I would like to know where you got the idea what I hold work as a bad thing, so I can revise that statement. That is not a component of my argument, and I do not believe that at all.
I'd also like to disabuse you of the notion that I see baking as an ignoble profession. I have a lot of respect for bakers, and I appreciate their products very much! The subjective positive or negative connotation of a profession is also immaterial to my argument.
My argument is rooted in the observation that society is dynamic. The jobs society views as valuable are dynamic. So as society evolves, people must either evolve with it and transition to more valuable jobs as their current jobs become less valuable, or leave society because they can no longer contribute more than they consume. Moreover, any job which is worth automating is by definition not sufficiently valuable to society to justify its existence. If it were, it wouldn't be worth automating. Automation, however, allows the job to be vacated in favor of a more valuable one without being a detriment to society: the value the job created is still produced; it's just produced more cheaply now (which ultimately means it can continue to exist for the time being, rather than being lost entirely). The fact that the value can be produced more cheaply, on the macro scale, implies that costs in society are down which can only help the individuals who were unseated while they learn new skills.
For many more, its an opportunity, not an obligation.
Certainly so! And I welcome this. I don't think bakers will ever go away; human creativity is infinite and so is human desire, so there will always be infinite room for bakers to create value in new ways. But apparently, the baking of twinkies is not terribly valuable anymore.
At first glance, your idea sounds great. But the reality is that if you get rid of the bottom, you get rid of the opportunity for anyone to start there.
There is no bottom and there is no top. There will always be lower paid and higher paid jobs because there will always be lower-valued and higher-valued contributions to society. I do note, however, that the obvious jobs (the ones that meet basic needs) are all being automated away at this point, so people will need to become more creative about how they will contribute value to society. The upside is that basic needs can be met more cheaply than ever before, so it's easier than ever to experiment. Unfortunately, the Treadmill Effect mitigates this advantage. Thus it may be that if humanity is to survive (let alone flourish), it will need to quickly do away with debt-based currency.
And fortunately, twinkies are also immaterial to my point. I agree, Hostess is not to be held blameless in all of this. The idea that I attempted to express in the OP was triggered when I was reading about the Hostess situation, though, which is why I cited it rather than some other example of automation. I certainly do not cheer for a company that makes poison and sells it as food.