Funny thing is a lot of job creation we are currently seeing is part time voodoo. They are eliminating full time positions and replacing them with 2 or 3 part timers. The net result is "job creation".

Never mind that the net money paid to the 2 or 3 part time  workers is less than you were paying 1 full timer worker therefore reducing consumer spending in the process. Not to mention doing this means you don't pay benefits which further reduces the overall economic benefit of the positions, and unless those part timers are working more than 1 part time job the chances they qualify for some sort of government benefits is high.

I guess my point is IMHO what we are seeing is a false recovery, the numbers look better but the economy is actually worse off.

I am sure we can pick out fields where making money is the only goal.  But MOST people who become wealthy are not in it to make money.  Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, etc. all became extremely wealthy because they wanted to do something really cool and were successful at it with money being the result.

Trying to paint rich people as greedy requires a very broad brush that has nothing to do with reality. If you want to say rich people are greedy, then it's more than fair to say that anyone poor is just a lazy, stupid loser.  We can cherry pick statistics all day but the reality is, most rich people are first generation rich people and did so by DOING something that society decided was worth spending money on voluntarily.

I have grave issues with our finance industry but much of the wealth gotten there is the result of government meddling creating markets for people who know how to navigate the byzantine rules rather than producing something good and useful for society. If you have (like I do) a problem with that, put the blame where it belongs - meddling government regulations.

I don't think you can blame the regulations when it's been proven those same folks are more effective with a lack of regulations, and are often the reason those regulations are created to begin with.

Some basic simple regulation is necessary or beneficial if it helps set up a competitive market. If investment banks were prevented from getting too large then it wouldn't matter if they failed. Banks that over reached or did stupid things would fail and fear of failure would keep the rest in check. Instead however we have "too big to fail" where government tries to prevent these companies from ever failing, which is just mind bogglingly stupid.

Read this article on regulation in America, it is eye opening.

Not sure if fast-food strikers have thought through their game of chess.

If the jobs go, then we  end up with a society where the majority are unemployed/underemployed.   If that happens, America will have to fundamentally change, because democratic capitalism cannot survive such a scenario.

I'm preparing for the dystopia as much as I can, and hoping for the best instead.

Long as the subject has come up, I believe the problems with the finance industry had two fundamental causes (i.e., huge mistakes by government):  1 - The repeal of the ban on interstate banking.  2 - The repeal of Glass-Steagal.  Virtually all the problematic issues flowed from those two events.

Principled macro-regulation is a legitimate and useful function of government.  Micro-regulation is full of mischief, and little else.

This actually sounds like the proper way to proceed.
Who the hell wants their experience on earth and contribution to mankind to be schlepping burgers.

We should be automating all mind-numbing jobs with robots as fast as possible.

Better start coming up with a plan to manage this transition, though.
Greece is going commie soon, others will follow...
Governments are burning the world over...
If you think this can't happen to the US, better open up the history books.

Regulation can also be mischief though, look at what happens when corporations get to write the laws (groups like ALEC)- if you live in NC, a big reason why your internet service is the worst in the country is true to ALEC writing laws on broadband to stifle competition.

A good role for government is to give a voice to the voiceless, but it does the reverse in America.

The laws of self-preservation are no less operative in business than in individual life.  Businesses inevitably seek advantage.  The job of government should be to keep the playing field as level as possible and not advantage any business(es) over others; in other words to let the customers determine winners and losers, not legislators or regulators.  Tough when those same legislators and regulators are drawn from the business community - requires a degree of moral and ethical behavior we seldom see any more.

A great discussion so far!

As to the OP, automation replacing human labor has been a constant factor in human history for a long time. And so far, humans have always adapted for the better. However, there are signs that this time may be different:

1) We are running out of growth options. In past history we could expand to new lands and new resource pools. But we have found every land, and most of our mining work now is a better exploitation of existing pools....not finding new ones.

2) Machines are starting to replace "thinking" jobs. In the past, when machines replaced our human labor, we turned to more "thinking" labor, using our brains more than our bodies. While machines are still not at the point where they can replace our general thinking, they are adapting to replace certain aspects of human thinking (look at the progression of the self driving car as an example).

The market has spoken many times, that once a machine can do a job as well or better than a human...the market will take the machine. So once machines can "think" as well as a human... what would humans do for work?

This is the trend that is occurring, and the competitive drive for efficiency and innovation will continue to push this trend forward. Now governments can regulate and unions mandate...but like a finger plugging a hole in the dam it is only going to be so effective. The trend will continue to push, and I think the result will be a large portion of the human population that will be unemployed.

That is a scary proposition, but without some radical change (like a fundamental collapse of society...which is certainly possible) I don't see the trend stopping.

What can we do about it? I have a few ideas:

1) Population Control: What has started in China is going to have to spread to the rest of the world. The bottom line is there are simply too many of us, and modern living does not require the large family to deal with huge mortality rates. Either we do it ourselves...or nature will do it for us, and I promise you she will not be kind about it. With a reduced population, unemployment will be less of a factor and we don't have to compete for resources as strongly.

2) Crafting a workless lifestyle: We basically have to redesign the entire concept of modern living. First of all, with the assumption that an unemployed person is the norm...and has no negative social stigma.

But beyond that, we have to craft an economic lifestyle for that person that will let them live on a provided "living wage". This would be the evolution of welfare into a hopefully better system. Lets be honest, welfare is not a good system as written...but the fundamental needs that it is trying to address are only going to get stronger as unemployment rises. We aren't going to get away from a welfare system, but we do have to change it.

