I just devoured a bag of kettle cooked Utz's chips last night with some Optimators. Chips are my weakness.

Less money my ass, my paycheck is still gone

Maybe we should hire back those people and charge 25 bucks a bag, instead of doing it by machine. Who knows, if we actually had to pay what it would cost, we might eat less.

And the anti-progress crowd will be here soon right on cue to decry the corporation removing jobs for the sake of profits. I like the video, it shows how making food(if chips count) has been made much cheaper by said progress. Yes, it maybe did used to require 100 people to produce the same amount of food, but that doesn't only mean 100 jobs missing. It means cheaper food for a lot more than those 100 people. That translates into other opportunities.

Not Food. The fact that they're making so much scares me. It's no wonder there's a huge health problem in the US.

What do they do with all those brown chips? I would happily buy a bag of just those!

Small saucepan, into hot peanut oil add thinly sliced, small, new red potatoes(crispier the better); Cook to desired crispy/burntyness. Sprinkle with Tamari or Shoyu and from a shaker, add a dash of powdered wasabi, white, black, or red, or any combo of peppers to taste. MMMMMmmm...

I wondered that too. Animal feed perhaps?

All the people that have been made redundant by this process was the first thought that crossed my mind. But, really, I don't have a problem with what this company did. They reinvested their profits into technology and increased their efficiency. Additionally, I'm sure there are a lot more people working in marketing and administration than there used to be.

However, it is a fact that those people who used to work exclusively on the production line (in this company and many others) are no longer relevant in this service-based economy because of a lack of education and non-industrial skills. So where do those people go? They end up in retail, selling the very products they used to make but at a fraction of the wages and benefits.

This is progress; this is reducing the cost of production. But it has to be accompanied by real living wages to unskilled workers whose jobs have been replaced by machines. That is not the responsibility of this company but it is a problem that our society has to face up to.

And the problem is largely mitigate by the price reduction in the goods the workers use to manufacture, but now are selling in retail. The bag of chips that used to cost $20 now cost $2, so even if their wages aren't the same, the buying power is better.

The real trick is distribution of the savings realized in the production line. If the company maintains the same price and volume of sales while cutting their staff, then it's the corporation making all the money. If the corporation though is forced to drive down their costs, then that is the republican's much beloved trickle down in action. In practice, both consumers and corporations end up pocketing a portion of the savings most of the time. The more competitive the market is, the better the consumers general make out.

I just don't get the complaint that automation has put people out of jobs.

You've taken shitty, menial, repetitive jobs and made them automated... like they should be.

In an ideal world, the people who used to do shitty jobs like that should be better educated and skilled and be able to do more fulfilling jobs.

Sure it doesn't always happen like that, but decrying the lack of mind numbing jobs that are better handled by automated procedures is really setting a fucking low bar on what you think quality of life should be.

Complain about the lack of education that leaves droves of people with no skills to be able to do meaningful work.