the rest of America is headed in this direction.... The age of machines/ai/automation is coming, and it'll dwarf the industrial revolution by far. We're not just talking about losing fast food jobs, or factory jobs - driving, all labor jobs, telemarketing/customer service/tech support, medicine careers. There will be devices you step in or get in without anyone's help that can take x-rays without an X-ray tech, or do a sonagram, or echocardiogram. General practitioners will easily be replaced by AI who can diagnose diseases 300x times better and 1500x times faster than a doctor ever could. There's a good (albeit fictional) book that shows how it could get worse quicker than anyone can imagine, by the founder of 'How Stuff Works' - http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I generally agree. There will be a future where even human programming skills are no longer needed, I'm sure. Hopefully I can both still live a long life and not have my timeline overlap with that future too much =).
However, until scarcity is totally eliminated, we'll be faced with the same challenge over and over again - how to bring prosperity to those whose roles in the social and economic order have been eliminated.
