11-20-2016, 08:40 PM
(11-20-2016, 06:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: But something got in the way -- the income from augmented production did not trickle down as pay for even the knowledge-based workers who were to prevail in the new, glorious age. Knowledge workers eventually competed for fewer jobs, and even at times the 'dumbest' of jobs, the ones that used to be relegated largely to dullards. Economic elites took all the net gain.
Instead of knowledge-based and manual (or low-skilled) workers joining in solidarity against the economic elites that have exploited everyone, the elites have turned the middle class and the working class against each other in economic competition in a drive to the bottom for wages and treatment. Donald trump is not the cause; he is the symptom.
As a knowledge worker, I'd say we did well until about the turn of the millenium, at which point the business became highly cyclical, with the booms spaced farther and farther apart and the busts lasting longer. That was also about when our wages started to be dragged down by immigration, as had happened to the working class a decade or two earlier.