And it used to take a crew of 50 to run a 150' schooner, then it took 25 to run a 300' coal fired freighter. Now it takes 10 guys to run a super tanker.

When I was flying DC-8's as an F/O it was about 1/4 of the work load that is involved in flying the same seat on a 757/767/737/A-320/777 ETC ETC the captains work load has remained about the same. "Pitot heat whats to eat, radar vector equipped" on the Douglasaurus. An F/O on a 2 pilot flight deck has high work load especially in the take off and approach phases much higher than an older technology airplane. And the work load is WAY higher when stuff goes wrong, not having an engineer. As far as automation, sans auto throttles and auto land an autopilot has been capable of flying an airplane in all flight regimes since WW-II. The main things that have made life better are navigation ability and display and general reliability of engines and components.

As I've mentioned before misconceptions about automation are fairly common to the laymen.