Well, they say that, but in my experience at least, that is just conjured up as a more palatable explanation after the fact. While I do think that a certain, even significant, amount of automation is good, there is also a large mass of unemployed that can undoubtedly be trained to fill these "human interaction" kind of roles (support). This workforce is still not hard to find at all. We just don't want to do that - there is not a single western country left that has low unemployment as its key prerogative.

Yes, it's only a profit thing. If you cut out the humans you can make more money. If not for your boss then for the company that gets the contract to make the automation.

This is the challenge of 21st century, innit? To motivate those who are OK with universal minimal income, which is apparently already there scattered in all forms of scam, surplus and wasted goods.

The automations predate any demographic issues - mostly a (sticky) cost thing.