayer subsidizes the wage market by providing the employees substinance.

Simple solution.
Stop providing welfare to them.
It amazes me that so many liberals think the government (tax payers like me) are expected to financially support low wage or no wage people. I didn't bring them into this world, let them earn their own keep.

 

[thereisnospoon]

McDonald's orders 7,000 touchscreen kiosks to replace cashiers - Neowin


YOu wanna walk out on your job for more money. Guess what you now might lose your jobs all because of UNIONS who are greedy..

This was inevitable.
In fact, airlines have eliminated many ticket counter jobs with auto check in kiosks.
Now, the other side of this is skilled technicians will be needed to maintain the machines.
So, the former fast food worker, or current one has an incentive to find a tech school or community college and take courses to learn how to maintain electronic equipment.
Those are recession proof jobs. Because if they break, someone has to fix them.

 

[daveman]

As an employer, McDonald has every right, indeed, every obligation to increase profits for its shareholders.

If McDonald invests in automating its procedures, it is McDonald's money, with no contributions from those who are sitting around like despicable vultures, waiting to try too cash on somebody else's risks and investments.

Those who have no stake in the investments have no right to demand benefits from its success.

Those who are unhappy with the wages McDonald's pays, should educate themselves or go away peacefully and hope to get a better job.

MacDonalds will get rid of a job if they can whether it's a $15/hour job or an $8/hour job.

It' truly amazing how conservatives are so happy at the prospect of fewer and fewer jobs in a country with an ever increasing population.

No, that would be liberals. They love it when more and more people are totally dependent on government.

It just means more votes they can buy with taxpayer money.