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Are Job losses/ stagnant wages due to technology advancement and automation?  

There is fear that technological unemployment will lead to widespread loss of wages among us in general. 

Such claims of entire human civilisation being defeated by automation are quite ridiculous and misguided.

On the contrary, Automation is the achievement of civilisation after years of accumulated knowledge. What Technology has to offer is productivity which is capable of reducing the working hours of the general public while maintaining the same output. 

Air we breathe is free. I don't see how vast amount of goods churned out automatically through automation could be sold to mass public of unemployed cashless citizens for any price.That is possible provided if society chooses to. If not, I guess its only fair to conclude that the problem lies not with technology, but more with the choices which society as an idiotic whole opted for. 

Its more of a problem with society's concept of Job (Work / Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself ~ the confusion about job might be caused by the word "Career" which involves certain personal ego which one tends to associate with self identity.) and the existing system of distribution where "land" plays a major part.

In this aspect, Physiocrats, Bertrand Russell, Henry Ford and Henry George shed more light on the mechanism of the macro economy... More truth and clarity than what  conventional mainstream Adam Smith's dogmatic religion of "Invisible Hand" and Keynesian's toying of fiat currency can offer.

Earth as a Commons

The earth, which was here before Man, is not the fruits of anyone's labor, and is not private property in the same sense as labor products. Everyone has a right to access land, limited only by the equal rights of others to do the same. State-issued titles to unlimited property in land, which allows some to hold vast amounts, often without use or with a merely nominal use, and without continual compensation of those dispossessed, violates this principle

Quoted from Henry George's Progress & Poverty:

Chapter "The Persistence of Poverty Despite Increasing Wealth" 

dvancing civilization tends to increase the power of human labor to satisfy human desires. We should be able to eliminate poverty. But workers cannot reap these benefits because they are intercepted. Land is necessary to labor. When it has been reduced to private ownership, the increased productivity of labor only increases rent. Thus, all the advantages of progress go to those who own land. Wages do not increase — wages cannot increase. The more labor produces, the more it must pay for the opportunity to make anything at all.Mere laborers, therefore, have no more interest in progress than Cuban slaves have in higher sugar prices. Higher prices may spur their masters to drive them harder. Likewise, a free laborer may be worse off with greater productivity. Steadily rising rents generate speculation. The effects of future improvements are discounted by even higher rents. This tends to drive wages down to the point of slavery, at which the worker can barely live. The worker is robbed of all the benefits of increased productive power.

These improvements also cause a further subdivision of labor. The efficiency of the whole body of laborers is increased, but at the expense of the independence of its constituents. Individual workers know only a tiny part of the various processes required to supply even the commonest wants.A primitive tribe may not produce much wealth, but all members are capable of an independent life. Each shares all the knowledge possessed by the tribe. They know the habits of animals, birds, and fishes. They can make their own shelter, clothing, and weapons. In short, they are all capable of supplying their own wants. The independence of all of the members makes them free contracting parties in their relations with the community.

Compare this savage with workers in the lowest ranks of civilized society. Their lives are spent in producing just one thing or, more likely, the smallest part of one thing. They cannot even make what is required for their work; they use tools they can never hope to own. Compelled to oppressive and constant labor, they get no more than the savage: the bare necessaries of life. Yet they lose the independence the savage keeps.

Modern workers are mere links in an enormous chain of producers and consumers. The very power of exerting their labor to satisfy their needs passes from their control. The worse their position in society, the more dependent they are on society. Their power may be taken away by the actions of others. Or even by general causes, over which they have no more influence than they have over the motion of the stars.Under such circumstances, people lose an essential quality: the power of modifying and controlling their condition. They become slaves, machines, commodities. In some respects, they are lower than animals.

I am no sentimental admirer of the savage state. I do not get my ideas of nature from Rousseau. I am aware of its material and mental lack, its low and narrow range. I believe that civilization is the natural destiny of humanity, the elevation and refinement of our powers.

Nevertheless, no one who faces the facts can avoid the conclusion that — in the heart of our civilization — there are large classes that even the sorriest savage would not want to trade places with. Given the choice of being born an Australian aborigine, an arctic Eskimo, or among the lowest classes in a highly civilized country such as Great Britain, one would make an infinitely better choice in selecting the lot of the savage.

Those condemned to want in the midst of wealth suffer all the hardships of savages, without the sense of personal freedom. If their horizon is wider, it is only to see the blessings they cannot enjoy. I challenge anyone to produce an authentic account of primitive life citing the degradation we find in official documents regarding the condition of the working poor in highly civilized countries.

I have outlined a simple theory that recognizes the most obvious relations. It explains the conjunction of poverty with wealth; of low wages with high productivity; of degradation amid enlightenment; of virtual slavery in political liberty. It flows from a general and unchanging law. It shows the sequence and relation between phenomena that are separate and contradictory without this theory.

Take away

Working in the system allows for synergy and more to be produced but employees is totally dependent on the system for a share of the surplus; No room for specialisation for Off the grid living as one needs to know everything essential for survival in exchange for total freedom from the system.(e.g Into_the_Wild_(film), Off The Grid Living)

Wakefield plan of colonisation: It is founded on a correct theory. In any country, however new and vast, it would be possible to change "scarcity of labour" into "scarcity of employment" by increasing the price put on the use of land.

Quoted from Michael Perelman's THE INVENTION OF CAPITALISM:

While economic historians may debate the depth of involvement in market activities at the time, the incontestable fact remains that most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative.

To make sure that people accepted wage labour, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support. The brutal acts associated with the process of stripping the majority of the people of the means of producing for themselves might seem far removed from the laissez-faire reputation of classical political economy. In reality, the dispossession of the majority of small-scale producers and the construction of laissez-faire are closely connected, so much so that Marx, or at least his translators, labelled this expropriation of the masses as ‘‘primitive accumulation.’’

The brutal process of separating people from their means of providing for themselves, known as primitive accumulation, caused enormous hardships for the common people. This same primitive accumulation provided a basis for capitalist development.

Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour. Karl Marx rejected this explanation as "childishness," instead stating that, in the words of David Harvey, primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation". This would be accomplished through violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism.

Marx “We find on the market a set of buyers, possessed of land, machinery, raw materials, and the means of subsistence, all of them, save land, the products of labour, and on the other hand, a set of sellers who have nothing to sell except their labouring power, their working arms and brains.”