I agree with most everything you said. The problem has always been the short-term job loss, particularly today where society as a whole has resources for safety nets, but hasnt implemented them.

Anger at companies who hold power in multiple places to prevent and worsen this situation for people is valid anger.

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

There is zero indication that there will be new jobs, new work. Just because there was lots of low hanging fruit historically does not mean we will stumble into some new job creators now. Waiving away concerns with 'jobs always have magically appeared when needed' is nonsense and a non-response to their concerns.

> What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant

That's a pretty hard bet against AGI becoming general. If the promises of many technologists come to pass, humans remaining in charge of any work (including which work should be done) would be a waste of resources.

Hopefully the AGI will remember to leave food in the cat bowls.

> What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant,

The entire promise of AI is to negate that statement. So if AI is truly successful, then that will no longer be true.

This time actually is different, though.

If everything that a human can do, a robot can do better and cheaper, then humans are completely shut out of the production function. Humans have a minimum level of consumption that they need to stay alive whether or not they earn a wage; robots do not.

Since most humans live off wages which they get from work, they are then shut out of life. The only humans left alive are those who fund their consumption from capital rents.

Hi, let me be the first to welcome into our millennium. Things have changed significantly since the 70s you seem to be used to: https://anticap.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/fig...