Reich is rather ambiguous. Granting his premise that robots will be doing all the world's manufacturing in a couple of years, is he suggesting that America should not expect manufacturing to employ a large number of people? Or that America should not bother manufacturing anything?

If the former, he should stop making soothing sounds about job loss and start using his pulpit to demand that America invest in enough robot manufacturers to bring our trade deficit within, oh, let's say 1% of GDP.

If not, he should abandon the pretense of having America's interests in particular at heart and stop writing for American publications.

Actually, that's what Reynolds suggested, in some of his books: a second Renaissance. But since he was a realist, he more often showed that the majority of people either weren't interested in entering the creative class, or simply lacked the ability. And so, most of them spent their time on legal narcotics (including alcohol), and watching TV - which became progressively more stupid and violent, eventually ending up with real (albeit small-scale) wars being fought on camera.

I would happily settle down to full-time writing. But from what I've seen of the rest of humanity...well, as long as there's TV to watch, I really doubt that they'd be writing any sonnets or composing any arias any time soon.

Re: "What will the effect be on society when MOST people are effectively on welfare, with nothing to do all day but watch TV or otherwise entertain themselves?"

Oh geez, put me on that welfare! All the artists, tinkerers, inventors, dreamers, musicians would be loving it! All the people who wanted to start a small business, real mom'n'pop as they are called...what OPPORTUNITIES for entrepreunerial activity for the average person! Imagine how our gardens would look when we didn't have to put in 40 hours (plus) and then sit in cars for the commute!

People make things - we would start making the things we CAN'T make under the current system, where welfare or unemployment checks mean vast UNCERTAINTY and barely making it - really terrifying! But think of a good paycheck + time + good education + health care = a real unfolding of creative energy currently suppressed by large corporations, who really aren't all that interested in innovation by the average Jane and Joe...the only innovation they care about has to generate huge returns. Creativity isn't always like that...

...and he was hardly the only science fiction writer to predict the impact of industrial automation. He postulated a "negative income tax" (under various names), which was nothing more than a direct government payment to all unemployed citizens - and in his books, most people were unemployed.

You might want to look up his books. Some are a bit lowbrow; Reynolds took an unusually strong social/economic viewpoint in his writing, but he was a former soldier-of-fortune writing for money. A bit of soft-core porn wasn't beneath him. Nonetheless, he was seriously thinking about these issues back when most of us weren't even born.

As for those service-sector jobs that require warm bodies, Mr. Reich? You might want to consider the possibility that many of those, too, are likely to be replaced by automation. At my local supermarket, they've had self-check-out lines for years, now. Just lately, they've introduced scanners that let you scan each item literally as you put it into your cart.

Combine that with RFI technology, and supermarkets will be slashing their payrolls to near-nothing - except stockers and managers. And how long will it be before robotic stockers are developed?

The simple fact is that unless society collapses or is deliberately rejiggered to create fake make-work jobs, unemployment of the majority of the population is inevitable. Free-marketers don't have an answer to that issue, of course. But neither does anyone else. What will the effect be on society when MOST people are effectively on welfare, with nothing to do all day but watch TV or otherwise entertain themselves?

Dr Reich cites modern agriculture being more productive than the agriculture of my grandparents (circa 1930s) as a segue to giving a pep talk for the post-industrial economy.

I think he is neglecting the huge environmental cost in both soil destruction and water table degradation as well as the looming crises in constrained resources such as phosphorus and fossil fuels that portend doom for agriculture as currently practiced.

As well, he simply ignores scale. We cannot all be designers and innovators! Our post-industrial consumer driven economy is driving us off the cliff.

Everyone is employed at vast production lines. Half the people build things and the other have take them apart again.

"The total collapse of the globalist wet dream of a world filled with low-wage slaves who are somehow still supposed to be able to afford to consume the goods thus produced shows that it is Reich who is "on the wrong side of history.""

NONSENSE!

Supercapitalism to the RESCUE!

We simply need to build more warehouses to store the goods which no one can afford to buy.

First we need to build robots that can build warehouses!

Given enough warehouses, we can keep this thing going on indefinitely or maybe even as long as the War in Iraq, whichever comes first.

I would make a swell Labor Secretary.

I like robots.

"The total collapse of the globalist wet dream of a world filled with low-wage slaves who are somehow still supposed to be able to afford to consume the goods thus produced shows that it is Reich who is "on the wrong side of history.""

NONSENSE!

Supercapitalism to the RESCUE:

We simply need to build more warehouses to store the goods which no one can afford to buy.

First we need to build robots that can build warehouses!

Given enough warehouses, we can keep this thing going on indefinitely or maybe even as long as the War in Iraq, whichever comes first.

I would male a swell Labor Secretary.

I like robots.

"Why is this moron advising our government?"

Deinstitutionalization?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

Some ended up on the streets and some ended up running the country, which explains a lot, doesn't it?