I don't think the point is that the transition isn't difficult. It is that there is an overall benefit that outweighs the challenges of the transition.

The sad part is that industrializing societies have not been very good at reconciling the benefits with the costs. The benefits first go to a select few and have seeped out to the masses slowly. Railroads in the US are a good example. The wealth accumulated by the Vanderbilts, Hills and Harrimans, did not get redistributed in any kind of equitable manner. However, everyday people did eventually gain a lot of benefit form of those railroads through economic expansion. (None of which address the loss of the native Americans, whose losses should also be part of the equation.)

You're missing my point. Job losses are a fact of life, just like death. Why should people get upset about the fact that someone might lose their job, or die? It's not amoral. These things happen constantly to millions of people, we'd we worn out. We happily send young healthy people to their death fighting in wars so we don't have to. I don't see people weeping because the armed forces exist.

Or is this just some sort of PC bullshit, that we can't talk about this sort of progress without carefully lamenting job losses? If you're not useful doing a job, why should you be employed in it? That's the bottom line.

Society is better if we sacrifice one horse and buggy driver job for two engineering jobs. The drivers suffer from that, but the net win for society is so plainly obvious that it's a better investment to retrain the driver or just pay the off rather than support a job that dying anyways.