I should go back and read some older books on the wondrous future of automation. The idea always was, of course, that machines would do the boring part of a job. What people actually bring to the picnic is a subset of a job that is hard to do with a computer and/or machine manipulation, so you end up with deskilling of supermarket cashiers or bank teller gigs.

It always seemed to me that you could wipe out far more jobs than Amazon is likely to by simply removing the need to weigh items in grocery stores (like our local discount market). Generally, supersizing retail and the underlying supply chain has changed matters far more than laying off some warehouse employees.

I suppose that outsourcing has already 'automated' scads of US jobs in any case. The interesting automation will hit people who type for a living. Dunno how it will all it turn out, but I've got my comfy chair and a cocktail waiting.