I mean, technically the self-checkout package has automation in it, a scale and cameras to "automate" the process of ensuring what was scanned was what was bagged, a process by which the station determines when employee intervention is necessary, etc. Automation tech is in there, things a person used to do are being done by technology, but again it wasn't created to improve the way it was done before, merely to make the owner more money.

I disagree with your analogy. The death rate has held steady at 100% for quite some time now. The only difference is how wrinkly the corpses are.

Lamp lighters, cotton pickers, wooden teeth makers, wool socks knitters, muck rakers, medical leech farmers... the list of jobs and entire industries destroyed in the name of "progress" goes on and on. We're going to be totally out of jobs any day now!

I remembered Mr Omar from Everybody Hates Chris trying to get the mayor that wouldn't care for safety elected so his funeral business gets more, well, dead people.

Your instinct to use a systemic solution is good. My concern would be the tax gives corporations the wrong incentive (Some percentage of jobs could be automated but would still be cheaper to hire people). As another approach I like worker cooperatives because if they automate some task the financial benefit goes to the employees. The problem is there aren't enough large scale worker co-ops, so I'd like to see them get tax advantages, preference on government contracts, grants, etc to drive their development.

Tbf the owners will get 100% of what they want because this country was bought decades ago. I was talking decent world. This will be inflicted on us, and used purely to further satiate the greed of the owners whether we protest for it not to be used and/or to be taxed.

I was just saying it would be stupid to put half our effort into both when one has a much better today outcome in a decent country. But in practical terms? The people are brainwashed, the owners hold all the cards, and this will be used to fuck us all, because the people gave up their voice in the 80s in exchange for the lie that giving the owners everything would benefit everyone. Now we're trapped in this workcamp of a country until collapse, likely long after everyone alive today is dead, because anyone who lives here paying attention knows the peasants are too chickenshit and/or brainwashed to revolt.