About 20 years ago I was a programmer at a manufacturing company. I worked on a project to automate part of materials requirements planning. The woman who was in charge of it was spending about 20 hours per week wrangling Excel spreadsheets to figure out what materials they needed. It was all based on data we had: inventory, orders, etc. A few weeks later, and with a fair amount of her help, I'd automated the whole thing. She was happy, it was her least favorite part of her job and she desperately needed time for other things. I was happy, I was showing that I was worth what they were paying me! (Salaried at the equivalent of $12.50 per hour.) BUT: That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job.
Automation is definitely having an impact on labor demand, with software driving out some jobs much the way cars and trucks drove horses out of our economy. I think it points to an increasing bifurcation, with jobs being high skill / high pay or low skill / low pay, without much in the middle.
Of course here in the U.S. this is also being driven by our monetary policy, our tax policy, our trade policy, our labor policy, I could go on. I'm in favor of UBI, but that seems about as likely as the use of any of those levers to reduce income inequality and spread the wealth our society generates in a way that supports most of those contributing to it.
Automation is definitely having an impact on labor demand, with software driving out some jobs much the way cars and trucks drove horses out of our economy. I think it points to an increasing bifurcation, with jobs being high skill / high pay or low skill / low pay, without much in the middle.
Of course here in the U.S. this is also being driven by our monetary policy, our tax policy, our trade policy, our labor policy, I could go on. I'm in favor of UBI, but that seems about as likely as the use of any of those levers to reduce income inequality and spread the wealth our society generates in a way that supports most of those contributing to it.