Up until now, the people displaced from the jobs automated away have always been intelligent enough to offer utility beyond what automation can provide. But there's a tipping point when automation/machine intelligence exceeds humans at which point they offer no utility to employers of any kind. We haven't hit that point for the vast majority of workers, but the early indications are that we very well might.

But looking at the past as a predictor of the future is a very dangerous proposition. We saw that in 2008 when it came to the housing market. Sometimes now really is different from the past. And if we hit that tipping point, it will be much like the posited AI singularity. Vast swaths of humans will become surplus to the most efficient means of completing work. It's important to realize that the people who are talking about this issue as one we need to confront are envisioning a future that is fundamentally different from today or anything that has come before now and they're predicting that for a very specific reason. You can disagree with that reason, but you can't use previous examples of automation-displacing-jobs as a way to dismiss that thinking. Because what's being predicted is fundamentally different from what has already happened.