On Maslow's hierarchy of needs ethics are most likely a tier 3 or tier 4 concern. We're discussing a scenario that directly threatens tier 1 concerns. So on what grounds is it shocking that ethics are the first thing to go?

I wouldn't think in term of gains, if someone doesn't want to live, it's because he/she has no other goal left. Despite the moral/ethical issues this may be a more realistic scenario that what it initially looks. This is what's happening in Italy for the economic crisis

http://www.beppegrillo.it/2011/12/il_veneto_degli.html

http://www.trevisotoday.it/economia/numero-verde-anti-suicid...

http://www.iltempo.it/cronache/2016/09/25/news/2016-il-tragi...

http://www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/primopiano/presentato_in_... http://mattinopadova.gelocal.it/regione/2015/09/08/news/suic...

http://www.vvox.it/2016/09/11/crisi-veneto-prima-regione-per...

They can effect change in an overall uncaring system.

Edit: From an ethical perspective it can be argued that a person who is "good" but does not help less fortunate "bad" people is not in a morally superior position (however you want to interpret that to make the sentence work).

(I do not necessarily agree with the following, but I think it might be a defensible position)

The hallmark of civilization is specialization. Instead of everyone having to hunt and farm their own food, build their own shelter from resources they mined/harvested/gathered themselves, only own whatever property they can by force stop other people from taking, and so on, we specialize.

The price for specialization is the loss of self-reliance. To get people to give up that self-reliance and specialize, it has to be implicit in the social contract that if they pick a useful specialty that society needs, they will be able to make a living for essentially the rest of their life. That's important because it can be very hard to change specialties, especially for someone who is older and has a family to support.

In the past when automation took jobs it usually took long enough and there was enough warning that specialists faced a slow decline in their specialty. New people could stop entering that specialty, but there would still be enough work to keep the existing practitioners going for the most part.

For instance, it took a long time for passenger aircraft to seriously take a bite out of demand for passenger rail service. That at least gave people considering careers related to passenger rail a good shot at recognizing when that would no longer be a safe lifetime career and choose something else.

Now we seem to be automating things faster. We can go from "automation is something your grandkids might have to worry about" in a given job to "there is a decade left on this job" in just a few years. People who played by the implicit social contract's rules, and picked specialties that were in demand and that no one seriously thought would be automated for several decades at the earliest are going to get screwed.

I think one could make a plausible argument that society has breached the social contract in such cases, and owes those people compensation in the form of one or more of (1) training them for some other comparable (by income and difficulty) work, (2) early retirement with some kind of pension to let them keep their standard of living until they reach normal retirement age, (3) throttling the rate that these jobs can be replaced by automation so instead of people being fired to make room for the bots the bots only replace workers who are retiring or leaving normally.

If society is not going to uphold the social contract, or compensate for its breach, then perhaps one can make the case that it is not unethical for the aggrieved former worker to also breach the social contract and turn to crime to support himself and his family, depending on the type of crime.

Well, I meant that in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. But then again, when one is watching their children go hungry, the list of things one is willing to do for money/food expands a bit.

Assuming that society's ability to absorb all the new unemployable citizens is maxed out I would say that in dire times ethics and morality are a luxury.

You've seen their merits, then - now think about when they would be worth taking...