[jtolmar]

Automation itself is a good thing. The way our economy is structured to respond to automation is predictably bad for the workers though.

Consider a hypothetical world where, every time a job was automated away, the person who lost their job got a pension equal to the difference in operating costs (they were paid $15/hr, the machines cost $6/hr, this person gets a $9/hr pension). In this world everyone looks forward to having their job automated and many people try to replace themselves or improve the efficiency of the machines that replaced them. And if this hypothetical world started doing this 100 years ago, everyone there is retired by now.

There are some flaws with that plan, but the gap between that world and ours shows that people are justified in being upset at the effects of automation.

[goatlover]

Not sure I follow this logic. Are you saying everyone tries to have their job eliminated so they can get paid less money to not work? Some people would like that, but a majority couldn't justify the reduction in their standard of living. And there are quite a few people who find work meaningful and wouldn't want to be paid to not work.

I do understand the point about people being upset at not receiving a pension for the difference in their job being eliminated, but that's different from working toward less pay for not working.

[jtolmar]

I threw that part in there because I was expecting someone to confuse themselves into thinking there's no motivation for progress under such a system.

Under the hypothetical, even if you want your current level of pay, you may want to automate yourself out, because that frees you up to spend your time on some other job, getting both paychecks.

(And if you really didn't want to have your job automated away... well it still works out better for you than our system of firing you and then nothing.)