I'm confused. What's the difference between outsourcing and automation in your mind? They are both driven by a desire to lower costs. Automation isn't yet "there" in terms of being able to implement a model/robot/system as effectively or cheaply as sending it to a lower labor cost country, but that's a temporary state of affairs. As soon as automating things is cheaper than paying low-cost labor, companies opt for automation. We've already seen this happen with manufacturing "coming back" to or staying in the US, when what actually comes back is highly automated factories with few blue collar jobs [1].

You seem to be arguing that the issues I brought up are tied only to globalization and outsourcing when they are, in fact, tied to underlying economics that strongly favors automation in the long run. Over the next 10-20 years as automation becomes cheaper and more practical, it makes sense that the same problems will accelerate, even as globalization and outsourcing decline.

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/news/companies/carrier-jobs...