I think one blindness we have is seeing the question of what to do with these workers as pertaining to the future. But it's hard not to look at things like "bullshit jobs"[1][2], or entire sectors that are parasitic (advertising, credit cards, sales, etc.) and see that we're already decades into this problem. As we've automated much of our work, we've largely failed to move most people to other productive jobs. Instead have been funneling an ever growing part of the population into careers where they're only helping to extract wealth from the ever dwindling percent of the population that actually produces useful things, if they're actually doing anything at all.

[1] https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/bullshit-jobs-david-graeber-w... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/04/i-had-to-guard...