[qub1t]

50 years ago, who would have thought of search engine optimization as a job? Social media manager? Video game storyline writer?

I'm not saying that people who are displaced will easily be able to retrain to a new job. They will have a rough time, and that's something we need to address as a society.

But assuming that number of "jobs" for humans will decrease to zero is a big stretch. I think that even if we had robots that could take care of all our needs for us, humans would come up with jobs to occupy their time.

[loup-vaillant]

> But assuming that number of "jobs" for humans will decrease to zero is a big stretch.

It seems to me the amount of available work is steadily decreasing right now. Perhaps not towards zero, but we don't have to lose that much to need substantial reform. Once you reach over 30% unemployment, you have a big problem already.

There's an easy way to increase the number of jobs though: share the existing ones by reducing the work-week. We could start by shaving off a few hours, perhaps as much as a full day (for a 4 day work-week). Then decrease it further to match progress in automation. Of course, we should keep the salaries at the same levels, lest machine owners will just get a bigger and bigger share of the pie, just because they had starting capital the other workers didn't.

[taway_1212]

All the jobs you've listed are white collar and require a probably at least above average intelligence. The high school dropout you remember from your childhood (the one who sniffed glue and never completely comprehended basic fractions) is not going to be a video game story writer. Once he got his issues in order, he made for a good truck driver though, and was a valuable member of society. I'm afraid it won't be so in the future.