Many things in life are not a matter of “if” but “when.”

No, I’m not talking about death and taxes. I’m talking about something more inevitable than taxes — given that many do not pay taxes — and less inevitable than death, which is the great equalizer among rich and poor and all living things.

The topic is technology, and the inevitability is that it will wipe out jobs by the millions far more quickly than we imagine. In the long run, this will result in an extremely good future. In the short term, it will cause mass civil unrest. In fact, we are already seeing tumult erupting in flashpoints around the world, though it is usually blamed on far less potent factors. Even here in the United States, the economic disruption being caused by the march of tech-driven automation has turned our politics into a nativist scuffle resembling a banana republic.

This is because technology is already eliminating jobs and depressing wages at a frightening pace. T