Before future-history brings us a dark and grim reality pitted against a killer Terminator robot army, humanity will have to face job killing robots.

And that may be the bloodiest period of human history, after unemployment leads to riots, unrest and bitter aftermath scenarios play out as a consequence.

Robotic labor is now literally cheaper than human labor, and it is poised to undercut work forces and drive layoffs in even in the most exploitative, slave-wage factories in the world.

Mass unemployment, destroying jobs in every conceivable sector, is a growing danger. Truckers, factory workers, waitresses, teachers, bureaucrats and bosses are all directly threatened by robotic labor, with millions and millions of Americans facing a 90-99% chance of termination (check out your odds in this jobs calculator). In a short span of time, employment could go from bad to virtually non-existent.

The system is already strained to the max, and millions of Americans are struggling just to get by. Those in the Middle Class are endangered. The poor and nearly-poor are the most dependent on government that they’ve ever been in history, and tens of millions more will soon join them, and become almost completely dependent on the State for their livelihood.

Now, South Korea is making a huge move to undercut China on labor costs by displacing humans once and for all in their production facilities, in a bid to edge up on their Asian rival. Samsung has vowed to create robots – who do the work automatically, and without the need for breaks, meals, or days off – that are literally “cheaper than any human worker.”

This is the tipping point. Things will not get better from here without a great and painful struggle.

The Metro reports:

In the future, we will all be on benefits, while rich people use robots to make even MORE money. That’s the dark future hinted at by Samsung’s new ‘big project’ – a plan to build robots cheaper even than the miserably underpaid humans who work in Chinese factories. […] If so, it marks a dark day for the future of human employment – as so far, many jobs have been protected simply because humans are cheaper than machines.

Humans face a literal existential crisis for relevance, purpose and survival. All but the most ultra-wealthy risk being pulled down with this tidal force.

People will become pawns in their own existence. In the coming age of human pets, dignity comes at a high price. People will be kept around at the pleasure of their controllers, and live a shallow existence off of welfare benefits for absolutely every calculable dimension of life.

The truth is chilling and cold, even if it is not immediately shocking. As SHTF previously reported, In the Robotic Near-Future, Most “Will Live Off Government-Provided Income”:

In the future, virtually everyone you know may be on the dole. From The Week: The robopocalypse for workers may be inevitable. In this vision of the future, super-smart machines will best humans in pretty much every task. A few of us will own the machines, a few will work a bit… while the rest will live off a government-provided income… the most common job in most U.S. states probably will no longer be truck driver.

While many, perhaps even most, will be kept alive as domesticated sheeple, some will be eliminated, fittingly by a computer, after being determined by a judging computer to hold a negative value in society, where the costs of putting up with them outweighs the benefits of sustaining them. The manner of elimination is likely to be subtle, but deadly nonetheless.

Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw, who is an architect of many of the systems that have grown up around us, intended it this way:

Socialism means equality of income or nothing… under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.

The power dynamic for personal freedom under this future is grim. Dissent becomes a most dangerous act.

Preppers will become outlying survivors – until they are targeted individually for elimination by killer robots who will be enforcing a database of petty laws. That is, unless humanity fights back, bringing us back to the Terminator version of events.

Can the future help change the mistakes of the past? The question will make for a good discussion while waiting in line for a job or a hot meal, only keep it under your breath so you aren’t picked up by the monitors.