I'm not saying things are looking rosy for the US. As I've stated in other threads, I believe an economic armaggedon is coming for the US, but it has nothing to do with automation. In fact, the increase in automation is one of the few good things the US economy has going for it.
The reason jobs aren't there in the US (and as I've explained in other threads, the US govt cooks the numbers to make it seem that the jobs are there when they aren't) is because there's too much government. Too much taxes. Too much controls (the so-called "regulations"). Too much govt spending, which transfers resources from the productive to the unproductive. (consider, for instance, how conventional, GMO, heavy pesticide farming and food production is subsidized, while organic, healthy farming and food production is taxed and restricted)
Massive welfare programs destroy the incentives for people to find work, especially low-skilled work, while the minimum wage makes sure to price low-skilled workers out of the labor force.
The demographics are all screwed up by these too. Productive people are taxed and regulated into oblivion, made to leave the country or never move there in the first place. While unproductive people are subsidized and imported in droves. The productive and smart have very few if any children, while the unproductive and dumb pop babies out faster than you can say food stamps.
The one problem related to automation is the following, and automation really is the solution to a problem created by govt: When the govt sets wages too high (whether it's minimum wages, union wages, or whatever), companies are incentivized to replace otherwise lower-cost workers with otherwise higher-cost (especially in the initial capital investment) automation machinery. But because the automation machinery requires a very high initial capital investment, but is then cheaper to run and maintain than a workforce, once the investment has been made (which, if not for the govt, would be a bad investment -- that is, it would be worse than the alternative of hiring or continuing to employ existing workers), even if the govt reverses course, it's too late. By then it makes no economic sense to get rid of the automation in order to replace it with workers. In this way the government can do a double whammy, and destroy jobs at the same time that it costs the economy valuable capital resources that could've been better employed elsewhere.
The rest of your points are answered by the links I posted, and even the extracts I quoted. All the cotton pickers and wheat harvesters lost their jobs when combine harvesters were created where one man could do the work of hundreds or even thousands of men. It's tough for them, but everybody else is better off, they simply have to find something else to do. And they themselves also benefit from every other technological improvement that doesn't affect their already acquired skills but makes all the products they buy cheaper. And what's more, if they do manage to gain the skills necessary to operate one of these machines, or to work in building or repairing them, they will be able to earn much more than they did before. This job opening simply wasn't there before.
All that said, I'm not enthusiastic about the Google cars. I have my doubts that Google really is a productive company and that all of it's funds are derived from selling it's products to willing customers and businesses. I suspect there's a good chance that companies like Google and Facebook are simply commercial covers for what is really a worldwide State-run surveillance program, and possibly even a mind control program as well. I don't want them to have any more power. And being able to remotely control all the cars would be way too much power. Have you watched the movie "I, Robot"? Despite the fact that the movie is centered on machines being the real evil, I think that was supposed to be an allegory, just like The Matrix.
