That's a valid concern and I think there's no really great path forward, aside from broad structural changes that will blunt the negative consequences of automation: how do you balance good working conditions with the specter of automation? If human labor forever has to undercut the cost of automation, then we can't discount the human cost of doing so.
The problem isn't actually automation. If a job gets automated, now the thing being produced costs less. At scale it means you can have the same standard of living with a lower salary -- a boon for the poor.
The real problem is when some of the things have artificial scarcity. If we have zoning laws that prevent new housing from being built, the poor can't afford housing. If we have restrictions on the number of new doctors and regulations that create high compliance costs and barriers to competition in medical services, the poor can't afford medicine.
You can't make a robot to build housing for people in a place where there is effectively a law against building new housing. So that's where we get into trouble -- people building moats around stuff that make it more expensive, to prevent its cost from staying in line (i.e. declining) along with everything else, until those things are unaffordable.
The real problem is the high cost of housing and medicine and education.
> If a job gets automated, now the thing being produced costs less. At scale it means you can have the same standard of living with a lower salary -- a boon for the poor.
This is making the massively optimistic assumption that cost savings will be passed onto the consumer rather than hoarded for executives & shareholders.
Automation is a fake problem which has yet to reduce the number of jobs in the world.
People think it's a huge issue because they misread a study about computer manufacturers producing exponentially faster computers since 1970 as saying the manufacturers fired all their workers.
