Where have all our old jobs gone, long time passing? The new world picked them everyone. O when will they ever learn? 

What?

By now, it has been widely acknowledged that the key reason for Trump's unexpected victory in this year's presidential election has a strong link to disaffected white working class voters who were hungry for change. Hillary, representing an establishment choice, never quite tapped into that anger, and eventually fell to Trump all over the Rust Belt.

But this is a festering problem - which affects way more than just the whites. It impacts all workers, independent of race or gender. Many such people have been feeling disenfranchised for decades.

Why?

A large number of articles have also been recently written on why this working class anger should come as no surprise to anyone. I particularly liked Joan Williams' article on Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class

Most of the articles revolve around the following reasons:

1. Most blue collar workers depended on industrial jobs, which have been steadily leaving the country.
2. A big reason for the industrial job migration is trade treaties (supported by politicians from both parties) which increase the GDP, but at the cost of worker angst.
3. Once the industrial jobs are gone (which in a lot of states meant union ensured benefits, like steady pension), the fall back was to retrain and start or join small businesses. However, when large swathes of a state are ravaged by such job losses, these businesses struggle to find consumers.
4. Most men who belong to the working class, have a strong distrust of white collar professionals - which can be an impediment in their retraining efforts.
5. Undocumented immigrants have not helped the plight of the white working class by eroding the margins of the remaining industrial or small business owned jobs. 
6. Societal decay, caused by the loss of self-worth among men who cannot put food on the table, has led to high drug use in certain areas, causing further erosion in living conditions.

How to fix this?

However, none of these articles get into the much thornier debate on what to do about the current situation. It is obvious that this situation is going to get exponentially worse with the introduction of artificial intelligence into the mix, because certain kinds of repetitive manual tasks can easily be performed by such machines. As they say, the jobs that are outsourced now, are automated tomorrow.

There has been some (but not sufficient) discussion amongst our though leaders on how to handle this problem. One author stands out in terms of his depth of research and easy-to-read policy prescriptions in this area, his name is Martin Ford https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Ford  - whose books https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Robots-Technology-Threat-Jobless and https://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology are a must-read for those wanting to familiarize themselves with this topic. 

Here are some options that have been debated, more so in Europe than in the US:

1. Guaranteed minimum income: we accept that we will not be able to employ certain people whose only skills lie in areas that have already been automated, so we pay them money every month to stay on as consumers, which is critical in an economy that is 70% dependent on individual consumer spending. The measure however has proven unpopular on the ballot, the most recent repudiation of which took place in Switzerland on 5th June, 2016 by a margin of almost 50% http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36454060 
2. Negative Income Tax: This is revenue wise similar to the guaranteed minimum income option, but with an eye towards reforming the tax code. People below a certain income get supplemental income from the government because automation has reduced their jobs to be, at best, technicians trying to ensure the machines get installed properly (at least till machines cannot install themselves yet). We already have a certain type of this NIT, in the form of SNAP (supplemental nutritional assistance program), but that is geared towards preventing malnutrition only.
3. Massive government spending on re-education: yes, we realize not everyone will become (or even want to become) a software programmer. However, many workers who used to work on production lines can be re-educated to install and service many of the machines that will replace humans in running these production lines, among other tasks. That is also why I see a great future in clean energy, because installing solar panels is a job that cannot be easily outsourced. At least, this addresses both the problems of climate change (no, its not a hoax) and job displacement.