This is happening in Asia also. A question arise as to why we work and how fast should we work? In the absence of technology, many things (e.g: ability to write this comment) are not possible. But technology is subsuming many activities where people earn just sufficient amount for the peaceful life of their families without bothering about loss of jobs or what position his country stands in the GDP/productivity rankings ...etc.

Economic press has created a race among leaderships of nations on who is developed(advanced) i.e. praiseworthy and who is not and many organizations started preaching ways to improve productivity as if productivity only is the ultimate goal of human life. Political leaders cannot dare to advocate alternatives because that is suicidal for them, their countries ...etc.

I think, technology's effect on human life is like inverted bathtub curve i.e. technology advancement to certain level is beneficial to society but beyond that we enter region where costs/losses outweigh benefits if we consider entire society. No doubt, there will be winners any time but as a whole society loses and inequality may rise causing law and order issues and impacting even winners indirectly. In that sense, technology is like level of water in river and beyond certain level, it is not good for humanity.

World is highly decentralized and innovators or cultures who tasted success in innovation won't agree that progress in certain technologies need to be stopped or efforts need to be directed towards other required activities. So technology progress always happen and jobs also gets destroyed as collateral damage.