Are we going to have to come up with some sort of government provided income from taxation of work from robots?
1. The government taxes companies who use robotic production
2. The government gives a portion of that tax money to folks who no longer work
3. Those folks buy the products produced by the taxed companies
In essence, companies would be funding the purchase of their own products through taxes? Assuming no waste or inefficiency, does the math work out?
At one time agriculture was the main living of most people (there were labor intensive trade too and office type jobs), as that became more mechanized people off set by reduction went into manufacturing, manufacturing reduces and people move into more service type jobs, so as service jobs are replaced by robots, what it the next job going to be?
I don't know what their next job is going to be. Then again, as you point out this isn't the first time that jobs or even job sectors have been gutted, replaced or outright eliminated. If you told someone in 1800 that over the next two hundred years 97% of the agricultural jobs would disappear to say nothing of the massive impact on blacksmithing, chimney sweeps, buggy driving, horse training, cloth weaving jobs, (and most other jobs of the day) they might have been forgiven for assuming that no jobs would exist to replace them. They could never have foreseen jobs as laser eye surgeon, database engineer, iPhone repairman, gasoline delivery driver, or YouTube content creator.
If 200 years ago our ancestors had tried to replace the theoretical income lost by the impact of technology with taxes and birth control instead of allowing businesses and workforce to adapt and evolve to use growing technology, would we be better or worse off than we are today?