Automation is quietly erasing wages faster than it creates new ones, which is bad for workers and eventually bad for the companies that need customers.

• Jobs are vanishing without layoffs — Amazon now runs a million warehouse robots and staffs each site with the fewest workers in 16 years, while driverless cars and tractors fill roles no human ever gets hired for.
• Pay stopped tracking output decades ago: productivity keeps climbing while paychecks barely move, and the savings from replacing workers go into record stock buybacks instead of lower prices or new hiring.
• Money is also changing hands less often than at any point in modern record, meaning fewer paychecks circulating through shops and fewer real consumers.
• Big Tech's fix is universal basic income, pushed by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, but a government check is a political decision that can be cut, restricted, or switched off — unlike a wage you are owed.
• The bill is the problem: $1,200 a month for every adult would eat over half the federal budget, and taxing robots does not work because a machine earns no salary.

Outlook: Expect more automation, more talk of basic income, and growing pressure for digital government money that can be programmed to control what recipients are allowed to buy.