Unless there's a country where widespread automation has effectively replaced all forms of physical labor, I'm not sure what you mean. Care to elaborate?
I was responding to "The economy as a whole has bounced back, like it does. Why can't the people who were laid off find jobs?"
There are other countries that also had a recession recently and don't have such an unemployment problem, now. And there other episodes with long lasting unemployed in other countries, too, without technology being to blame in the way your post did.
So I don't think the current level of unemployment in the US says much about technology.
Your argument about jobs being welfare is independent of that. I recommend getting some hard data to see how prevalent that is.
So we do have enough resources to provide those goods right now. And if technology marches on, like we are speculating here, it will take less of an effort by the remaining tax payers. So it should be doable even with US levels of taxation.
You would need to reorganize your public spending to make it much more efficient, though.
(And I don't really think that level of welfare is necessary anyway, because unemployment won't reach 80%.)
