What you will see is a larger distortion of wealth between the rich and the poor with less and less people in the true middle class. Rich people...do not...share money.
^^^ This
Computers are getting more sophisticated all the time. Before long they will be "smart" enough to make some human workers obsolete... meaning that the person has *no* viable task that they can perform better or at a lower cost than a machine.
These people will be unemployable, and as the machines continue to become more sophisticated, the number of persons in this category will grow.
Every developed country in the world runs on a consumer capitalist economic model. That's because it has been proven the most successful since the industrial revolution began. The consumer/worker is vital part of this system, because the prosperity of the capitalist depends on the prosperity of the consumer. The capitalist makes profit from making and selling stuff to consumers. If consumer income and wealth doesn't increase, then the capitalist's wealth can't either for long.
It's a symbiotic relationship that never before existed in human history. Previously serfs, peasants, and slaves provided valuable labor, but there was no incentive for the wealthy to allow them to keep more than a bare minimum of their production.
Consumer capitalism also favors a democratic government, human rights, and freedom. Why? The general population will work harder and be more efficient and more willing to fight wars if they are free, which ultimately increases the power and wealth of the capitalists.
Our socio-ecomomic system will soon be obsolete. As the economically useless humans become a greater % of the population, consumer capitalism will no longer be viable. From the capitalist standpoint the consumer is no longer a vital part of the system, but rather something that merely consumes resources while providing no value to them. We will not descend to our previous level of serfs and peasants. Those positions will be taken by machines. From the standpoint of the wealthy,
the unemployable persons will be like vermin. Instead they can use those resources for themselves, and use robotic slaves to build whatever they want directly and much more efficiently than ever before. They will experience a lifestyle and degree of luxury and power that we can't even imagine today, but it will only be for a few.
What do you suppose will happen to our human rights and living standards then? I don’t expect this change to happen swiftly. There is only so much you can do in one generation before people really notice and complain. The necessary computer sophistication will probably take another 30 to 40 years before a majority of the population becomes unemployable. Most likely welfare will be expanded, and propaganda will continue to pit the middle class (who experience higher taxes and declining living standards) against the lower class (who don't work and receive the dole). Divide and conquer. But the population will be mollified and distracted one way or another while the number of unemployable persons grows. I imagine in a short few decades most of us will be "happily" spending nearly all our time in VR pods hooked up to feeding and evacuation tubes... until we die. And that is an optimistic scenario. Useless humans might be eliminated much more swiftly, especially if there is a shooting battle for world domination.
The alternative? That democracy and freedom are actually strong enough for the interests and wishes of the majority to win out over the desires of the powerful few. And so we share in the bounty and all live better and more interesting lives without needing to work.
Trends are not encouraging. The greatly increased spying and surveillance, along with a repeal of some legal protections, is one disturbing aspect. Totalitarian control that is well beyond anything seen before in the world is now possible. Another is the globalization and “free trade” project that the US embarked on several decades ago. This was sold as something that would make us all richer, and that could have been the case. Instead it was structured from the beginning to benefit the wealthy greatly, and result in depressed wages for rest of the population. Even now it is taboo to point this out. Which brings to mind what is probably the most disturbing trend; the apparent success of propaganda to divide the populous 50/50 around issues that are of little importance. This keeps everyone “entertained” and distracted over political theater and indignation over “hot button” issues, and effectively powerless to organize and change anything worthwhile. Democracy may have always been a sham, but this is becoming more obvious at the time when we really need it to work.