It seems as if what we have been discussing is the lack of economic opportunity.
Of course, as low wages will be a worsening problem due to the globalization of the economy. For example, I know nothing about IT, but I know what I want it to do for me. So I have a subcontractor in Dhaka who can do anything, do it well, and at a price that you couldn't get a kid to shovel your front walk for.
But the problems wrought by globalization will be an incidental issue, notwithstanding their use as a political rallying point. As humans become increasingly unnecessary as a factor in production, you will begin to see more definition in today's social striations: fantastic profits for the owners creating a small vastly wealthy elite; good wages for the few highly specialized workers who provide the technical and administrative support for the means of production, this group forming a shrinking petite bourgeoisie; and members of a vast unnecessary labor force whose ONLY economic value will be as a parasitic consumer class, who must earn enough income selling each other Starbucks and burgers to allow them to purchase the fruit of automated labor. The only other jobs will be in the military service keeping international and civil order, herders, fishermen, sanitary engineers, and prostitutes and other entertainers and sports to divert the masses.
Compound this with genetic improvements to the human species that are affordable only to the wealthiest elite.
The arc of history is curving toward basic guaranteed minimum income:
http://basicincome.org/ Without it, no one will buy the shit made or grown by the robots. The credit crunches of the last three decades have been a clumsy failure to properly account for the growing wealth gap between the owners of the means of production and the consumer class by propping up the consumer class with credit bubbles.
The only two things of value one has are one's vote and one's consumer power. Will the voters trade the vote for a big screen tv?
We shall see.
