[nicoburns]

There's a long-term economic problem looming around the loss of jobs: which is that most people's ability to command a share of our economic output (i.e. earn money) is tied to their value as a labourer. If that labour is no longer needed by those who control capital and thus allocation of labour resources (which is increasingly the case across many segments of our economy), then we end up with an economy where people increasingly struggle to earn a decent living.

Of course there are areas where that labour would be useful: healthcase, teaching, childcare, elderly care all come to mind (and there are many other examples). But our economy is not set up to enable this. The problem isn't supply side (difficulty retraining people to do the jobs), it's demand side: the people who need these services often don't have the money to pay for them. So the jobs are badly paid.

And it's a downward spiral: as wealth becomes more concentrated, demand for labour drops because those controlling the wealth already have their needs met and often don't care about the needs of others.

If history is anyhing to go by, then this will eventually lead to war and/or revolution.