Once, most Americans were farmers and ranchers, growing and herding their own food sources. But during the Industrialized Revolution most Americans went to work in factories, becoming dependent on jobs to purchase their food. Then those factories were outsourced to foreign countries for cheaper labor, forcing many into unemployment or low-paying jobs, and becoming dependent on food stamps.
Today in the United States, immigrant farm workers are now doing the "jobs that Americans don't want to do", because they are treated and paid as slave laborers.
Now with the Technological Revolution, H-1B visas are being used to displace higher skilled and better educated Americans into unemployment or low-paying jobs, and who are also becoming dependent on food stamps.
Eventually, the American jobs that once went to factories overseas will gradually become more automated with robotics, and will eventually displace the more expensive (but cheaper) labor abroad. Foreign engineers and workers will produce and maintain the robots.
Soon, the people in China, as well as most Americans (and other peoples of the world) will no longer be able to go back to growing food or herding animals, because they will no longer have the means or the necessary land. At the current pace, and with the current trend, over the next 40 years, almost 7 billion people may not have a means by which to feed themselves. They will no longer be capable of purchasing or growing food.
Maybe, a few isolated patches of humanity living in the jungles of South America and Africa, who were not touched by the Industrialized or Technological Revolutions, might have a fighting chance for survival. But by that time, what becomes of the rest of us?
Will the corporations only maintain a certain supply of humans to cater to their executives, who will build their homes and skyscrapers, grow their food and raise their livestock, and build and maintain their robots? Will they also maintain a certain supply of humans for a police force to protect them, and maintain armies to fight their wars? Or will robots also be used for all those things as well?
Or maybe, robots might also eventually replace the CEOs too, when nanotechnology rules the planet, after human beings have finally outsourced themselves into extinction.
And when "food" is no longer needed, robotic historians might one day call this new era in Earth's history The Nano Revolution.
*NOTE: If you think my scenario is far-fetched, then why does the United Nations wants us to eat insects? http://www.fao.org/...