I think automotion is the crux of the basic income argument. If mass automation was going to happen the way many people predict, basic income would make more sense. I don't think it will, and I think most jobs will be difficult to automate than people think. (Most factories are still manned by humans; manual jobs require interacting with the physical world, which machines can't do well at all; most professional jobs have significant non-routine components).
The electronics factories we work with are empty: large buildings filled with (Japanese and German) machines and a handful of people 'operating' them. A few years ago there were many people doing that same work. So sure there are some people manning them but a lot of jobs gone. Automation does not have to replace all jobs but it will and does replace most repetiti ve ones. So sure professional jobs stay for a while yet but what % is that? That is really not what most people do or are able to do. Like the biggest employ in the US is truckdriving: you really think that exists in 50 years? And what can a truckdriver do instead generally?
Most light manufacturing remains human-operated, though - I'm thinking the 200-person widget factories in Shenzhen or 50-person tailoring shops in Vietnam. They don't typically make a small range of products on a mass scale, but many slightly varied products on a small scale, with an irregular schedule of orders. My guess is the electronics factories, car factories and the like, found machines were a worthy investment to improve precision and quality control. For many industries, a semi-skilled human at developing country wages is a better deal than a robot.
Even lower-middle class professions like teaching, nursing, policing, office admin, etc are much less routine than people realise. (Tech is obsessed with the idea of, e.g., replacing teachers with e-learning software, but what usually happens is that the teachers end up using the e-learning software as another tool to do their job).
Vehicle automation is one large area I can genuinely see becoming automated (possibly the success in this area is because the AI doesn't need to manipulate the environment, just navigate through it). There are still many blue collar jobs which are really hard to automate - cleaning, gardening, building maintenance, etc, etc.
(Honestly, I see the most likely outcome being that first world countries develop a grey-market, third-world economy, where low-income people work cash-in-hand, below-minimum-wage jobs running cheap food stalls, cleaning laundry, or offering other convenience services on the cheap. It's not as utopian as everyone getting a basic income and using their unlimited free time to paint watercolours, but it works out as a more robust social safety net).
You underestimate the widespreadness of "creative accounting". If you try to follow all the rules by the book, you will be broke in no time. Same goes for law. So, in fact, these two professions will be one of the last to disappear.
With automation, already, a lot of these jobs have disappeared and will do so more. Not all accountants & lawyers disappear; there are just a lot less of them needed aka one person can do the work of many already and certainly in the future.
Maybe it's different in Switzerland, which I doubt, but in other countries in the EU you don't 'go broke' if you just follow the rules blindly. Many people actually do that with their companies and they do fine. It is true you could be making more with creative accounting but at a risk; going broke if you don't is a bit too strong imho.
Have you tried to run a business? Any business? In any European country or the US?
Probably the only European country that can follow the tax/accounting rules to the book is Denmark. They have high taxes, but very simple tax code. The rest (and the US) are the maze of regulations, exceptions, exceptions to exceptions, applicable limits and human interaction. People are safe from machines here. Sadly.
I ran businesses for the past 25 years in NL, DE, UK, PT and ES. I agree the regulations are a maze if you want to maximize profits when it comes to taxes. I cannot agree you need that to run a healthy company; you do not. Following the base rules (which can be automated and we do) is fine; sure you pay too much compared to navigating the maze but it is clear. The worst countries (paperwork wise) I operate in are Spain and Portugal but even there things can be simple if you overpay a bit (like sometimes just not ask for VAT back because it takes more time to fill the required paperwork than it is worth). None of that is endangering my operations; If it would I would be concerned about my business viability and the margins I am making... Why would I even start such a business in the first place?
Foxconn is replacing as many workers as possible with robotics. As robotics get better, the tipping point for each job (where the economics make sense to automate) comes closer to the present.
If you assume that automation begets more automation exponentially, then the end game of automation is the elimination of all jobs. Assuming this, the question is when, not if. So either we keep inventing fake work faster than we invent automation, or we decouple the idea of work from the idea of being human and let people do what they truly want to do.
