Often there are government programs available for retraining if your job is lost to outsourcing or automation or similar. People who train into a new job will l

Often there are government programs available for retraining if your job is lost to outsourcing or automation or similar. People who train into a new job will likely make more money, have a better quality of life, and better long-term career prospects. So 200 people are put out of work in a factory town, but the 10 people the plant still needs are much better off. The rest of the workers are expected to take advantage of the resources available to them, and find something better. There is still a large net job loss, but other jobs crop up elsewhere in the economy, and the general quality of jobs throughout the nation is improved. Often people don't take advantage of retraining programs, however, which leads to enormously depressed areas which used to be centered around a few large employers. But it's not usually because of laziness or unwillingness to change gears. Many people simply balk at leaving their home community, and when everyone is suddenly out of work, there aren't openings in many industries that they might retrain into. Still, that's like staying in a village after the well dries up; sort of pointless and making life much harder on yourself than it needs to be. Automation is not a bad thing, but it requires a dynamic country where people are willing to move and train into jobs. Today's America is stagnant and stationary, a problem which would probably solve itself if these decrepit factory towns weren't so successful at garnering subsidies to maintain their lifestyles. Just look at coal country...