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Automation and increased efficiency are naturally expected to eliminate an increasing number of jobs over time.
The traditional argument that this naturally creates "new jobs" is decreasingly valid over time, since we are running out of other tasks to which large quantities of human labor need to be applied.
It will be an interesting social issue in our near future, even moreso than it is today.
You have to distinguish between "redistributive" increases in efficiency (eg, a machine frees up laborers to do some other labor that had previously been squeezed by lack of manpower or development - hence, it shuffles the labor around, but doesn't decrease the overall quantity of labor needed) and "replacement" increases in efficiency, where human labor as a whole is devalued, not replaced, and is made redundant.
Well it's not entirely bogus. Automation has been eliminating jobs forever.
True, as shown by Obamas choice of picking a nearly 40 year old technology in his example. I wonder how many potential bank workers today weren't even born when ATMs were first installed?
Technology eliminates jobs but it also creates new ones.
That's the hope. But there is no actual economic "law" which dictates that this must be true. It's entirely possible for technology and automation to eliminate more jobs over time than it "creates."
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