The state of the "social safety net" and automation concerns
Frankly, the future of most worldwide government healthcare and pension entitlements doesn't look too great. These programs aren't going to die, but its hard to see how they will be able to provide the inflation-adjusted benefits that they do today.
Plus this world is not currently turning into Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek future, where your food replicator puts billions of people who work in agriculture and food service/retailing out of a job, but the savings and freed up resources are distributed in large part to the welfare and retraining of these now jobless people. Sadly, the world we are heading toward is closer to Blade Runner, where the investors and entrepreneurs at International Replicator MegaCorp make a mint, and the people who's living is disrupted are tossed out on the street, and maybe given the gruel-only replicator in compensation.
So getting automated out of a job can basically mean that you spend your retirement in a rather squalid room with illnesses that you can't afford to get treated, eating a fairly meagre to substandard diet.
I can see why people have "displacement anxiety" about something like that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
