You'll have an office in ten years?
Congratulations!
*throws confetti*

If I lose my job sooner than I think it's probably because I'm browsing at work way more than I should.

It would be interesting to see if the Chinese would still be just as happy as today, if their economy plummeted to the pre-WTO times (2003 or so).

Don't worry, the robots are going to want slaves and by then you won't have any need for money.

Are you sure this is not your current selfie?? :S

Judging by what I read regarding the Chinese-American different situation, they won't. Money is about security but losing what you are used to is much more annoying than how enjoyable it is to acquire it. Compare the ecstasy of a lottery winner realizes from one second to the next he or she is now a millionaire to a very successful stock broker making a mistake, losing so much he gets fired and having to foreclose his house and other properties he has acquired over the years.

Oh, so you're still playing with yourself. :P

The more machinery, the greater the need for people to service them. And those jobs can pay well.

Spent most of this spring installing a complicated automated production machine, supposed to bump up productivity. It's so complicated it's still not working very well after four months of dinking around. When it is humming along, it's so fast that it takes 3 people to run it. But I think they'd be better off with three smaller, identical machines to do the same job with less automation, and still using one operator on each. Simpler to maintain, redundancy, cheaper to purchase, and leaves more room in the process for the flexibility that human workers provide.

There's a middle ground, a sweet spot if you will, that combines the best of both. Humans can be costly, and can create problems with consistency of quality. Machines don't have the on-the-fly flexibility, and when a critical machine breaks it can have ripple effects along the entire production process.

Human workers are great when you get people who care about the job. Automation is great when designed correctly for the required tasks. Going too far toward automation can create more problems than it's worth, and relying too much on human labor can increase costs to the point of being uncompetitive.

Automation machinery is where I make my bread and butter, but I tell customers not to go too crazy with it, especially if they don't have the technical background to understand, maintain, and repair the equipment.

Edit for autocorrect

Asking to be paid more money than your skill set is realistically worth == asking to be replaced by a machine.

And I'm actually surprised by your bad experience with automation. I've been using ATMs and automated checkout lanes at supermarkets for many years now, and so far have not had a single instance of a mistake having been made. People, on the other hand, screw up all the time. I wish I had a dollar for every time a bank teller or a grocery store cashier messed up somehow.

Add to that a HUGE amount of automation we all use when we do just about anything over the web (banking, purchasing, etc.) and it would seem to me that machines are overwhelmingly better than humans when doing their job. Which is why I prefer to deal with them. Do you really miss the phone operators? The only need the machines don't fulfill is the need to socialize, but let's be honest, I don't go to a store to socialize with cashiers. I have people in my life who I actually want to hang out with.

One last thing. Buy stocks in the companies providing the automation. You'll be able to retire on those in a few decades. Remember, you heard it here first! =)

P.S. — On the topic of fast food, since that stuff is not really food, it's perfectly fine and even appropriate that it be made by machines. Flipping a burger or removing a basket of fries from an oil vat is something that should have been automated a LONG time ago. Now real chefs will not be replaced by machines anytime soon. So food will be cooked by humans and non-food will be cooked by robots. Just as it should be.

Except, machines replace 60'000 jobs. it only takes 60 people to keep those machines running. its also unlikely many of those 60'000 have skills to apply for those jobs.

Previous waves of automation have always been accompanied by emerging markets to take the displaced work force.

I fear this current wave may be more than traditional economics can handle.

Forced sterilization for all so that there's less humanity to need jobs! :D

That fear was present ever since the steam engine was invented. Unless you believe that humanity has reached the endgame, that all there is to be learned, done, and discovered is already learned, done, and discovered — you have nothing to worry about.

Industries appear and disappear all the time. The ice-cutters (and a gigantic shipping industry) disappeared with the invention of the refrigerator. They didn't all get jobs in the fridge-making companies, but there was no disaster. The phone operators got phases out very quickly by automated relays, and they didn't all get jobs at relay-producing companies, yet there was no disaster. This happens all the time.

Now, what WILL hurt people is the minimum wage laws. If I need someone to vacuum the floors in my building, I am content with paying them $7 per hour. I will hire them. However, if I'm not allowed to hired them for anything less than $15 per hour, I'm not gonna break the law. I just won't hire them. Instead I'll buy a fleet of Roombas. The law designed to protect people just put them out of a job.

As I said, this fear has been raised before (and further back than Steam, IIRC the Caxton Press caused similar outrage). However those inventions happened in socio-economic environments (localised economies, lower population much lower life expectancy) and none (with the exceptions of 1900's automation) hit multiple industries simultaneously.

Historically its been the service industries that have take the influx of jobless, since machines could not do those jobs. However now, not only is skilled labour now automated but also various levels of an already saturated service industry.

The next growth market in creative and content production, but there is a limit to the number of people that can sustain and a much higher level of skill to enter.

I agree with you on the outcome of minimum wage increase, but counter with this.

$7 an hour is, for most, an unlivable wage. Minimum wage jobs are rarely full time, and often come with conditions that the amount time "working" is not equal to the hours paid (think unpaid travel time, time quoted jobs that take longer than job card and other such tricks). Unless you are fortunate to live in a country like the UK where the state supplements your income to ensure you have enough to live on, then you are subject to constant poverty.

Hence my belief that traditional economic may not be able to adapt to this new level of automation.

Its also worth noting during the automation boost in the 1970's, people believed that 3-4 day working weeks would become the norm due to reduction in man hours needed. It turned out that those at the top of the companies saw grater profit in reducing the number of people, rather than keep the same number of people and reducing their hours.

You don't need this kind of things to loose your job.

An idiot CEO with some idiots managers is enough to close a very successful company and leave hundreds of family stranded.