TBF there are plenty of programmers who aren’t good programmers, but keep their job because rarely does anything they do actually affect someone’s physical health.

I’m glad you still manage have a more positive outlook on the future than I do.

Yes, my perspective is definitely colored by my experience in America, but if you think similar won’t happen elsewhere then I think you’re being overly idealistic - at least when it comes to the full population of the world. Those who enable the powerfully wealthy will certainly do better - at least until those who don’t are no longer much of a threat, and said wealthy no longer need their enablers.

If you compare recent history to a hundred years ago, sure. Now, analyze the trajectories of trends from that recent history and extract where things are going over the next century.

If improving people’s standard of living were actually the end result, but it’s not been the case thus far.

Hardly sad, first of all. Second, we’ve been reasonably successful, or there’d still be at least twice as many such jobs now (likely more). Third, recent advances in multipurpose robotics have a strong likelihood of having major effects in this area before much longer - especially when combined with AI tech.

It was snatched up in the nanoseconds it took to generate the lower part of the page. You’re just too damned slow, OP!