Moving to a post-work economy, part one: the situation as it stands

Let's talk about employment, making a living, working for the man.

It's going away.

When I was a child, a man could graduate high school, get a union job, work 45 years, get promoted, get raises, and retire with a pension. But something happened in the 80s. Plants started closing. Work went overseas.

The New Roman Empire had discovered the idea of replacing middle-class workers with skilled slaves.

It has continued, and worsened. Most jobs today are service jobs. While many things are made in the US, most of them are made in plants run by robots.

Let's have a look at the shopping trip of the future.

You use your phone to summon your driverless Uber to the shopping center, getting food untouched by human hands that arrived on a driverless truck, from an automated distribution center, before shopping in stores stocked by robots, with goods made by robots or foreign slave labor, and checking out on your phone before getting your piping hot kiosk pizza and taking the next uber home. That's if you don't just have everything delivered from Amazon via drone.

Think I'm exaggerating?

Service jobs are automating or putting the work on the consumer. It started with self-serve gas. Self-check stands are found in most major stores. And Wal-Mart is experimenting with using their Scan&Go app as mobile checkouts. The new Michaels app incorporated price scanning ability into the features. How long before the average craft shopper can scan each item as she goes, pay with her card on her phone, and just bypass me and my line entirely? If they can do that, how long before we're relegated to one check-stand (for the lock-up items) and one phone-checker? The warehouses are much the same story, being highly automated and Teamsters have clashed with Kroger and other grocery chains.

You can even do all your shopping on-line, pay by card, and pick up your order at both Wal-Mart and Kroger, never even setting foot in the store.

McDonalds is automating more of its work, and many places have apps that allow you to order and pay online, and then simply collect your food at the store. Some restaurants, like Genghis Grill, allow you to order by on-table screen, select, supervise andcollect your food, and have minimal interaction with a server. And in many places the food itself has been automated. Momentum machines can crank out 360 made to order burgers per hour, untouched by human hands. NXT has turned pizza into a kiosk item: order, selecting toppings on a screen, and watch as their pizza is made, starting with flour and water for the dough.

Even shelf-stockers aren't safe. The UBR-1 robot costs $50,000 (but requires programming) It pays for itself in 8000 work hours, or about 2 years of open-to-close, no days off work at Michaels. And that's at minimum wage. It only takes a year and 5 months to replace me.

Amazon is looking into picking robots, as well. Salon summed it all up.

Self-Driving vehicles have been in the works for years, and are already here. Colorado is using them on its road crews. The annual savings of automating the trucking industry is projected to be about $168bn, $70 billion (with a b) of which will come from reducing staff. $70 billion dollars out of our economy. $70 billion not paying mortgage and rent, buying food, clothes or cars, being spent on durable goods or frivolities. $70 BILLION evaporating out of circulation and into the hands of the profiteers is going to kill the US. (Also, 3.5 million truckers out of work)

Estimates are 5-10 years.

Uber, the country's largest non-livery taxi service, is looking to go completely driverless as well, cutting out all the drivers who depend on it. It's already killing taxi companies in many cities.

So where are we going to be getting the money for that shopping trip?

Part 2: How will we be making money if the robots run everything?