[ska]

  "short-term" means being unemployed or unemployable for a while.

If you add the caveat that "for a while" might in practice equal "several generations" for comparable employment, this is true. See for ex. industrial revolution.

The hard truth is that to the degree that these things do work as a simplistic free market model might predict (and that is clearly arguable) they may operate on time scales that will do nothing to alleviate to problems the changes cause.

[venning]

Very true and very scary. The sad thing is that regulatory protection often makes matters worse by insulating people from changing realities. That causes the inevitable collapse of that protection to create an even greater shock to those who had been protected.

[coryfklein]

> See for ex. industrial revolution.

I was not aware that the industrial revolution caused unemployment that lasted for generations. Can you provide a link for further study of this?