And on the time scales we're looking at here (millions of people losing jobs within a decade or so), population growth is not a relevant concern, and does not explain why people are worse off despite more automation. Not to mention that population growth is already negative in most societies most affected by automation.
Just wanted to note that I didn’t propose a particular solution—you seem to have responded as if I’ve just said “we should have no automation,” which is not what I was proposing at all—it was just an observation about where things have ended up.
We could imagine lots of ways to not throw people to the wolves when their jobs were automated away, the idea of just continuing to pay them is sort of a lower bound (in the sense that obviously the economy could bear it, because it had just been bearing it, right before the automation was implemented).
Well no, if we still had the same gross economic output as 1000 years ago quality of living would be much lower.
The point of competition is that it drives up total economic output.
Of course it sucks for the people who get outcompeted. Certainly getting them productive again in another capacity is good for society. Letting them simply idle is not.