Good point, but where do we expect a Limo driver of 40 years to take some responsibility for recognizing the writing on the wall?
There's a whole lot of catastrophe hidden in the phrase "in the long run." That's real wages in the UK. The mess from 1500-1600 is the Reformation, Bloody Mary, dissolution of the monestaries, rise of the Anglicans and the general economic depression of the British Isles leading up to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The mess from 1750 to 1850 is the rise of industrialization and all it brought on. I've now read two 200-plus page studies of technology and employment. They both make the argument that technology never affects employment, it affects jobs and that the only thing, the best thing, the essential thing is large-scale retraining. The study under LBJ from 1965 and the study under whatever conservative think tank from last month came to the same conclusions, and dollars to donuts the modern study is going to be ignored just as hard as the one from 1965. The limo driver with 40 years of experience is fucked if he chooses to be a limo driver with 41 years of experience. He's also fucked if he thinks anybody is looking out for him. The problem we're about to face, in spades, is the percentage of people taking a long, hard look at their jobs and saying "will I still be doing this in 10 years? What can I do that will still be here and how do I start doing that?" is heartbreakingly small. Everyone else knows change is coming and thinks/hopes that they can hang on until they can retire. And then change comes. And then they're fucked. And what they know is they did everything right and the system ate them alive. And then they vote to Make America Great Again.
... and then when you do give them exactly what they asked for, they refuse to participate because it's easier to sit your lazy ass on the couch and watch Faux News while cashing that sweet free government check every month. The future is not retraining. The future is angry people sitting on barcaloungers yelling at the TV while eating their food provided by government food stamps, getting their heathcare from government funded Medicare, which prescribes them opioids for their bad back (from sitting in the chair and eating literal shit constantly), and paying the rent with the money the government gives them every month because their former boss failed to plan for a non-coal future and modernize the business, and just let it augur into the ground of obsolescence. Meanwhile, us "liberal coastal elites" will continue to invent shit, and drive the economy, while these sad fucks suck at our juicy taxable teats. Now I know how Germany feels...