We're already seeing the consequences and have been for decades. Crappy service jobs have sprung up to fill the avoid. Even those are being automated. McDonald's has claimed a $15[1] minimum wage will force them to roll out robots to replace the expensive cashiers. These robots are already being rolled out, the $15 minimum wage would only move their timeline. There's not much time before a lot of mundane service jobs get priced out of existence by crud terminals with a cash slot and chip reader. Grocery stores, gas stations, liquor stores, hotel front desks, and fast food will be the first. My guess is substantial disruption (>50% decrease in hours worked) within the next ten year's for these fields. Then I see bars and restaurants in major metros following. A table clearing, dish washing, order taking and delivering robot could be today with off the shelf parts and some talented computer vision engineers backed by a fleet of underpaid contracted out data labelers. Up front probably cost in the low tens of billion and 3-10 years to get a production ready prototype. Roll out over 3-10 years before mass adoption. Conveyor belt style restaurants and bars could pop up far sooner and completely undercut the incumbents with an Amazon model of burning cash until the competition is gone.
In 50-100 years there won't be much to automate. Drone delivery will happen soon unless the drones kill a ton of people. Same with driverless trucks. Uber might go under first but someone will figure it out. Between service jobs, warehouse jobs, unskilled manufacturing jobs, and driving jobs there's going to be tens of millions of jobs lost with virtually nothing to replace them. As jobs are made simpler by machines the value added by the machine goes entirely to the machines owner. This is a net loss for society and a net loss for the economy.
100 years ago, just sending this message to everyone of you who reads this would have taken countless man hours. Think of the paper that needs to be made, the trees fell for the paper, writing each letter and delivering them to the post office. Where someone sorts them and they get distributed to the various routes they go along. Hundreds of man hours, for a message to go around the world. Thanks to technology this message is virtually free. But the technology replaced countless jobs to get us here. We, as a society, have robbed our countrymen of opportunity by allowing technologies fruits to be captured by a select few people who are no more special than any other human on earth.
The backlash from all that unemployment is going to crash the system at some point. The gilded, automated future is DOA. Even now, $15/hr is starvation wages, even outside of HCOL areas.
In 50-100 years there won't be much to automate. Drone delivery will happen soon unless the drones kill a ton of people. Same with driverless trucks. Uber might go under first but someone will figure it out. Between service jobs, warehouse jobs, unskilled manufacturing jobs, and driving jobs there's going to be tens of millions of jobs lost with virtually nothing to replace them. As jobs are made simpler by machines the value added by the machine goes entirely to the machines owner. This is a net loss for society and a net loss for the economy.
100 years ago, just sending this message to everyone of you who reads this would have taken countless man hours. Think of the paper that needs to be made, the trees fell for the paper, writing each letter and delivering them to the post office. Where someone sorts them and they get distributed to the various routes they go along. Hundreds of man hours, for a message to go around the world. Thanks to technology this message is virtually free. But the technology replaced countless jobs to get us here. We, as a society, have robbed our countrymen of opportunity by allowing technologies fruits to be captured by a select few people who are no more special than any other human on earth.
1. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/mcdon...