I agree that it's generally been true up until now that we've invented new jobs to replace those which we've automated away, but I don't think that is the whole

I agree that it's generally been true up until now that we've invented new jobs to replace those which we've automated away, but I don't think that is the whole story. Going back to at least the industrial revolution with for example handloom weavers, people who have had their jobs automated away were often impoverished for the rest of their lives. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'd argue that this will be true for most displaced workers today -- any career change later in life will put you behind the curve, and it's not like someone working as a coal miner is likely to learn how to code or whatever. My thought is that these new high-tech jobs we invent have been and will be performed by new generations leaving the displaced to suffer. I also don't think this trend of inventing new jobs will hold true forever. To the poster who asked why this would suddenly change, it's because we now have algorithms which can learn. We may be long dead (though perhaps not), but I am absolutely convinced that eventually we will invent machines which are able to perform any given task at or exceeding normal human ability. When that happens, and when we deploy it in mass across the economy, I think we'll have to face an existential crisis as a species. Today we want everyone to have a job because we want everyone to have a means of independently supporting themselves. We want each of us to contribute to society, to not be a burden. We want people to have a job because it often provides a sense of dignity and a sense of purpose. My thought is that, just as you say that normal people will find another job as automation advances, the attitude we will need to adopt instead will be that people in general disabled or not will need to find another means of providing meaning in their life. Because honestly, my thought when watching that commercial was not, "oh how nice that this individual is working." My thought was that the job looked terrible, is probably not good for health, and that it's not a job that human beings should even be doing. I generally think this about most jobs, but especially so about jobs where you're sorting through waste. Real people will suffer from automation, but I think the process is inevitable, and personally wished I existed in a time where automation freed all of us to pursue what we were interested in rather than serving the purposes of making the economic machine spin round. Let it spin on its own.