[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

except for the people who needs those menial jobs because they don't have the education/qualification for any other type of jobs.

Sucks to be them, I never claimed the world was a nice place, nor should people think it so. When it's a choice between living and dieing, people get quite creative. You should see how slum dwellers manage to live on very little. Quite interesting.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

In the richer countries of the European Union, maybe. In America? People need two jobs to make ends meet, further exacerbating the unemployment and underemployment problem.

Yes, and there are plenty of people making 100,000$ with no time to themselves. If all those people choose to job share, you're doubling the skilled work force. And America is wealthier then you think. I'd actually say America is wealthier then the EU by a long shot, however it's a bit more unequally distributed. Society is in a state of flux at the moment, so there are still kinks that need to be worked out...

You either give people welfare or give them jobs (and actually most people -- despite all the whining about welfare coddling and all the slander -- would rather be happier with jobs, especially substantive jobs). If you aren't willing to have welfare and you're bleeding jobs to give, it's a bit of a problem getting the cycle running again. The spice must flow, except it doesn't flow.

I don't view this as a problem for government or some other centralized decision maker to solve. I think Society itself will solve it, society itself will evolve to find new and novel ways to employ people.

The creative fields cannot take in mass labour. That's simply impossible. Even now just about every creative field is extremely competitive already.

Just how many webcomics do you read a day?

The future is niche entertainment, look at the entertainment you consume, Anime. Top selling anime only sell about 50,000 copies. What will happen is a proliferation of niche entertainment, like anime. Right now, if you like a particular thing, you can't always get it. For instance, there are no new mecha anime being produced right now, that means there's untapped potential someone could be selling. Everyone has really specific things that only they and a few other people like. What you will see is more and more entertainment cropping up that caters to those people's specific and niche tastes.

Consider games. A great example is Paradox Interactive. They make games I absolutely love, and they also make games that are only popular with a small number of people. Most people would find their games dull at best (why am I spending so much time looking at spreadsheets?), I don't know what their sales are, but they have only 12 employees (very small for a game developer) and probably sell in the range of 50,000 copies per game.

The last century was the century of mass market entertainment. Blockbusters, entertainment that had to cater to everyone's taste. The next century will see a flowering of more and more niche interests being able to stand on their own. Entertainment has already grown a lot in the last decade, look at how much more anime is produced now compared to 10 years ago. Look at Video games. I don't see that growth slowing down any time soon. People still have lots of free time, and still are trying to find ways to fill it up.