In a macroeconomic sense, there's no significant difference between poor workers buying their food and housing versus a slaveowner buying food and constructing barracks for the slaves; there's not significant difference between a job being so worthless that noone would pay poor laborers to do it and a job that's not worth the food & resources that slaves would consume while doing it. A poor worker could do a slave's job for just a meal, if (s)he had no better alternatives.
A robot-based economy creates different challenges. If a robot can do a job cheaper than a handful of rice a day, then poor people won't be able to live with such a job ever again. Just as right now people (or slaves!) can't feed themselves by working in a treadmill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel).
Mass slavery can drive the price of (some?) labor down to the level of bare sustenance. Mass automation can potentially drive the price of (some?most?) labor down below that level - and that's a significant difference.
In the US? Compared to whom? Doctors? Bankers? Lawyers? Politicians?
Who do you think that you are better than?
Most of my ethics course from university focused on US based case studies (Tacoma Bridge, Kansas City walkway collapse, Space Shuttle etc.) So it could be possible Engineers in US have a worse reputation.
One of these things is not like the others.