“There was a massive inflow of technology, for example, displacing hordes of secretaries and clerks, in the 1980s. But under the Reagan revolution that became Morning in America, with “greed” decried by the left as more and more people became wealthy and saw their middle-class standards of living finally rise again.”
I actually took advantage of this era, when data entry operators were disappearing. I jumped into a system operator job, then became a database administrator. I’ve been in IT for decades. Technology has been my bread and butter.
I am concerned about the unintended consequences. There must be a point of diminishing returns, especially for the people on the lower end of the economic spectrum. They are the target in the beginning, but everything else is too. People need to feel valued, to have meaningful or worthwhile employment, and aoptions to better themselves. Replacing them with robots on a grand scale will have repercussions. The robot visionaries don’t seem to give a damn about that aspect. I’d just like to see them addressing that issue as well.
Higher levels of technology is what has brought us more return on our labor and led to our requiring higher levels of skill, while reducing the number of boringly repetitive positions.
Again, I am worried about technology, but very much more in the big brother surveillance-state sense than in our running out of need for people to fill other jobs — and making us vulnerable to attack or other crisis. That IMO is where the unintended consequences are looking horrific.
Oh, and I am also concerned about the increasing number of low-skill illegals we’ve allowed to come here and now too many are arguing to allow to stay.
Get them out and we’ll have a much better society all around.