The Automation Revolution

The New York Times on the current state of the U.S. economy:

On the other hand, corporate success has not necessarily benefited American workers and consumers so far in this recovery. Today, the economy produces more than it did when the recession began in 2007, but it manages to do so with six million fewer jobs.

I don’t see this ever getting any better. What are we going to do in two or three decades down the road, the only available jobs that computers or impossibly cheap labor haven’t replaced are the ones that require imagination to do? Either everyone’s going to be in a design or programming role, or we’re going to have unbelievable unemployment. What we need to be asking is how to rework our economic system for a “utopian” future where the economy doesn’t require people to drive it.