It's the people driving the tractors who take jobs, not the ones building them. If you operate a hand-plough for a living when tractors come on the scene, you'd better learn how to drive a tractor. The same is true of AI.
Is it stupid? Because people are railing against the AI, not the system of evaluating worth and distributing wealth that implies that the advent of a miraculous labor-saving technology should be met with fear, not excitement about expansion of the capabilities of every human being.
I think this is right on. AI would be an amazing if it didn't mean that some people will have an even harder time making ends meet. Why does every technological innovation that improves productivity end up shifting even more resources to those at the top of the ladder?
The factory worker bemoans his station as the new automated smelter they're going to install may run him out of a job. Before he goes upstairs to commiserate with his spouse, he throws his dirty clothes in the washer, nary a care paid to the previous generation's neighbor children who used to make all their money washing other family's clothes for them.
(Probably not too much thought should be paid to the fact that when that economic system collapsed, we instituted allowances for children).
Tractors and policy favoring bigger scale agricultural production.
The US is profoundly inefficient at utilizing land for agriculture. The “miracle of the desert” and emptying a giant, un-renewable aquifer has been carrying us for decades. In my lifetime, we’ll be relying on small garden plots just like the Soviets did for vegetables.