The majority of the human population lives in desperate poverty. Here in the US, many, many people are barely able to afford basic necessities. This has been the status quo for many years, and the political establishment shows little interest in changing it. What makes you believe that this will change if/when office workers are made similarly impoverished?
By "we should be devoting substantial resources to finding solutions" I meant that I don't believe policies will adapt to address the problem when it arises. I believe that humanity will shift all cognitive labor to AI it can't predict or control, then be disempowered, then die out; including the political establishment and capital owners. And that's bad!