Speaking from an economics viewpoint, new technology kills jobs temporarily. Eliminating/automating jobs is obviously a good thing over the long term: how often

Speaking from an economics viewpoint, new technology kills jobs temporarily. Eliminating/automating jobs is obviously a good thing over the long term: how often do we lament the cotton gin because of how much cotton harvesting labor it eliminated? Over the short term, it caused job loss for many cotton harvesters, and a concentration of wealth for cotton gin owners. But over the long term, it caused the cotton industry to boom, and created a higher standard of living for everyone. It just took time for the market to reach a new, higher equilibrium. The same thing is happening today with technology, albeit at a much faster pace. So the real issue is not permanent job loss, but rather how do we take care of people as industry reinvents itself? The pace of this reinvention is accelerating, and has been accelerating for hundreds of years. In the near future, 20 years could result in a completely new job skills need. In fact, compare 1993 to 2013. Entire industries have sprung up while others died since then. Yet we do not lament the advent of the omnipresent internet because of the lost jobs in the newspaper, movie, music, and publishing industries. At least, not most of us. The same thing is simply happening today. Jobs will continue to exist. Just not right away. The real problem is only the short term: figuring out what to do when people get optimized out of some obsolete industry. There are many answers, we just have to think about it. Socialism is an answer proposed by many people. I think I agree with them to some degree. Some kind of economic floor below which no person can descend. I don't know how this could be created, but I would argue that the "economic floor" has been steadily rising for hundreds of years. In the US, even poverty currently results in a significantly higher standard of living compared to the median income life in 1850.