A $15 minimum wage worker at full time hours costs at least $31,200 worth of wages plus a variety of backend expenses to handle things like insurance, etc. A former McDonalds CEO now raised some hackles when he commented, “if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry—it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries.” But those sentiments are not merely conjecture. Wendy’s already anticipates implementing the practice with these comments from their CEO on the impact to franchises, " look at the opportunity to reduce overall staff, look at the opportunity to certainly reduce hours and any other cost reduction opportunities, not just price. You know there are some people out there who naively say that these wages can simply be passed along in terms of price increases." Along with advances in self-driving cars and improvements to natural language response, many entry level positions will easily succumb to automation in the near future.