The problem comes when robots begin to perform these higher order tasks. What happens to individuals when they have no "higher" place to move into? What happens to society when automated replacement becomes commonplace?
Keep in mind that the specifics of this is very hard to predict. A large number of the jobs we have today would have seemed absurd 20-40 years ago, but to us they feel like they were inevitable.
Web design, coding, app design, site reliability engineers , debugging, user interface testing, so many new jobs
That hasn't happened though. We have no indication that such a question is more relevant now than it was 200 years ago. And it's worth pointing out that we're currently in a period of fairly low productivity growth.
And now the publishing industry is dying because of the web. Its not remotely a 1 to 1 transition and automation certainly is to blame for that. Sounds like your example was just a couple hundred years too early. Back in the old days you literally had a factory running to print papers everyday, two usually, with an evening edition. Editing layouts took several experienced people which now can be done by a bored intern with a copy of Adobe CS. Teams of copy editors had to read and re-read copy to make sure it makes sense, now spell and grammar check do that.
Your Detroit example isn't good either. New factories require less human assistance. Ford's new plants in Tijuana will require less human work per car for example.
The numbers simply don't add up and every new form of automation doesn't lead to an explosion of jobs. Worse, in the few cases it does, it creates local unemployment. Its unrealistic to expect a 20 year travel agent veteran to become a full stack developer for Expedia. And if she did, how many job openings are there for that? In the past we needed one travel agent for every 1,000 people. A handful of devs can put up a travel service that serves millions.
Also the article linked makes some good points,but ignores a lot of job growth has been in retail or part-time jobs[1]. While technically employed, these people are far from the jobs of old and cannot be the primary breadwinners in their household. Not to mention, that we've never had automation on this level before so historical data might be meaningless. Sure we can talk about horses turning into cars, but people still needed to drive and own those cars. We may be only a few years away from a self-driving car service that makes both those things obsolete and the jobs it produces will be nowhere near what we have today.
[1] In other words, the automation downturn is already here but some haven't recognized it yet. People with college degrees working at Footlocker or greeting at Walmart know its happening.
I was lucky to get into programming (as a hobby at first), but as we all know, it's not for everyone. Especially, if you only get into it because you think it's lucrative.
My Dad fell ass backwards into a blue-collar factory job when he was 18, and supported a wife (who worked part time sometimes) and 2 kids. This was literally par for the course in the 60's-80's. That's upper middle class these days, at minimum.