Tablets Replace Waiters in Restaurants: Another Reason America Doesn’t Need More Immigrants
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Americans should look around and take stock of all the places where a smart machine is performing a task formerly done by a human: ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines), ticket kiosks in airports and self-checkout in grocery stores. Plus there are other examples that exist out of the public eye, including automated warehouses, robots for harvesting crops and manufacturing.

The latest incursion of smart machines is fast food restaurants like Chilis and Chevys introducing an Ipad-style device on tables for customers to order food.

The increasing use of smart machines everywhere is one reason for the jobless recovery.

Below, a surveillance robot patrols a school — eliminating a watchman job.

More clever automation is yet another reason that doubling legal immigration is a terrible idea. We don’t need to import excess workers when 20 million citizens cannot find work.

American workers are now facing major employment destruction from three fronts: immigration, outsourcing and smart machines. Of the three, immigration is the issue over which citizens have the most influence.

Back to more automated restaurants, which may become more so if employees insist on substantially higher wages: a robotic burger flipper is ready to replace humans.

Michael Saltsman: The Employee of the Month Has a Battery, Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2014




Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made the connection in a recent interview on MSNBC. Asked if he supported a higher minimum wage, Mr. Gates urged caution and said the policy would create an incentive for employers to “buy machines and automate things.”





Empirical studies, including University of California-Irvine and Federal Reserve researchers David Neumark and William L. Wascher’s exhaustive 2008 book “Minimum Wages,” show what happens when labor costs increase. Companies must choose between increasing prices or reducing costs to maintain limited profit margins.

And they’ve already been fighting rising costs. The federal minimum wage increased by 40% between 2007 and 2009. In the five years prior to that hike, 28 states acted independently to increase their own minimum wages. The cities of San Francisco and Santa Fe were the first to raise their base wage to nearly $9 an hour. Eleven states now raise their minimum wage automatically with inflation. New Jersey even amended its constitution to ensure wage hikes. Then there’s the Affordable Care Act, which has presented low-margin industries with another set of cost challenges.

President Obama and Senate Democrats are now endorsing another 40% increase in the federal minimum wage. And in localities such as Seattle and San Francisco, $15 an hour—which translates to an entry-level wage of $30,000 a year—is being seriously entertained. The small airport town of SeaTac in Washington already passed a $15 an hour minimum wage in November. It is not surprising that companies are urgently seeking labor savings that don’t dramatically alter the customer’s experience.

Which is exactly what today’s technology offers. Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s and other brands, has cautioned legislators that a higher minimum wage is “encouraging automation.” Other service-industry CEOs are saying the same thing behind closed doors.

“Efficiency” is the positive public face of these changes. Chris Sullivan —a co-founder of Outback Steakhouse who now works with MenuPad, a tablet-ordering company—explained his product to me this way: “It increases productivity, allowing servers to wait on more tables.” That means tips may increase for some.


Technological change is inevitable and often healthy for industries, and perhaps our restaurant and grocery store experience will look different in 20 years regardless of labor costs. Yet policy makers are encouraging the switch to technology by increasing the cost of hiring—at a time when unemployment for young adults age 16-19 has hovered above 20% for more than five years.

There’s no limit on who can be replaced: San Francisco-based Momentum Machines has a burger-flipping robot that replaces three full-time kitchen staff, makes no wage demands and stages no walkouts.

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