[yorwba]

Poor people with hard-to-automate occupations don't necessarily need to be able to afford token costs for social role reversal to occur. They only need to be able to hire an even poorer person who used to earn a salary that exceeded even those token costs and who was laid off as a result.

[overgard]

Um, what poor person is hiring ANYONE? If you're able to hire a software dev, even a laid off one, you are not poor.

[yorwba]

After going without food for a few days, even a software dev is going to have to swallow their pride and consider alternative employment options. You might think they could just take a poor person's existing job, but why would for example a meatpacking plant hire a software dev with zero meatpacking experience when they already have lots of experienced meatpackers and meat demand hasn't gone up? Meanwhile, the meatpackers might like it if they could have someone babysit their children, cook for them and clean their now much larger house (which used to belong to a software dev who fell on hard times and had to move out). And a steady supply of desolate characters holding up cardboard signs saying "I used to be a software dev, but now I would do literally anything for a meal" could put such luxury into their affordable range.