It's not about what the employer is willing to do, it's about what people are willing to accept; especially if there's competition for their services.

> Whereas building a machine that can do even the basics of what a human hand can do is quite expensive.

We even have robots that can wash dishes, and they are cheap enough to be in a substantial proportion of households. There's lots of of basics and not so basics that we automated.

Of course, build a machine that can do _all_ the basics of a human hand is expensive (at least so far). But people can and have arranged their business processes around these limitations: you don't expect your welding robots to wash dishes; you use a dishwasher for that.