Self-driving trucks will be job-killers.

[HughBeaumont]

47. I always have questions for Doom and Gloom Disguised as Optimism threads such as this.

What ARE these new irreplaceable careers going to be?

What's the next "killer app"? What's the next "Steel"? What are our future replacement "industries"?

Where's the next "internet" going to be realized? Is it going to be infrastructure? Energy? Nano-and Bio-tech? Environmental sciences?

Where is the money for these multiple trips to college going to come from to train for these careers when the average worker has no savings and limited prospects? The average college education costs between $10,000 and $50,000. Will that come from the worker's ASS or the money tree in the back yard?

What if the worker is already financing (as I am) a child's education?

In a world where corporations value American STEM talent as far as they can find cheaper overseas counterparts, how does a person who is now forced to enter that field (never mind whether or not they're INCLINED or MEANT for that field .. . they'll learn to like it, I gues . . . .?) going to compete with the multiple thousands of underpaid workers currently IN these fields that are struggling to survive?

How is the average worker going to be able to consume with no paycheck coming in? How do their bills get paid? How do they retire to make way for younger workers? How does capitalism; better yet, how does American government continue with no revenue, public OR private?

Realistically, between reduced job prospects, astronomical student loan debt, automation and everyone in public and private power subscribing to cheap labor corporatism, how will a Millennial be able to survive, much less retire?

How does one answer the hundreds of thousands, possibly a few or several million, workers that will suddenly have no paycheck and no prospects due to displacement by automation, redundancy, job offshoring or just general "FREE MARKETZ CAPITALISM"?

"Oh well, not MY problem." "Shoulda, woulda, coulda." "Should have prepared, should have thought ahead"??

"Adapt or die" is nothing but a cold-hearted cop-out and a losing alternative to an actual long-term plan for displaced workers. You all attest that futures can and always will work out . . . but what if this time, and sorry to say, it's very much a certainty . . . IT DOESN'T??

Some (like Thomas Friedman and Marc Andreessen, for example) giggle gleefuly at "Creative Destruction". Guess when it's not them that's affected, it's hunky dory, right?

Me, I have a heart. My crime, I guess. I want to at least pretend to have some sort of plan for our workers when this hammer drops.