Labor organizers are turning up the heat on McDonald's and other fast food companies to raise worker pay speed up their rate of capital-for-labor substitution, with protests set to spread to more than 30 countries Thursday.
Artificially raising wages (i.e. not through an increase in demand for the final product and/or an increase in worker productivity), over time, just encourages firms to seek different ways to get whatever they need to have done done. Then again, given that McDonald's restaurants rarely seem to get my orders right the first time anymore, maybe capital for labor substitution would be an improvement.
Update: Ironman sent me a couple of links that are related.
"McDonald's hires 7,000 touch-screen cashiers."
One of his own: "Business Math: Robots or Minimum Wage Workers?"