Wendy’s Serves Up Big Kiosk Expansion As Wage Hikes Hit Fast Food, by Jed Graham.

Wendy’s [hamburger chain in the US] said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.

It will be up to franchisees whether to deploy the labor-saving technology, but Wendy’s President Todd Penegor did note that some franchise locations have been raising prices to offset wage hikes.

So raising the minimum wage leads to increased use of capital (machines) to replace labor? Who would have guessed?

One of the things that disappointed me about the many people I knew in the Australian Labor Party is not so much that they knew little about economics, but that they simply were not interested. Perhaps that generalizes across the Left?

UPDATE: Don’t know if you’ve been to McDonalds recently, but they have big self service touch screens now to build your own burger. Quite fun actually for the older kids.

It won’t be long before they realise they can replace most of the screens with a smartphone app and let you just walk in and pick up your order you created yourself on your phone.

hat-tip Matthew