Bad Bad ATM

The latest comment from President Obama showing his complete lack of understanding of the economy, using ATMs and Kiosks at the airport are ridding our culture of human labor.

Well, the ATM industry was having none of that.

‘President Obama should never use ATMs as an example of how technology replaces human labor because ATMs today play a critical role in providing extensive employment in the ATM and cash-in-transit industries. In addition, ATMs provide an indispensible range of services to customers, including all-hours access to their own banked cash. With over 400,000 in America alone, ATMs have become the main distribution channel for the distribution of cash in all modern economies and cash remains by far the most popular form of payment by US consumers. The whole purpose of the invention of the ATM back in 1967 was to make cash available outside of bank hours, liberating citizens to access their banked money 24 x 7, a huge increase in convenience.  Given these major roles of the ATM, it would be quite irrational to turn the clock back to the 1960s to a time before ATMs.

Let’s follow Obama’s logic a little further.

Industrial Revolution? Complete waste. All those stupid machines took over jobs people could previously do by hand. So what if doing it by hand is more expensive and takes 400 times as long.

What about farming equipment? Those farmers want to keep all the money to themselves with expensive and fancy machines instead of hiring out labor.  

Vaccuums, dishwashers, and laundry machines? Those all cut out the need to hire a maid. Those housewives, saving money with newer technologies instead of hiring someone to do their chores. Bring back the good old days of full house staffs, that's what I say. 

And obviously, it doesn’t matter that entire industries are created to build and maintain these machines, which provide jobs for many people. Not only that, machine and new technologies make goods cheaper. Could you imagine how expensive food would be if it had to be farmed only by workers with none of the advanced machinery available today? Food prices would sky rocket and production would plummet. Not only that, a work force would have to be found to do these jobs. How many recent college graduates who are $20,000 in debt would want to go work on a farm cutting down wheat or corn? At least those unemployment rates would be down.