Part of that may be the recognition that some quality of life aspects are going to go down. Here is an easy example. Right now, even USA's poor generally have access to electricity 24/7. We might be able to provide electricity to them at 1/6 the price....but they only get it at certain times of the day (perhaps 8 hours a day, at key times when electricity can be generated the cheapest).

Another example: Our medical system and our drugs try to limit pain and side effects as much as possible. In some cases there are cheaper alternatives, but they involve some short term side effects and discomfort. If I can provide you a drug that will have you healthy in 2 days with no side effects....or give you a drug for 1/8 the price that will take a week and leave you feeling miserable.....number 2 may become the default option in order to make healthcare affordable. I think people would agree that not getting cured would be a worse alternative.

Then of course there is the social factor....what will people do with all of their freetime (again assuming machines have replaced the bulk of human labor)? That one I leave to others, as I have few good ideas to bring to the table.

workless lifestyle.. sounds like star trek. without the unlimited power/resource bit.

thing about population control.. is that... no one can tell whether it's working. studies have stated that pop growth would have fallen as a society techs up anyway.

i remember family planning adverts decades back in hong kong - 2 kids are enough (obviously there were no penalties in law for more kids.. just a question of whether you can afford it).. nowadays, they are saying people are not having enough kids.

THe funny thing is the uncertainty is causing folks like me to not marry and have children.  Maintaining a marriage is expensive, and kids are even more expensive.

And this is despite me doing better than most of my peers right now.

there should be MUCH more concern about the innocent victims who are being served as food at these places than the one's doing the serving. 

check out this short video to increase your awareness about this

Sorry but only an idiot would buy a hamburger from a machine. Self checkouts are a failure, and many retailers have been quietly 'removing' them. Costco started testing them then realized they actually had to pay additional people to re-check items, fix errors, debug the machines, and at times, manually enter bar codes. You can still find these 'unused' Costco automated checkouts at the Auburn Hills location - pushed off to the side like some arcane relic... The vast majority of chains are removing them - as quickly as they can....

http://www.businessinsider.com/costco-is-eliminating-self-checkout-2013-6

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/story/2011-09-15/self-service-checkout/50411994/1

http://supermarketnews.com/retail-amp-financial/albertsons-llc-removes-self-checkouts

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2012/06/03/19832081.html

Why is it so bad people are demanding fair wages? Frankly, the rest of the civilized world has much higher minimum wages, and the US is quit a ways behind. If you want to stimulate the economy the best way is to raise wages because a significant number of those making minimum pump their money back into the economy. 

What I have noticed is local economies are trumping federal wages. Orlando for example bases minimums on what Disney pays.. In my city the minimum wage is around $9 an hour. Nobody DARES pay anyone less than that or they will never find anyone to work for them. Businesses in poor areas can't be trusted to set wages so the govt. has to step in and do it. In higher end areas the market determines wage.

Sorry bud, robots aren't replacing anything. Well.. Maybe they will replace CEO's, and we'd all benefit. 

Hmmm....seems 60 years ago there were these new fangle things called Automats.

Not a thing!  That is the beauty of a free country.  THey can always get another job.  And they will - when their labor is worth it to another employer.

Wage 'worth' is too relative, it's an 'opinion' of a business, often not based on the market. For example my friend owns a popular bar. They do between $25,000-$30,000 on a Friday or Saturday night in booze. Shouldn't that merit a bunch of $20-$40 an hour employees? Surely it should, however the majority of his workforce are under $10 an hour. Pathetic. So employers often cannot be trusted to make rational labor decisions, that's why the govt needs to set minimum standards. It's also why our govt' needs to ditch the 1980's rubbish $7.25 an hour and immediately bump it to at least $12 an hour, maybe $15.. I have yet to meet a business owner that was entirely fair about wages. Most just want the cheapest people they can find, and with large populations of 'desperate' workers they sure as hell can find those cheap people. Sad really.

Also, why is Joeuser still fail after all of these years? I click on quote to reply, and it doesn't even take me down to reply, or quote anything.. What a horrid site.

Sad, indeed.  But not quite in the way you think it is.

So what is to prevent these employees from opening their own bar, and paying those wages?  They surely would skim off the cream of the crop (who would not want to work for 2x-4x as much)?

And therein lies your answer.  There is nothing stopping them, they just have not risked a thing.  Your friend did.  And he has to pay those people $20-40/hour when he only does a few hundred dollars on a night.

Good luck getting credit for that, and with their slave wages, they can't save enough to even get enough to start their own business.  This is why income inequality is bad- it's a snowballing effect- poverty is one of the most expensive things out there.

Also, your "friend" can pass some of those increased costs onto his customers, especially if his competition also has to pay those increased costs.

That's the American, 'Can Do' spirit.  All those other bars just sprang up from nothing when Magic Greedy Rich Dude tapped his Wealth Wand on the ground, so 'not fair'.

Where do you think the friend got the money from?  The bar fairy?  Most people do not win the lottery and open a bar.  They create a business plan, sell it to money backers, and borrow the money for it.  But they have to pay that money back.  And the investors want a return on their investment.

That friend is just a $10/hour bartender who had a plan.  And sacrificed for it.  He is not Bill Gates,

Good luck with that.

I like the bar fairy better.

You need a certain amount of capital/collateral to get the loan.   Nowadays many folks can't even get that collateral from the service sector.

You need money to make money.  Poverty's expensive.