Instead of job destruction, you could say we're just becoming more efficient at doing things. This is nothing new, it's a trend that started with division of la

Instead of job destruction, you could say we're just becoming more efficient at doing things. This is nothing new, it's a trend that started with division of labor in the Stone Age. Then we invented currency to distribute the fruits of this divided labor somewhat evenly among the participants. Now we're seeing that the value and income gap between professions is becoming wider and wider, and it's developing into a real problem. Some proposed fixes like raising the minimum wage will only work temporarily, as it increases the pressure to become more efficient. A basic income might indeed be a better approach, but the problem is that we'll have a lower class of bored, but somewhat poor people. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I think Europe's "social market economies" with high taxes and high benefits are in a better position to handle this than the US's gung-ho capitalism. And to say that higher-level languages and open source products are making software engineers obsolete is a bit short sighted. Sure, languages and frameworks have become more powerful, but the problems to solve have become orders of magnitude harder, and new problems have arisen. You still need people proficient in lower level languages to build those high level tools and frameworks.