[ WP ] With automation , robotisation and off-shoring , unemployment in the USA has reached 65 % . What does society look like ?

I woke up and went to brush my teeth; I ran out of paste two weeks ago, default was supposed to be flavourless, but tasted like grit, mint was a premium item. My apartment was dark, messy and a little dungeony, but it had it's advantages, I punched the buttons on the food fabricator for breakfast. The'oat' bar': protein printed to have the feel of what people imagine oats would taste like, glazed with sugar. It was still warm to from the printer, just like mom used to synth. 
 
 I sit down, put the headset on and log in. My world becomes bright and clean. I turn on augment mode and the walls of my apartment have wood panelling, the door is now a bookcase full of the classics. I look at the sealed up window and it's been replaced by a view of the city. A real view may cost extra, but a cyber sim of it is free. The major landmarks are highlighted, and there is an overlay of current traffic. The full auto lanes are running like clockwork, while the manual roads are jammed as expected. I do n't even know where those people are n't going, its not like most them have a job. 
 
 Automation. From everything from farming down to underwriting insurance. Pretty much anyone can be automated, which means most things were. A machine does n't require sleep, time off, or sick leave. A machine does n't talk at the coffee machine for 10 minutes. 
 
 Highly skilled engineers and anyone who knew anything about robots did well. Even hobbyists could make a decent living filling need gaps large solutions left; like prosthetics for an 8 year old who will outgrow it in a year. Software and'cyber' did well in all this. 
 
 Unemployment increased, the news in my display told me it had hit a new record, 65 %, and this was being hailed as a good thing. As everything became automated, the costs of most living expenses came down, but so did the ability for people to buy it. This is when the UNIVERSAL system was rolled out. 
 
 UNIVERSAL was a massive undertaking, showing all the benefits of automation. Housing projects hundreds of feet high, with free automated food processors in every room. Residents would also be given a weekly number of credits, these could be spent at any of the stores within any UNIVERSAL project. This was the way of the future; meet peoples basic needs for next to no cost. The cost, was in your metadata. This was given to software, which would use it to learn about needs better, and cater better for them. 
 
 I knew what I was in for when I signed up. Outside of credits, I had no money making me trapped in whatever UNIVERSAL decided. The first people they let live as they wanted, even catering to moving them to a floor with a better view when they got bored. They had food and clothing fabricators that could create pretty much anything under the sun in seconds. They had a connection to the internet for anything else they needed. They did n't have to work, they could study, be artists, anything they wanted, life was good, and it was only costing people their data. 
 
 Outside of the display UNIVERAL tower they showed, things became very different. Premium they called it. They bolted the windows shut by default and removed the glass, a view became premium. The fabricator was restricted to food that would keep you alive, other items were premium, clothes were dull colours unless you got a premium one. The people almost rioted ove that one, but do you know what stops a riot? Every automated shop that takes credits closing, every vending machine going out of order, and every fabricator stopping. Ends even faster when they turn the water off. 
 
 That was another premium, hot water. Many residents took to using a kettle to heat it themselves. The plugs in later buildings were upgraded to only take UNIVERSAL products. Universal do not sell a kettle. 
 
 I should make it clear you did n't buy any of these features. They were timed. Rent a view for a week at a time. Hourly rates for the fabricator. Hot water metered down to the millilitre. A thousand other tiny things used few credits, fractions of a credit at a time. 
 
 All of these things could be bought with real money of course, it's just most people in UNIVERSAL did n't have any. This drive most to look for a job of any sort. The black market grew, and before long people were modifying units to do things they had not taken premium for. All of this had a cost, and quickly protection rackets grew, who'd hack the systems so they wouldn' detect your mods. Do n't keep up to date on that subscription, and UNIVERSAL will detect the mods.'Terms of Service Breach' sounds much nicer to being evicted, made homeless and being charged with damaging company property. 
 
 For money most tried to create something machines could not, nice pattered glass, intricate earrings, generally anything that filled a niche. Others used media to get supporters who'd pay them to create content for them to consume; new VR augment, new altered reality app, recreating a movie inside a game to live through, a million weird and brilliant things. There were some very talented people out there. Most of the stuff out there was terrible, best way was to get on the top charts of UNIVERSALs app store. 
 
 The rest had to get jobs it was hard for a computer to do. Checking the computers were working correctly was the main one. Checking they were doing what they were supposed to, general tech support, front-line easy stuff for the most part. 
 
 There were a bunch of reclamation projects on old oil rigs and flooded cities, claiming it was n't worth getting a robot to do, when they get a bunch of cheap labour there for a few dollars and a fabricator. There were a lot of jobs around the ocean and coastlines, a lot of demolition work. Really I think it was just to give those looking something to fight to do. It ca n't be hard to get a machine to do that work. 
 
 I look at the virtual city for a second more, I sit at my desk, clearing a few bottles away while opening my streaming app, and I connected to the producer as became a solid bright light, I was in a TV studio. I checked my avatar and signalled I was ready. The countdown started. 
 
 I took a deep breath. `` Welcome to Motorola-Fox News.''
