[mpyne]

It gets worse. What if skilled workers are skill in a field that becomes suddenly redundant? Think about payroll clerks who typed out checks every two weeks; now it's all done by computers, databases and spreadsheets. Even skilled workers are not necessarily immune.

Of course that merely shows that there is a problem, it doesn't show what to blame or how to fix it in general.

[staccatomeasure]

The problem is that all of the technology we've created as a society (sharing science, funding from the government, allowing resource harvesting from public land) is being used to make workers obsolete, but instead of honoring the communal investment in technology by making a strong safety net where people can live, further training/education, and thrive, making our economy even stronger, we allow the corporations and uber-rich to dodge taxes (and hoard the hundreds of billions of dollars that could support that safety net).

[baddox]

Or wagon manufacturers when automobiles took over. Or manual farm workers when plows and then tractors took over.

[saraid216]

Remember how we used to have telephone switchboard operators?

[mpyne]

Even better, remember when people used to talk on "party lines" with no privacy at all?