I am not so sure that we won’t work on eliminating humans for various business processes so a minimum wage won’t even be an issue for those jobs. I also don’t think it will be related to any hourly wage at any rate of pay unless it is very low and the wage cost is less than automation. Accountants have preached for years that human labor is a very high repeating cost for most processes and controlling repeating costs is necessary to drive profitability.

We are now approaching a new stage of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As an example Uber openly wants to eliminate the driver from their cars. With all of the work on self driving cars this will likely happen unless there is legislation that severly limits driverless cars. If you can buy the car with a one time investment and do the normal repeating maintenance, but all without a driver, it is a much less expensive process to haul somebody from point A to point B. You can also control the car utilization easier because the car cannot refuse a passenger pickup like a human driver/owner. Yes, Uber will have to have a massive capital investment but that will come easy because the stock market will support their stock price and investors will line up to loan them money. Will they be able to pay off the loans … who knows and for a while nobody will care.

Not every business process will automate with AI as easily as driverless cars. Uber has the good fortune that they are on the leading edge of the driverless car phenomenon and they don’t have to invest much money directly to push its development. Tesla and every other major car maker is doing all of the driverless car R&D work for Uber and they don’t need so spend one penny. They simply are at the right place at the right time.

So some humans will be pushed out of various categories of work (like Uber) sooner than later. This will create more available humans in the labor force so supply and demand will put a downward pressure on wages for the remaining jobs. As more industries ramp up with AI technologies then the cycle will continue.

It is foreseeable that a large class of humans will be relegated to being a generally meaningless part of society and Universal Basic Income will be required or they will simply starve. Maybe UBI will happen but this group of humans will likely be “demoted” to not be very important in their respective societies.

So … not a good story but maybe there is a different ending. Mother Nature may catch up with us and reduce the number of humans on planet earth to the point that the global ecosystem is within it’s carrying capacity. When that happens supply and demand for humans may shift in favor of the humans and they will be paid enough to survive … then the cycle will start over. But hopefully we will have learned some lessons and not “trash” the planet again and believe humans should not be replaced by AI without fully understanding the consequences and solutions.