<p>Okay, onto my obsession - Foxconn announced yesterday it had replaced 60,000 employees with robots. But they said no jobs were lost, because they were going to 'retrain' the workers. (Yeah, tell that to Kentucky's coal miners. They know those programs really do work - why else would they be gulping 40 oxycontin a day to keep reality from  blasting in? Hilary really 'doesn't get it'. 'Retraining programs' is supposed to be an applause line, rather than people staring at her like she just arrived here from some other, much wealthier, planet. While I now find politics fascinating - it's like some reality TV show gone terribly, horribly wrong, but like an accident, you just can't stop rubbernecking and not look at it - I think we ought to have one 'last episode' - when Hilary and Trump attend their first debate, have some Islamic terrorist wheels a 747 right through the debate stage. And then we can try this 'election thing' all over again from scratch.)</p> <p>Also, on a ZDnet article earlier this week, in western Asia Taco Bell is experimeting with a mobile, talking robot that will come to your table and take your order. (I'm not making this up.) And Mastercard also said it was going to start using robots there, altho I can't recall exactly what their implementaton of this was.</p> <p>My point being, as Jester and lt cap have pointed out, the middle class has been horribly squeezed, it's going to get worse, as robots create a class of the permanently unemployed. Think UPS trucks that self drive, with little robots that will crumple and mistreat the boxes of your Amazon stuff, before punting them onto your doorstep. If you can afford Amazon stuff, that is. </p>