There are two separate effects here. In the short term, a new technology may put people out of work faster than they can retrain. That’s bad for them; it’s likely to be bad for the world as a whole in the short term; but it may very well be a good thing for everyone in the long term, e.g. if it creates more jobs than it destroyed. But it may also happen that a new technology destroys jobs without creating any new ones. In that case, even if it produces an increase in total wealth, it may be bad overall (at least for people whose values assign substantial importance to the welfare of the worst-off) -- in the long term as well as the short.
So the following two claims need to be treated quite separately. (1) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and lots of people are getting shafted as a result.” (2) “Future technological progress may obsolete more jobs than it ever creates, directly or indirectly, and lots of people will get shafted as a result if so.” And both are different from (1.5) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and that loss of jobs will persist way into the future”. It’s (1.5) that’s made less credible by observing that past progress doesn’t seem to have left us with a population that’s almost entirely jobless; that observation seems to me to have little to say about (1) and (2).
There are two separate effects here. In the short term, a new technology may put people out of work faster than they can retrain. That’s bad for them; it’s likely to be bad for the world as a whole in the short term; but it may very well be a good thing for everyone in the long term, e.g. if it creates more jobs than it destroyed. But it may also happen that a new technology destroys jobs without creating any new ones. In that case, even if it produces an increase in total wealth, it may be bad overall (at least for people whose values assign substantial importance to the welfare of the worst-off) -- in the long term as well as the short.
So the following two claims need to be treated quite separately. (1) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and lots of people are getting shafted as a result.” (2) “Future technological progress may obsolete more jobs than it ever creates, directly or indirectly, and lots of people will get shafted as a result if so.” And both are different from (1.5) “Recent technological progress is obsoleting more jobs than it’s creating, and that loss of jobs will persist way into the future”. It’s (1.5) that’s made less credible by observing that past progress doesn’t seem to have left us with a population that’s almost entirely jobless; that observation seems to me to have little to say about (1) and (2).