If a person is working 40 hours a week, they should be paid enough to live off of.

[quakerboy]

47. I don't

I dont know of a machine that can replace a janitor or a secretary.

But I know of a machine that can allow a store to do as much with 1 teller as it used to with 4. And I know of a machine that allows one farmer to do the work that used to take many people. And ones that can allow one live telephone operator to do the work that used to take more. And ATMs that reduce the number of tellers needed. Manufacturing line equipment that allows a few dozen workers to do the work of hundreds. And apparently now even a machine that is supposed to do the work of a burger flipper, according to one post I read earlier. And many other such situations

Machines are not going to make people redundant, at least not as they are now. But they do reduce the number of people needed to do certain jobs. Many jobs, in fact. And as we get clever, there are more and more that fit that bill. Sometimes it backfires, as you describe. But not in the majority. If you look at most any industry, productivity per worker has gone up in the last 60 years, often significantly. And its not because the current generation of workers are amazing supermen. Its because companies have found ways to do the same amount of work with less people and more automation.

I dont shop in the self check line and I avoid ATMs. People need those checker and teller jobs. But if we reduced the work week and raised wages to a liveable level, I would have no problem with doing either. They work for 90% of what I need to do, and I would hate being in a "make work" job myself. Just not as much as I would hate not having any job.