7 karma · joined January 16, 2018
There are places in India where they pay 100 men pennies to dig a trench. Sure, they could buy a machine so 1 person could do the work of 100, but if the machine costs 100k and the guy who is trained to operate it makes 10 an hour, the payoff time is too long to justify. If the guys digging the trench demand 5 an hour, the barrier to the investment goes down significantly.
This is why, if a 15 dollar minimum wage is passed nation wide, you will never order from a person at McDonald's again... and any niche restaurant that does use people will cost significantly more. A large business like McDonalds benefits from this because they can absorb the cost. A small business can't, so big corporation's have less competition and can make even larger profits because they have less downward pressure on their prices.