2. "the lowest 65 percent" is a pretty big segment. How were the lowest 40% doing, or 20%? I don't know the answer, I just think it's a useful question.

3. Much of this article talks about how rising income is not the same as a rising standard of living, and how it is "plausible" that standards of living decreased for the first 70 or so years of the industrial revolution.

4. Even if wages and standards of living both went up, inequality on its own is a concern. Your quote shows that inequality was worse a century later.

5. I'm not calling for anything specific. My only point is that it's not acceptable to say "we don't need to worry at all, everything will work out". We do need to worry, but it's totally possible that after worrying we'll come to the conclusion that no major changes make sense at this time.

I've just seen a lot of people say "look at the Industrial Revolution, we'll be fine" and I think that's exactly the opposite lesson we should have learned. And I honestly didn't have UBI in mind when I wrote that comment, I was thinking about maybe some kind of subsidized education program for people who need to switch careers because their old career no longer exists. Or anything, I don't know. This isn't my field. I'm just saying this is worth a lot of thought and study, preferably by people who know what they're doing.

>"we don't need to worry at all, everything will work out"

Strawman of course. A nuanced understanding of the historical context of other technological booms is the point of my original post and it's specifically the 'omg AI gonna take our jerbs' kneejerk reaction that I wanted to preempt. I would add that statisticians seem to be less worried about AI threats than your average HNer [1]. And although I don't have a handy source, I know that economists are also likely to brush aside predictions of major impacts.

[1] https://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report/executive-summary