The world is changing, faster than it has in the past. No one know exactly what will happen, but there's a whole new generation of people who have no idea what it used to be like, and they will do their best to survive.
The economy, and life, will find a way.
At some point you have to admit that there is a limit to the potential jobs that a society can support. You can hope these hypothetical new jobs get created, but I don't know how you can prepare for them.
I sincerely believe there is no way to invent enough jobs, by convenience or necessity, to replace the amount of jobs that will be destroyed by automation.
How about the people Google and Facebook and Twitter employ ? That's a huge workforce and these jobs were not predicted by anyone 15 years back.
And I'm not even talking about the network effect, i.e. businesses and freelancers and individuals who were able to build their businesses on top of the services offered by such companies.
And that's just a single industry. Look at how the solar panel industry is growing, or the smartphone industry (it did not exist 10 years ago), and look at all these companies living off it making apps and services around those.
Seriously, opportunities arise by themselves.
Ford alone employs 200,000 people, with a market cap of... 48 billion. And a profit of ~7 billion. GM also employs ~200,000 people. With a market cap of... 50 billion. And a profit of ~7 billion.
Tech employs very few people, compared to the amount of money it brings in.
People were saying the exact same thing when sophisticated machines were introduced in automotive industry manufacturing. Sure, some people could not convert and lost jobs, but everyone else moved on to be productive in other areas.
This prophecy of Doom is happening every 10 years or so.
Tell this to the midwest, where the lie of our government's unemployment reporting is most obvious. It's honestly kind of offensive that you said that as I am from Michigan.
And as I have said in other comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12605690), there are factors like the stagnant minimum wage and self-interest at play that have kept jobs in these companies that could be replaced currently let alone in 10 years.
I am not here to convince you to change your mind about potential job loss. Understanding the technology, our current economy, and the political atmosphere around jobs should be enough to convince you of this truth.
As others have said, maybe there are imaginary jobs that will be invented to make up for these losses. I'm sure the banks will do their best to make sure that happens.
Is there some demand for the general skills of former lathe operators, that we've all missed?
Should millions of people start building websites that make money by advertising other websites that make money by advertising other websites?
You are uninformed if you believe these jobs are staying. There is no way, mark my words, that our economy doesn't experience a net negative in jobs during this next revolution.
It's not all bad though, it could push us towards UBI, maybe a supply based economy. Otherwise we're basically saying jesus take the wheel.
A guy can dream.