What is civilization? Mostly it's agriculture. When 100% of your population doesn't have to hunt and gather, some people get very good at making clay pots or sandals. Result: everybody's pots and sandals are much better, and there's still enough to eat. Populations and cities grow and you have to have law and order.

Around the world several thousand years ago, people figured out it's much less work gathering a few seeds and planting them or domesticating a few animals than rooting through the forest day after day searching for nuts and berries. Medieval peasants with near-zero tech, did not work as hard as 20th Century factory workers. Hunter gatherers also worked less than 20th Century factory workers, but they had to make their own cruddy sandals.

You could argue a labor intensive manufacturing-based society is a "terrible twos" that civilizations pass through. For a while everybody has sneakers, which are better than homemade sandals, but everybody has to work ten hours a day in a noisy dangerous sneaker factory. Because of high demand for labor and collective bargaining at that stage, salaries and benefits are good and sneakers are abundant, but nobody can honestly say they're happy.

In 2016, voters and governments around the world are losing their shit that there aren't enough good paying jobs at sneaker factories in First World countries. Nobody can afford to pay rent in London or New York working as a checkout clerk. Fuck that shit anyway. Nobody really wants to be a sneaker worker for fifty years just so he can eat. In Third World countries, sure, people are still living in shitty factory dorms and sweating over machines all day. But even their cheap labor can't compete with automated machines forever. Witness the century-old flight of labor from agriculture in the US, but production is higher than ever.

Great! Goods are abundant and stuff is cheap, but who's going to buy it? You could just give the shit away, but then why would owners of capital build factories at all?

The answer is different levels of income. After a certain point, wealth doesn't make people happy. Having more than the other guy does. The rich factory owner could still strut around in his bespoke suit with his European model wife on his arm, impressing the shit out of everybody at the yacht club by having a boat two feet longer. That's enough to make him invest and always-be-cravin'.

How will the rest of us live if our labor is in such low demand all jobs pay Walmart-level wages? That's the Big Question of our age. Famous conservative economist Milton Friedman supported a "negative income tax". We don't need WWIII.

tl;dr Voters and politicians around the developed world are freaking out now because their old software, "just work hard and you will get ahead!" hasn't been updated. Humans really don't need to consume very much for their basic living requirements. Basic income/negative income tax is being introduced in pilot programs in developed countries now, and it will gradually spread to developing countries as their agriculture and manufacturing automate. Owners, builders, and operators of automated production deserve and will have a higher income. Everybody wins.