There's plenty of stuff at the margins. Labor is getting expensive, so McDonald's has machines to fill drink orders now. Some places have robots mopping the floors, etc. Self-checkout is more and more available.
We're not going to see McDonald's or wherever fully automated anytime soon, but the number of people needed to run the restaurant will decrease.
McDees freeing up labor makes available elsewhere.
We are not currently funding our labor needs and are seeing decaying infrastructure, just as one example out of many.
One other question we should be asking is why labor is getting more expensive when the promise of tech advancement and automation was to make it cheaper to live.
Cost and risk exposure continues to rise.
Current automation does not appear to be helping.
This is where you run into flawed premises. A very hefty chunk of automation, in fact, does not make it either cheaper or easier to live. Particularly now that many firms are reaching the limits of actual innovation, and are turning to transaction facilitation and fee extraction as their primary profit taking mechanism.
When the innovators are innovating on being middle-men where previously no middle-men could exist, you've got issues.
Example:
Electronic bill payment service. In order to avoid the hassle of a stamp, envelope, and check, pay $2 on top of your bill to do it from a convenience store.
Not only are you paying more over and above your bill, you get a false gain of value. You just go to the store right? But what if the service goes under? What if servers go down? So on, and so forth.
Arguably, a great deal of automation that exists today strikes me as a regression from 40 years ago. Fewer people actually have a clue now about how value flows through the system, yet resources centralize far more easily than ever before.
Indeed, and I would put health care increases into the pile of things wiping out gains too.
Crap like this is giving us the motivation for finding solutions and getting closer.
Just like the danger of starvation is giving people the motivation to get off their asses and get to work and improve themselves.
We're pretty simple energy conservation machines otherwise. Give me a small stipend for weed, games and porn and I’d still be living in my parents basement.
That's not crap. It is reality.
Both the cost and capability of automation tech needs very significant improvement before we can talk realistically about it actually replacing basic labors. I have experience with these things. We have come far. There is far to go. I am not being negative here, just brutally realistic.
About as brutal and real as the problems related to low wage employment.
And as I said above, whether we have that available as a meaningful component in the discussion changes nothing.
One other argument is all our innovation and increased productivity was supposed to be associated with it being far cheaper to live. Increased automation augments that promise.
Fact is Americans face ever higher cost and risk exposure relative to their income despite much progress on those fronts.
We are not seeing it get cheaper to live so far.
Will we?
Fair question.
We will need to see that happen, or automation changes nothing about the basic discussion we are having here, and that is people have costs to exist and show up for work.
And at some point, we can also say, if there is work to show up for, but we do not have to say that today, and for a reasonable future given where we are and the current pace of advancement.
There is a lot of work to do, that we need to do, and we might as well employ people respectably and invest in them to get those works done, in addition to the massive value basic labors already add to our lives.
I don't know about you, but my time is worth a lot! There is a great chance we both can do work that isn't basic too.
Those people doing basic labor enable us to do that which we do.
How much is that worth?
I would suggest it is worth enough for them to make it and show up for work, same as us. (I am not suggesting they get a wage same as ours, just one that allows for a reasonable, modest, dignified life, and that they get it because what they do is necessary.)
Up thread I posed a question, "which is it?"
Corporations fully funding their labor, or government insuring that and corporations pay what they feel they can or should pay?
Someone has to pay, or they die and don't show up for work.
I don't care which. I do care that we continue to refuse to discuss which way it should be and instead treat all this like some problem the people doing basic labors for us should solve on their own, despite their contributions having good value and being necessary.
The hard truth is the investment is huge! And general automation, sufficient to replace basic labors on a meaningful scale is still in development.
May happen some day. It will be a long while though. Plenty long enough for this discussion to remain relevant.
Secondly, say we arrive at that point.
What changes?
People have costs to exist and be humans.
I put this in another comment: if we truly do not pay those costs, people die and or do not show up for work.
Lots of dead people is not helpful or desirable.
So what do we expect them to do?