The Minimum Wage Protestors Are Too Naive To See What Is Already Happening To Their Jobs

Just last Saturday, CNBC posted a story entitled: "Hiring R2D2 to protect your mall or campus—all for $6.25 per hour".   In that article, it showed a robot that was capable of making security rounds at an hourly depreciated and operational cost that is a full dollar below the minimum wage.

Additionally, these robots won't need vacation time or a matching pay in to Social Security and Medicare; and, for sure, won't cost the company a single cent in providing mandated healthcare under ObamaCare or the fine that would be imposed for not providing it.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, Amazon announced the deployment of 15,000 robots of its own to streamline its picking, packing and shipping in their warehouse operations.

Saving approximately 20% in labor costs, the little orange robot is designed to bring a storage rack of goods to a human so they can pick the product off the rack and then package it for shipping.  No longer would real people have to roam a large warehouse in search of product that needed to be shipped; and, then, return to a shipping point to pack it and complete the process.

Earlier this year, in a joint effort between Adept Technologies and SwissLog, a labor saving hospital robot was announced that could shuttle specimens and, I would think, medications throughout a hospital autonomously.

Of course, one has to ask, why couldn't a robot like this also deliver food to a restaurant table in the not too distant future.

The simple fact is, that already, robotic workers are cheaper than paying the current minimum wage at $7.25 an hour plus benefits for a human worker doing the same job.  And, don't think that ObamaCare and the employer mandates won't also be at the heart of this trend of replacing humans. So, what do you think will happen if Obama and the Democrats get their way and the minimum wage is set 40% higher at $10.10, or if the short-sighted $15 minimum wage protesters got their wish?

The high cost of union labor has driven much of American manufacturing jobs overseas in the last 5 decades. Now, labor's wish for a higher minimum wage is sure to banish the existence of most of those  jobs through robotics.  It's a matter of simple economics, and right now, there are at least 50 companies (link below) chomping at the bit to have their robot technologies added to our everyday lives.

References:

Hiring R2D2 to protect your mall or campus—all for $6.25 per hour: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102240810

Amazon's new robot army is ready to ship: http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article4216163.html

Florida Hospital Orlando to automate laboratory transport with Swisslog autonomous mobile robot: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/4/prweb8336301.htm

Robotic Business News: 50 Robot Producing Companies: http://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/companies/category/top_50/list