Research shows every 2nd job might disappear within 2035

[ag]

If you're afraid of this, you've missed the boat on why work exists. The reason we have work in society is because we have tasks  that need to be completed or we will all die without it. If there is no work that needs to be done, it isn't a travesty but a success.

We wouldn't necessarily die (that depends on the task), but our living standards would go down and we wouldn't be able to produce all of the stuff that people want. Machines will never replace human labor because the list of human wants is essentially infinite. When one thing we want can be more or less fully produced by machines, we just "move down the list" and go on to the next things that still require human labor to produce.

There is a slight logical problem in your reasoning If machines can do some of the job people do today, while people go on producing something else, it means the economy is bigger - and everything produced in that economy does belong to some human being, not to a machine. Likewise, everything that machines produce, in the end, will be consumed by humans. So, why exactly would living standards go down? A reasonable (though, probably, still wrong) argument would have involved the impact on inequality: the capital owners would grow richer relative to those with only labor to sell - but that is not the argument you are trying to make.

[ag]

Work for much of human civilisation has been an integral part of someone's identity. You meet someone new, you ask them what they do, they respond "I'm a ________ ". A good proportion of our surnames (including my own) are a reflection of our ancestor's jobs. The whole of civilisation is built on the division of labour in the form of careers. And now we have to recognise that the idea we've cherished so long - that of "being employed in order to make a living" - is impossible to keep up.

I hope I don't sound like I'm talking garbage here, I'm slightly off.

You are, unfortunately.

[ag]

Does anyone really think that the economics will still favor automation, if the economy sheds 50% of all jobs? It would require an act of economic cupidity for which there is no precedent.

Obviously, if there is 50% unemployment and the corresponding fall in wages, any idiot, who invests much in automation of something cheap labor could do would go bankrupt, pushed out by the smart capitalist hiring human beings.

[ag]

In the world of falling fertility, I would sincerely hope that machines are available to do more things, so that humans shift to things they do better: such as, say, caring for the aged. Otherwise, quite a few of the younger folk here would not find a decent nursing home

[ag]

As a condescending jerk, I have a hard time choosing where to start

Well, at least in the US the unions will not be much of a problem Of the 14.5 mln union members in the US (that is in a country with the workforce of well over 150 mln. people) about a half work in the public sector - teachers, police, firefighters, bureaucrats and the like. The private sector unionization rate is under 7% - they are increasingly irrelevant for the wage setting Minimal wages are fairly low  - and if unemployment is, indeed, staggering, there will be both the political pressure to lower them further and the de facto universal avoidance of those floors (not that I think that would ever come to ti - for a host of reasons). As for unreliability of humans - true enough, but, at least, they are a lot more reliable then machines (at least, machines cheap enough to compete with people in many occupations)   Of course, industrial production is increasingly automated - but there is so much for humans to do that does not involve imitating robots in industrial production

Now, none of this - except, perhaps, for the last point - was a serious comment (being a condescending jerk, I did not see anything serious to comment about). Ever since the wheels and the mules displaced human force in transportation (and, likely, earlier) the same argument has been  proposed repeatedly - it is not new, and it is not true.  It is, of course, getting more ridiculous in the age of declining fertility and increasing elderly population - if anything, I would worry about who´d be wiping my ass when I no longer can.

[ag]

The social wage will have to be instituted when permanent unemployment begins to consume 20, then 40, then 60 and more percent of the population over time.

I think one can safely bet it will NEVER happen. No matter what technological progress means.

There are things humans can do other than pretending being robots in a factory assembly line.