[Vince Ferrer]

This isn't going to help:

The hyper-real robots that will replace receptionists, pop stars... and even sex dolls: Unnervingly human androids coming to a future very near you

[ComputerGuy]

Can you teach a robot to be surly and belligerent? If so, my VA could use a few dozen.

[wastedyears]

The only Asuna I know of:

<3 Sword Art Online

[rbg81]

Yeah, I saw that too. The Japanese have a weird technology fetish that could drive them to extinction. While I doubt we’ll ever get as strange as them, we are not all that far behind.

The older I get, the more I suspect that there might be something about technology that destroys the human spirit. Maybe because it serves to insulate us from brutish reality. I dunno for sure, but it deserves some looking into.

[AZLiberty]

On the contrary, automation will will help. Modern economies need fewer workers, so production can continue apace as the working population declines. Toyota and Honda can continue to flood the world with quality cars while replacing workers with robots.

We already know how to "redistribute"wealth to non-productive seniors -- "social security" is the mechanism. The questions becomes how to fund an ever-growing social security system. Declining costs accomplished by increasing automation will help. Technology will help in other ways, for example by producing cheaper energy.

"We", in the U.S., have decided to do it by importing workers, but this will fail because automation will hit here, too. There won't be enough good jobs, so all those dissatisfied foreigners will become the radical revolutionaries that Obams wants.

Japan must figure out a way to tax automated production (i.e., tax robots) so that the gains of automation can be partially recycled into social security. At the same time, they have to do this in a way that maintains incentives for increasing automation, or all the automated factories will move to countries with less onerous tax structures.

Then again, maybe it IS impossible to thread that needle. An alternative solution would be to quit viewing seniors as non-productive -- and figure out how to enable many seniors to continue earning their way despite their increasing age.