01-27-2021, 04:21 AM
The creators of this rosy view of the world saw economic progress as a given and that it would surely make possible a better world for most people. This technology would fit people of greater formal education well (but if the teletype machine and other print-out devices would be the norm, then that would mandate literacy at a rather high level -- not bare literacy but also the ability to read between the lines, and interact appropriately. The technology was wonderful, but it could not conceal the vileness of the neoliberal politics that would slip in under Reagan, when real wages started to fall while the profit margins widened... and management, much of it trained in MBA schools, adopted command-and-control systems. Reduced pay and harsher management were not consequences of new policies to create more prosperity, although they succeeded at that. Real wages fell by design.
To be sure, American attitudes toward work changed. Talented people took the advice of guidance counselors and did anything other than factory work. Figure that someone with a BA degrees who got work on an assembly line was likely to go back for some further education related to industrial productivity such as engineering or certain phases of accountancy or would be the ideal shop stewards in union shops.
The sorts of jobs that burgeoned in the early 1980's, largely work in fast-food places and in shopping malls, were not the sorts that allowed an adult living; neither did they teach any skills other than how to bow and scrape before superiors (basically everyone).I had such a job and I actually got a pay raise because the minimum wage took a slight uptick, and I would have remained below the minimum wage had I not gotten such a raise.
No technology can compensate for human degradation.
To be sure, American attitudes toward work changed. Talented people took the advice of guidance counselors and did anything other than factory work. Figure that someone with a BA degrees who got work on an assembly line was likely to go back for some further education related to industrial productivity such as engineering or certain phases of accountancy or would be the ideal shop stewards in union shops.
The sorts of jobs that burgeoned in the early 1980's, largely work in fast-food places and in shopping malls, were not the sorts that allowed an adult living; neither did they teach any skills other than how to bow and scrape before superiors (basically everyone).I had such a job and I actually got a pay raise because the minimum wage took a slight uptick, and I would have remained below the minimum wage had I not gotten such a raise.
No technology can compensate for human degradation.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.