It may be true that jobs are indeed created after technological advancements (many, in fact), however, the coming loss of jobs will surely overwhelm the amount created. Before, when new jobs were created as a result of tech advancements, the advancements themselves were relatively easy to adjust to (especially for jobs that didn’t involve creative thinking or working the mind too hard–basically labor jobs), thus it wasn’t extremely difficult to work off of those innovations and find jobs that were created as a result.

The coming age of advanced automated processes (from self driving cars all the way to 3D printers) will simply render millions of such jobs obsolete; manufacturing jobs, driving jobs, and many more will no longer require a human in virtually any capacity. It may be true that more jobs will be created, but they will likely be technical jobs that require extensive training and/or education. I know that at least in America, the majority of people are not particularly inclined towards highly technical jobs that require large amounts of training and/or education. The majority will therefore be left with no jobs, because adjusting to the changes brought on by the coming technological advancements will be too difficult and time consuming to deal with. All of those who lost their jobs (there will be many millions, at least in time) will either have to go back to school and find a way to sustain themsleves for the years it will take to learn a new skill (because most low skill jobs will no longer be available) and hopefully find a job eventually after they complete their education, or they will be left behind as yet another burden upon society that the rest of us will have to carry. We can only handle so much until the strain finally breaks us.

That is why it is imperative to find a way to fix these coming problems before they become too much to handle. If we don’t, the transition will be far from easy and there will be radical changes in the economy and governement as a result. We may not agree or like some of those changes, which is why we should try to make policies and changes that we can all agree upon in a controlled and organized process.

Dr. Eddward, I do generally agree with you, and your examples are valid. A person always has a comparative advantage somewhere and technology will make goods cheaper. Thus wealth will increase. I am only a soft-believer in this Singularity paradigm, and I am highly skeptical of many of the comments made on this site; however, I think that the fears expressed over job losses are highly valid. The industrial revolution allowed society to harness energy to complete physical work. Less human labor needed to go into each manufactured output. For example, a stamped metal product had far less labor input in an industrial plant than in a blacksmith shop. The current information technology revolution currently allows for reduced mental input for each unit of output. For example, current science, engineering, and mathematics students use calculators and computer programs to manipulate data (Mathematica, Matlab, etc.). Prior to ubiquitous computing, tables were needed and many problems that take seconds now would take hours. Manufacturing plants are not fully automated in a lot of instances because human processing power is still superior to machine power on a comparable cost basis. Currently, humans have much better vision than machines. Thus little things like picking up bolts out of a pile and noticing details are relegated to people. However, as machines improve and become less expensive the processing advantage is rapidly shrinking. Ironically China is inadvertently unwittingly financing capital expenditures in the developed world with their high savings rate leading to a lower interest rates. After braun and brains, what do people have left? The horse mainly had braun and very few brains. The horse was an integral part of the economy at one time, so what happened to the principle of comparative advantage? In the short-run is everyone capable of being an engineer, programmer, marketer, or person that can put together the site we are reading? I highly doubt it. In the long run you may be correct. I think it will be a painful economic transition. As Charles Dickens taught us, economic transitions are not pleasant.