I understand and respect your concern for our fellow Americans and their jobs, but I think it might be a bit patronizing, if you dig into it a bit.

For example, if we take your position back in the early 1980's, you could be saying, "Personal computers are going to put typists out of work." And, "Full Service gas station attendants will be left in the lurch, when people pump their own gas/drive electric vehicles."

The thing is that the future is not a straight line from the past, projecting forward like an arrow to a predictable future.

Shit changes.

When typists are no longer needed, they find other - usually more fulfilling - roles. Some of them got into Desktop Publishing and layout, and then moving those skills into electronic newsletters, and finally web pages. Secretaries got greater responsibilities, because their time was not taken up with typing any more. Personal growth changed from receptionist > typing pool > secretary > wife-of-an-executive, to demonstrating an ability to learn and adapt and get into management. Or sales. Or marketing.

Shit changes. People adapt.

People also age out of a demographic, and into a new one. The young ones coming up behind them - like the typists' kids - grew up with computers, and got into web and software development. (For example.)

Cohorts grow obsolete, but still need to make rent, so they adapt, change, move somewhere else and switch careers, go back to college, take online courses, get into government retraining programs, and they continue to pay rent, and buy cars, and work other jobs.

The only people who get left in the lurch, are people like coal miners, who stayed with a dying industry, in a town with no other options. And there has to be some personal responsibility there.

Any one of those coal workers could have taken the government retraining that was being offered, and learned web design. Then started a business teaching other people in town the same thing. Then hired their neighbors to do more work, for clients outside the area.

But they largely didn't. (Well, some did.)

Shit changes.

And we can't see today, how things will be tomorrow. And thinking that we need to help others protect themselves from being left in the lurch is a touch patronizing. Just a touch, but still patronizing, nonetheless.