Today America needs 5 million less workers to produce a greater value of goods and services than it did in December 2007 when the recession began.

Just think how much bigger the economy would be if those 5 million people could also be productive.

But purchasing food and games and driving are all essential roles for our economy. We should all just be paid for staying home and shopping.

Then let the robots have work!

I think you mean clicking on ads are the driving and essential roles for our economy. I'm guessing it's robotizable, if not at least turkable.

I'm truly wondering what kind of jobs those displaced 5 million workers COULD do.

It's gotta be something less turkable.

I was just making fun of Beberg's Observance which states that we've lost a whole generation of our greatest computer science minds to figuring out how to make people click on ads...like that famous rats and bars experiment.

I think humans can click on ads better than machines. Seriously, the unpredictable nature of human spending is a huge economic driver!

This recent TedGlobal talk by Shyam Sankar from Palantir about JCR Licklider's theory of intelligence augmentation talks to this!

Here's where online education is so important. Those displaced by robots need resources to help them learn new skills.

Might I also suggest organizing militias to defend against the inevitable robot uprising?

Chris, militias against robot uprisings didn't work well in the Terminator movies.

We should prefer a bore-from-within approach like in The Matrix.

I kid, I kid. We all know that the answer is to shed our organic bodies by uploading, so we can take on the robot rebellion on even terms.

Jim Firby used to joke about "robot slaves for a better world"... but let's say that robot slaves really could do 80% of the world needed by our advanced society. What would the rest of us do all day? And what would the intermediate steps between here and there look like?

Vacation!

It's interesting to note they had this same debate 100 years ago. What ended up happening is ham activity changed to fill up all new time.