[Retric]

The worlds economy isn’t underpinned by an underpaid underclass.

Every major commodity cobalt, shoes, cellphones etc has large scale automated production. What’s going on is essentially a parallel system where people making almost nothing can barely out complete automation. However, because both are occurring at the same time consumers wouldn’t notice a significant change if 100% of that production was automated.

Granted without infrastructure and a skilled workforce you can’t instantly swap to automation, but that’s a different question.

[chii]

> Every major commodity ... etc has large scale automated production.

the automate-able industries have done it, leaving behind the ones that aren't as automatable. This is why there's still many developing countries that export cheap labour. You can think of those as the "underpaid" class.

Not necessarily bad, since i believe they are not being forced under lock and chain in slavery. They are merely economically incentivized.

[Retric]

I don’t think there are low value non automate-able industries right now. Try and name some.

That’s not to say nobody is making subsistence wages making shoes, just that there’s robots making shoes in another factory. It may not be 1:1 in every niche as a train isn’t a drop in replacement for a long haul trucker, but they are still in competition.