Depending on our economic policies, there are a few different ways automation's impact on labor can express itself. The key thing that automation does is that it substitutes for labor thereby making labor less valuable.<p>If labor is less valuable, it doesn't have to mean fewer jobs. It doesn't even have to mean fewer hours worked. It can just mean less money going to labor (i.e. lower wages).<p>If our economy is operating below its productive capacity, which it is, then our levels of production are constrained by how much people can spend. And if consumers get their incomes from labor, then automation means consumers have less spending money.<p>If consumer incomes are constrained by wages, you'd therefore expect our level of production to decrease with increased levels of automation. And because economic policies are keeping the hours worked high, you'd expect the amount of production per man hour to decrease.<p>Hence...<p><i>"1. The U.S. economy is in a productivity recession."</i><p>Furthermore, if firms need to keep production levels low in order to clear markets, you'd expect that they wouldn't have much of a need to figure out ways to boost production.<p>Hence...<p><i>"2. Companies don’t seem to be investing in technology nearly as much as they used to."</i><p>Technology and automation allow the use of resources to be more efficient. One of those resources is labor. That means that in cases where we're actually using labor for production -- instead of, you know, just as an excuse to give people incomes -- we can get that labor really cheap.<p><i>"3. Globalization is a much bigger deal than automation for work and wages."</i><p>Globalization <i>is</i> automation.<p>But because we're Americans and we believe in the American dream, we need to force the labor market to provide incomes for hard-working Americans. Naturally, since many jobs amount to little more than token busy-work, we should then expect the labor market to become exceedingly boring and uneventful. After all, these are just fake jobs propped up by economic policy.<p>Hence...<p><i>"4. The U.S. economy’s creative-destruction engine is broken."</i><p><i>"This isn’t what the end of work was ever supposed to look like."</i><p>Yes it is. This is exactly what it's supposed to look like.