Add to that wage pressures

Speaking of wage pressures, I think a lot of people who had been making $10 and hoping for $15, will soon be wishing they had that $10 instead of $0. Welcome to the unintended consequences.

"Wendy's is turning to self-service ordering kiosks to offset hikes in the minimum wage. The fast-food giant announced that the kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of 2016. It will be up to individual franchisees to determine whether or not to utilize the labor-saving technology."

insider.foxnews.com/20...-hikes

Jester,

Re: Self-serve kiosks at Wendy's. Only the beginning of a trend. Or the beginning of the 'end'. The whole operation will be run by robots, with one human 'manager' on site to read error codes and 'reset' machinery accordingly. He can afford to buy a burger at Wendys - all the laid off staff cannot, as commercial eateries do not accept food stamps. Or may s/he isn't needed - have all outlets managed from 'Wendy's Central' in.....Vietnam, or the Phillipines. 

So, yes, the irony is apparent. A permanent class of unemployable workers, and meager spending customers.

Bernie gave a speech in a city in my state the ohter week. It was locally televised, and man, was it 'no punches pulled.' He started spewing figures, such as the twenty richest families in America have greater wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans combined. Approx. 140 mln people. Bernie said listen up, because you won't hear these kinds of wealth figures on TV. And yes, you won't.

I believe the march towards more automation will conitnue relentlessly, and is creeping up towards higher skill labor.  

lt cap,

I agree entirely. I'm sure I've posted this before, so forgive me: A close friend, an expert in AI, contends that it will not be long before a computer with sufficiently high AI will be able to do anything a human can do (including art: painting, poetry, etc.) 'Our Final Invention' by Barret makes a pretty strong case. 'Rise of the Robots' (can't recall the author) speaks to how the owners of the automatons (the 1% if you will) will become increasingly more wealthy, rather than spreading the $ around, and perhaps sets the conditions for revolution as the gap between haves and non-haves gets dizzying. Good thing that 60 countries are reseraching autnomous battlefield weapons - one way to cut down a murderous mob.

And on a different topic, I know you all know this...but.....Jester's and lt caps observations about both how earnings reports are cautionary and how real GDP keeps falling far short of estimates (warnings from both in the US - .5% GDP growth, and IMF or whoever looks at World GDP cutting back estimates) are important long-term indicators of what we're probably in for. Not that this is any different than other times - but the market seems to keep 'dithering' on the news of the day, if not the news of the hour - Oil is up, the market gains 200 points - Oil price is down, it loses it back. Attenion span of a guppy. I hope to God our play on the optical network sector comes to fruition before the party is over. I have read some stories that suggest a recessive market may well open up price wars - let's hope not.

And on a different topic - I cannot believe how negligent I was on not monetizing my strong opinion that in graphics cards, Nvidia was eating the only competition - AMD's lunch. AMD was playing desperate catch-up, re-branding cards with the same architecture. And not doing well at it. I looked at NVDA in the low 20's. It is now above 40. And on May 27th, NVDA will begin shipping its smaller-die Pascal architecture cards. Too stupid to act on the implication of one's own words? Well, hope there's another bus coming in 20 minutes.

This narrative the media is peddling about oil and the market is BS too. When oil was crashing, all we heard was that it was unequivocally good for America. Then we saw the results in the oil sector of layoffs and bankruptcies, and suddenly it wasn't so good. US retail has been crashing too, despite the supposed benefits of these low oil prices, with those savings mostly going to ever-rising healthcare costs and the general inflation that the Fed insists is non-existent, for instance it seems like almost every restaurant near me has raised prices by 8%-10% recently, and I'm not talking about the cheapest fast food chains. My property taxes are up a similar amount. Yay for no inflation! Now with oil rising, does it not follow that it's worse for America? Higher costs when consumers and companies are obviously struggling? And yet whenever oil is going up, they tell us that's why the market is up, and vice versa.

The collapse of Oil Prices certainly caught most experts by surprise (although in handsight it should have been obvious to those in the biz), even T Boon Pickens (sp) was saying it would not last as long as it has and then he was predicting $80 a barrel soon.  So here we are and oil is still under $50.  The number of bankruptcies in the oil patch is certainly very high.

On the other hand, Iran is still ramping up and Libya and Venezuela are not pumping anywhere near what they used to. So who the heck knows when the supply/demand will balance?

From as recently as March 1st, there's this story about the supply glut with storage and tankers full of oil.

The queue of ships waiting outside Europe’s biggest port and oil-trading hub of Rotterdam has grown to the longest in seven years as a global supply glut fills storage capacity.

As many as 50 oil tankers, twice as many as normal, are waiting outside Rotterdam because storage sites are almost full, the port’s spokesman Tie Schellekens said by phone on Tuesday. 

bloomberg.com/ne...r-high

Re Oil and Venezuela:  I hear the economic situation in Venezuela is in a death spiral, people are going without basic necessities, even toilet paper is rationed!  It has been pretty rough going for socialist/left wing leaning governments in Latin America, I would not be surprised if Venezuela’s President Maduro finds himself in a tough spot.  If this were to happen, it would not help the Oil Sector.  Venezuela has the biggest reserves and Oil output has completely collapsed. If this were to happen, a new government would likely have a more conservative (right wing) agenda.  The Exxons and Chevrons of the world would likely benefit and bring production back in a few years time.