> Every single worker at, say, a McDonald's is doing a job that could be automated with some capital investment.

I think you underestimate how difficult something like this would be.

I mean, I agree that as long as you have someone/something supplying the food gloop packets to the store, taking out the waste, and fixing the machines, pretty much everything in a McDonalds could be automated as a closed system.

But we're talking about billions to trillions of dollars of investment.

Just maintaining the frosty machines is outrageously expensive.