OF COURSE, IT'S A MERCY KILLING:

This time around, computers, smart software and robots are seen as the culprits. They seem to be replacing many of the remaining manufacturing jobs and encroaching on service-sector jobs, too.

Driverless vehicles and drone aircraft are no longer science fiction, and over time, they may eliminate millions of transportation jobs. Many other examples of automatable jobs are discussed in "The Second Machine Age," a book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, and in my own book, "Average Is Over." The upshot is that machines are often filling in for our smarts, not just for our brawn -- and this trend is likely to grow. [...]

Many expanding economic sectors are not very labor-intensive, be they tech fields like online retailing or even new mining and extraction industries. That means it's harder for the rate of job creation to keep up with the rate of job destruction, because a given amount of economic growth isn't bringing as many jobs.

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