On the other hand, there's going to be short term turmoil as people scramble to find new jobs in an increasingly automated world.
Really?
Do you mean: "Being paid to do soul-crushing work is better than not being paid" ?
Or: "Doing soul-crushing work is better than having nothing to do" ?
The first is an issue of income and the distribution of product (in the GDP sense of product). There is no axiomatic rule that says "you have to have a job to get paid", it's just how our current economy operates.
If I owned a farm that produced a variety of food in excess of the needs of my whole family, but was totally operated by self-maintaining robots, would I need to have a job? The robots would produce all the food I need, and I could sell the excess in order to obtain other goods.
I guess I could say my job was "farmer" or "grocery salesman" or "robot supervisor", but I wouldn't actually being doing work.
If I am a truck driver, and I own my own truck and I make an income by transporting goods, and then I convert my truck to be self-driving so that I no longer need to be the driver, then (if we temporarily ignore external price pressures) I still make the same income as I used to. But I'm just reaping the benefits of my self driving truck, I don't actually "work" anymore (or at least to nowhere near the extent I used to).
But if I am a truck driver, and someone else owns the truck and I make an income by being contracted to transport goods, and then they convert my truck to be self-driving so that I no longer need to be the driver, then I no longer make any income, and I'm screwed. The owner of the truck reaps incredible benefits, and I don't actually "work" anymore, but I also don't have an income.
That's how things work in our society, but it doesn't have to be that way. There's no universal moral law that says that the first ex-truck-driver should continue to be paid for doing nothing much, but the second ex-truck-driver needs to get off his butt and go find a new soul-crushing job so that he can earn an income.
As our economies change to produce more output with fewer workers, there becomes less useful work for the citizens to do, even though GDP is increasing. That ought to be a good thing (economically) - more "stuff we want", less effort to produce it. But it won't actually being a good thing for the general population unless we move to a different model for the distribution of income, so that there's a way for the populace to share in the increased productivity even though their manual labour is no longer needed.
That where ideas like "Universal Basic Income" (UBI) come in.
Are we sure this isn't true? Are people who don't have to work (e.g. those on permanent disability in the US) more or less happy than comparable people in dead-end soulless jobs?
I don't know of any studies, but I suspect there would be some.
In addition to the question of "how do we share income in a less-work world?", there is the question "how do we ensure that the are opportunities for everyone to contribute something meaningful to society?"
Ideally those questions would connect - we would use our increased product(ivity) to fund a wider range of human endeavours that might not have been considered "economically productive" in previous generations.
I don't know what that looks like, but I would hope it means more art and science, rather than more soul crushing, meaningless busy-work.
Maybe not many, but I feel pretty confident that number is greater than 0.
One of the hopes of UBI is that when everyone receives a salary just from being alive, and working earns you extra on top of that, whether one works become more of a choice (like living frugally) instead of a failure, and loneliness is reduced when unemployment isn't an evil to combat, and more people choose to do something else.
Apparently nail painting businesses are a viable industry, in my eyes they are totally useless.
Most of the businesses we recognise today would have been hilarious to our ancestors. Paying good money for a personal trainer? Paying someone to wash your car?
This is an age-old problem which keeps solving itself.
But jobs existing are a consequence of two things: (1) demand & (2) ability to price work output above a minimum.
UBI answers a world where there aren't enough of (2) to satisfy labor supply (whether through automation or increases in efficiency). Because bar repealing minimum wage statutes we're going to reach a point where for {minimum wage salary} there only exist X potential jobs (additional jobs not economically-feasibly offering a sufficient income), and labor pool > X.
Most people don't like their work. Most people don't like waking up on someone else's schedule and do work that their told to do. That's why businesses pay them, after all.
Companies will only pay what they have to.
Some examples of industries where tons of people work for shit money (less than a person of their abilities could earn in other industries) or even sometimes for free because of an emotional attachment to that industry are showbusiness, art and academia.
Then you have the opposite examples, like working on an oil platform - most of those people would earn less money if they had picked a different industry, because they have to be paid more to agree to live on an oil platform and do a shitty and dangerous job.
If 50% of the jobs in a field are automated, in the near term you still have 100% of the former labor looking for that job, pushing salaries down towards their minimum, thereby reducing the cost effectiveness of further automation.
To me, minimum wage says "if you work, then you should at least able to support yourself on your income$." UBI+ says "if you work, you must find greater fulfillment than mere sustenance in your work."
Personally, I can't see minimum wage applying to anyone receiving UBI. Although it might make sense to have a "less than minimum wage" tax that helps fund the UBI directly.
$ Abstracting away actual amounts and whether or not they're enough
+ Market adjustments aside
The problem with automation is you cant ask the robot why X, Y or Z is going wrong and how to fix it. A master weaver on the other hand will do it over a 15 minute conversation.
That's a very romantic view of weaving which hides the real reason there are still many weavers, mostly in low-cost countries: They are cheaper than machines. There is no guarantee that this will still be true in face of increasing computing capabilities and machines which learn better than before.
Yes, mostly in Asia, living in hellish conditions, often struggling to get enough food. I'm not sure what point you were trying to make with that comment.
Depends how short the "short term turmoil" is. If its 20+ years then it could blight an entire generation.
It's always been this way.
Besides the population of most countries is starting on the path to decline.