On the long term, though, humans have so far coped with the disappearance of many professions by simply inventing new ones.
Yes, but this time is different. When a farmer became a factory worker, he went from a low-IQ trade to a low-IQ trade. Now most of the low-IQ trades are being drastically reduced by automation. New professions are being created, but they usually are high-IQ professions. When a factory worker becomes a coder, he goes from a low-IQ trade to a high-IQ profession.
I don’t see the equivalence with the past. There are people who will never be coders, because their brain does not have the intelligence required to code (the same way I cannot be a professional soccer player because my body does not have the strength required for that).
I don’t see new low-IQ trades appearing. And if some low-IQ trade appears, I will doubt that it will have as many job positions as the low-IQ trades of the past.
I think the elite knows that the number of real work hours needed in the economy has been drastically reduced and will be reduced even more. This is why all the noise about the Universal Basic Income (UBI). In fact, there are lots of jobs that don’t add anything to the economy: a lot of people push paper and don’t give any value (this is a hidden UBI). This is one of the forces behind the increase of size of Administration. And higher education has been extended to low-IQ people so they don’t become part of the workforce early. (Then these low-IQ people think that they are entitled to a high-IQ job and, when they don’t get it, they get angry, as the recent riots have manifested).