You're forgetting that corporations have only one responsibility & it is to make profits for their shareholders.

Whereas a government's responsibility is to ensure peace and prosperity for as many of its citizens as possible. These things will be at odds when increased profits for companies no longer coincides with increased employment.

You may be overlooking the fact that the US is an oligarchy.

Can you name a present-day country which isn't?

No, not Sweden where 40% of the population have been employed in some way by the Wallenberg family and its corporations in recent times. The other Nordic countries are not as egalitarian as they are presented either.

>a government's responsibility is to ensure peace and prosperity for as many of its citizens as possible.

I've never seen the US government behave as if this was a priority. Perhaps things are different in a nordic country?

Yes. Perhaps the OP was speaking from a dream or a theory standpoint. We know our government in the US has lost its original intent.

Yes, believe it or not some of still believe in this and vote accordingly. Aspirational, as it has always been, with the understanding that we will always fall short.

It has been a priority, but only for a certain group of citizens (which only briefly became unfashionable to legislate for explicitly)

A government's main responsibility is to protect and fund itself. All the rest is secondary in real terms. I know it shouldn't be that way.

I’ll make sure to pour one out in memory of all the lamplighters, the stable hands, night soil collectors, and coopers that no longer can find employment these days. These arguments were had 150 years ago with the advent of the railroad, with electricity, with factories and textiles, even if you don’t have net productive coworkers, if there’s a more productive way to do things, you’ll go out of business and be supplanted. Short of absolutely tyrannical top down control, which would make everyone as a whole objectively poorer, how would this ever be prevented?

The difference is that back then we were talking a few jobs here and there. Now we are talking about the majority of work being automated, from accountancy to zoo keeping, and very little in the way of new jobs coming in to replace them.

By the way stable hands and night soil collectors are still around. Just a bit harder to find. We used to have a septic tank that had to be emptied by workmen every so often. Pretty much the same.