Until you realize that no level on minimum wage is adequate in SF, while $10/hr is livable in rural Arkansas.
It's not a silver bullet even with COL factored in. Higher staff costs? Replace them with automation. You can see the largest employers of minimum wage employees (eg. Mcdonalds) hedging against a rising minimum wage with kiosks to replace cashiers. At $15/hr for labor, those capital investments start looking like a mighty fine ROI.
Cashiers helping one customer at a time are a bottleneck in a fast food restaurant. It's not that those jobs are eliminated, food still needs to be cooked and served. Kiosks allow up to 2, 3, 4 times the number of customers to order food at the same time (this also includes food delivery services who can order remotely). Kiosks are just the last part of efficiency that fast food restaurants have been developing over the last 50 years.
Increasingly surprised how we need all these various ipads/terminals in businesses. Seems by now technology should be able to push something to the customer's phone when they walk into the store and have them complete their order on their phone without having to install apps.
Until you realize that no level on minimum wage is adequate in SF, while $10/hr is livable in rural Arkansas.
It's not a silver bullet even with COL factored in. Higher staff costs? Replace them with automation. You can see the largest employers of minimum wage employees (eg. Mcdonalds) hedging against a rising minimum wage with kiosks to replace cashiers. At $15/hr for labor, those capital investments start looking like a mighty fine ROI.