Obsolescence
The work goes, and standing goes with it.
Distinct from idleness because these people are not comfortable. They are surplus, and they know it. The material provision may be adequate; the humiliation is total.
Vonnegut wrote the definitive version before the term AI was in common use, and Player Piano is still the sharpest treatment because it is about class rather than philosophy. The engineers keep their jobs and their dignity. Everyone else is sorted into the Army or a road-repair corps that exists to occupy them, and they understand perfectly well that the roads do not need repairing.
Stross runs it forward at speed: minds that think faster and cheaper simply outbid baseline humans for everything, and the humans become refugees in a solar system being disassembled around them. No malice anywhere in the process.
4 works give this answer
Player Piano
A small engineering and managerial elite still works. Everyone else is sorted into the Army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps — the Reeks and Wrecks — who repair roads that do not need repairing, and drink.
ObsolescenceBK·1974The Forever War
Mandella returns from combat to an Earth of mass unemployment and state rations, where the economy has restructured around having no use for him. He re-enlists, because the army is the only institution that still has a slot with his name on it.
ObsolescenceBK·2005Accelerando
Baseline humans are outbid for matter, energy and attention by minds that think faster and cheaper. They become refugees in a solar system being taken apart around them. No malice is involved at any stage.
ObsolescenceBK·2018The Calculating Stars
Elma and her colleagues work as human computers for the space programme, doing orbital mathematics by hand, while the machines that will replace them are installed in the next room.
Obsolescence