The issue though, isn't that a specific job is going away, but instead the whole class of "human as control theory implementation" is going away. That's way more disruptive. Like, people instead becoming control software for guillotines level disruptive.
> And no, real wages are at all time highs in the United States, with the median household income hitting $63K in 2018.
"Real wages" mean inflation and CPI adjusted so you can actually compare them in a meaningful way. They have indeed been stagnant for median wage earners since the seventies.
I'm well aware of what real wages means in terms of inflation.
"From January 2019 to January 2020, real average hourly earnings increased 0.7 percent"
I literally see Embark trucks going down the I-70 mountain in the snow. They are already here.
Here says they are already making deliveries (albeit test ones): https://www.wired.com/story/embark-self-driving-truck-delive...
> I'm well aware of what real wages means in terms of inflation.
> "From January 2019 to January 2020, real average hourly earnings increased 0.7 percent"
> https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
And meanwhile when you don't cherry pick a single year (and really 0.7% increase isn't something to be writing home about in the first place), they've been stagnant for decades.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
In the meantime, you could make the same argument about farming equipment in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yeah 90% of the population used to be farmers, and yeah the equipment automated away most of that labor, but did the former farmers and laborers lose out or did they gain, by access to the same technology... either via personal automobiles or via cheaper, more reliable supply chains of abundant food.
Likewise, if and when transportation is automated, people will gain from their time saved in traffic. They will gain from cheaper costs of transportation overall which will reduce price of goods at retail. They will gain from the availability of 24/7 cheap, reliable, on-demand transportation.
And no, real wages are at all time highs in the United States, with the median household income hitting $63K in 2018.