Here I'll take the social issues past AIDS which has now, gotten very serious. Deadly serious, actually, with more bad news to come. Part 1 hasn't played out it's full course. Wait till 3 out of 10 sexually active people begin to get infected in the world! I kid you not! AIDS will eventually die off, literally, without ever being cured.

As our society moves into the Advanced Technical and Space Opera Era, under-employment and the unemployable will become major social issues for a very, very long time. Illiteracy, under-education, and drug abuse will under-score the problems. You may automatically think 'difficulty with youth' when you think of these issues as its always been. Not so in the future. These problems will span across all generations and social strata!

There are going to be riots by the unemployables and heavy subsidies for the under-employed right up until the wealthier governments implement a Basic Living Income which in effect, guarantees a minimum survival level for all it's citizens. The UK, Canada and the United States will be the first.

When machines guided by super computers can do practically every type of labour job. While materials will last longer not requiring a lot of repair or maintenance. When the only people making a fairly decent income will be technical staff doing the programming and systems maintenance work, unless you have a job watching them perform with instructions to push the OFF button if something goes wrong, the rest of us will be either sitting at home or serving those elite techies. "Would you like fries with that?"

Now I'm not saying there won't be millions of jobs still requiring selling, teaching, trades or physical skills which cannot be supplanted by computers and machines. What I am stating is that if there is any way whatsoever of supplementing the human element in any process by the use of technology, then it will be done! Hang the social consequences. There will simply not be enough low-tech jobs around to keep the masses gainfully employed and the one's that are, aren't going to be paid very much.

If you think this employment situation is bad now, you haven't seen anything yet!

'UNEMPLOYABLE'. Watch for that label coming down the pike soon. The bar is constantly being raised by technology. High school education? Not good enough. College grad or full university degree? In what subject or can you upgrade?

Of course, remedies will be the next BIG stage. Remedies for education problems, drug addiction and how to spend idle time ( I kid you not! ). The retirement age will be lowered. Job sharing with government income supplements will be enforced within the more affluent societies. Less developed countries governments and their populace will simmer in quiet apathy.

While Man goes off into space, discovering new worlds and an abundance of raw materials for manufacturing. While spectacular breakthroughs in technology bring benefits to Mankind's health and quality of life. While we make contact with wonderous, very different civilizations in far off galaxies, we will have at home, a few generations known as the 'wasted generations'. The people passed by in the race into the future.

In twenty years or so, young children will be properly tested for inert abilities and skills and thus, streamlined into 'speciality' education programs specifically geared for their individual needs. Oddly enough, children who have a knack for something, embrace and excel in that subject. They need only to discover that which they do best. It'll take twenty years for this fact to be broadly known and acccepted in our old education establishment. Under the guise of a broad education, holding children for twenty years without specific purpose has only broadened the teachers employment prospects! In the future, a young person, say around eighteen years old, will know how to run or repair sophisticated mining equipment on some far-off, airless, 1200 degree planet.

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