By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
We told them this was going to happen, Save Jerseyans.
You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist or fortune teller to see it coming.
“I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry – it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging french fries,” the former McDonald’s US chief executive Ed Rensi told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo this week.
So predictable! And Rensi’s comments come only days after McDonald’s competitor, Wendy’s, revealed plans to expand the use of automated kiosks due to minimum wage hikes pending in large states like California and New York. Prices will be going up, too. There were 311 McDonald’s in New Jersey as of this time last year. That’s a LOT of jobs – real people – on the line.
$15 per hour = More expensive burgers + less shifts/workers earning $15 per hour (or any wage).
Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto is the tip of the spear for the $15 minimum wage push here in New Jersey. The Speaker and his colleagues continue to ignore the clear and convincing evidence that a minimum wage hike will devastate New Jersey’s already fragile job market.
Is it stupidity? Willful blindness? Class warfare run amok?
Or are these Democrat Super PACs courting ‘Big Robotics’ for donations? Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised! Intentional or not, $15 per hour Dems may end up doing more to advance the robotics industry in a short amount of time than the free market ever could… overnight.
Domo arigato, Mr. Prieto! On behalf of the thousands of New Jersey workers who are going to be replaced by burger-flipping robots should you succeed:
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