People do a lot of stuff they arent allowed to. But how often will you catch a guy taking a quick spit in the buns? I even know of cases locally where a guy brought his semen in a bottle and mixed it in to the mayo. That one got caught, but how manydont? I've personally seen people just pick up buns from the floor and use it for a burger. Point is we dont have these issues with robots

I personally haven't had a job that was minimum wage. All the jobs I've ever had paid more, they all haven't required great skill either.

People need to aim higher than minimum wage jobs and those jobs being forced to pay significantly more isn't the solution, they will just get machines. For teens and those seeking work experience, minimum wage is fine. But people trying to make a living, you gotta aim for better than that. Most jobs pay better than minimum, even low skill jobs.

States already vary in minimum wage, some going considerably higher than federal. More importantly, most jobs already pay more than minimum wage.

Robots have already taken a lot of jobs in Europe from my understanding. Nobody says Europe is in the shitter. This is progress, robots doing tasks while human focus on other things.

I think the primary concern with immigrants or illegal immigrants isn't jobs, but they are a financial burden and ofcourse safety issue.

You go and keep poking at someone else to provide some sort of citation for the success of co ops, so I went ahead and included one with my counter arguement to what you were saying. Now I expect you to do the same. And even if that doesn't account for mergers or buyouts, that does not happen nearly enough to inflate the overall average age of a business back up to 50 years. And 20,000 business is change to the millions of businesses that function in America. I ask that in your citation it is relative to the present because from what Is being inferred, companies are failing more often and earlier in their life. Like I said, it is extremely rare for a company to make it 100 years and the companies that do usually lead their industry or are absolutely significant/game defining players.

I don't think a single person has argued that minimum wage isn't entry level. What we are arguing are that we need entry level jobs to begin with - for kids in high school, for disabled people, for undereducated folks trying to survive, we still need them and the point of this debate is that these jobs are/will be the first to go which will not only put more people than ever before on the streets, but drag the rest of the economy down with it.

"Oh but wait education". Lol. Please. Our educational system is getting worse, not better. My state dropped standardized state testing the year after I graduated, drop out rates are going up, overall test scores are going down. The reform we need is a second thought to the reform we've gotten - real education these days starts with college and the cost of that is also going up in strides each year to the point where you can either 

A) try to work your way from the ground up toward a decent wage (yikes what's happening to those entry level jobs?!) 

or

B) Essentially enslave yourself to pay your way through college or university for what is ultimately still a gamble on job security after potentially wasting 2-8 years of your life.

I grew up from a poor ass background. I am self made. Most of my friends were handed cars, were given their first jobs through friends and family and many had parents that could afford a higher education. Some people genuinely do not understand the struggle that poor people are born into but I sympathize greatly for these people and feel their pain (I make $20/hr now and feel absolutely blessed to have made it even this far at a young age, but I still think that we need to care more for each other, I still think that minimum wage is much too low and this is not the proper response you should expect from what needs to be a responsible company).

Machines and technology bring progression. When those machines and technology outright replace an entire group of people with nowhere else for them to go, purely for financial gain very few will see, that's not fucking progression. That's called opression

Lastly, this post is within the context of the discussion, in no way am I implying anything about your character or who you are as a person.

We made big progress in the past few years. Googles Deep Mind won in a creative game against the best person. This game has more possible moves then atoms in the universe so computing power alone will not help you. Thinking out of the Box is necessary to win. We made big progress understanding the brain a better in the past years and general AI might not be so far out. People like Elon Musk mentioned their biggest concern is AI. I think maybe 30 years max until AI has Human like intelligence. 

Check whats going on right now the AI field is brimming with money and new discoveries. Its just a matter of time and I am sure in our lifetime there will be a software that will pass the touring test.

Autonomous Cars. Drone Delievery, VR, Printing Organs. Fully Electric Cars. Carbon Nanotubes , 3D Printers. Robots that can  make a stroll through forests on 2 legs. In 2020 the 10 Billion Iter Fusion Reactor will go online in France. If I compare it to the things we were promised in the 1990 and what actually came true. ( we got way way more than any of us has expected)  the changes that are coming soon, will be even more unbelievable.  

I cant stress enough how much life has changed in the past 20 years. And everything is pointing to even bigger and faster changes ahead. Who expected fully automatic cars in 2020 ? Who expected VR , who expected 3D Printers ? And once silicon substrate for chips are maxed out we might move to carbon nanotubes which will give us 200 GHZ processors.

A Wave off new technology will hit us in the next 2 decades and change life fundamentally. The  Changes are speeding up.  Society will also have to adapt.

At some point we will just not work in the traditional sense. As technology will provide for everyone and will be able to maintain itself. What will happen after this is absolutely unpredictable. Aslong as the progress keeps up like this or even accelarates the consequences could be anything really.  

German researchers design robots to feel pain:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/researchers-teaching-robots-to-feel-and-react-to-pain

Combine this with Atlas from Boston dynamics and some Deep Mind like Cloud based intelligence and add 30 years development to it and there you have robots that can do anything.

I would probably go to McDonalds for the first time in years if this were the case. The food isn't very good, the employees are always rude, and your order is almost always wrong. So, removing 2 of the problems might make it worth it.

But this is obviously coming. Unskilled workers will not get $15/hour because they aren't worth it. Although, there will always be a need for human interaction in physical storefronts, but machines have taken over jobs before. They're not stopping on simple, process based food preparation.

@Bolded.  That's exactly what computing power is all about: Increasing speed and memory for pre programmed possibilities.  You can always increase it more and more.  It's just difficult to wrap one's head around how many atoms there are in the universe..but we have systems that can obviously produce such numbers.  This isn't about intelligence though.  There's more to the brain than just intelligence or creativity.  There's pain, growing, emotions and of course the big one that probably won't be replaced by robots: Empathy.  

Do you think you can get empathy or more importantly get people of all kinds to empathize with a robot?  People will want this when ordering from McDonalds.  The world is getting more and more isolated but there are still call center jobs for instance for people that need to remember such skills.  A large part of those jobs aren't just technical ability; it's selling comfort.

Wow where is your mcdonalds located? Are you one of those people asking for special burgers? I almost never have an issue with Mcdonalds getting my order wrong and Ive never had one be rude to me. I never get anything special though however they make it is how I get it.

Remember, McDonalds is a franchise based opperation.  A lot of responsibility for running each individual store falls to the people who own and opperate the franchise.  So quality can and does vary.