Re:‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar ...
by dagw on Wednesday March 25, 2015 @10:51AM
(#9263291)
Those improvements were the cause of the unprecedented growth of a relatively wealthy middle class.
Absolutely.
the luddites didn't realize the possible growth of the non-land-owning and non-hereditary base of power which, at that time, was sparse and dependent on the favour of classes above.
Again, absolutely agree. However I disagree that we can necessarily extrapolate anything useful from that fact. I just don't see it as a given that we'll see the same level of job growth coming out of this bout of "creative destruction" over the next 50 years. As you pointed out even our leisure activities are requiring less and less workers even as their variety might be growing. We're going to have to find a fundamentally new source of employment or the numbers just don't balance out.
But as I said, I'm an optimist at heart and I think we'll be fine, but I also suspect the we have to fundamentally rethink things like the meaning of "full employment" and the nature of the 40 hour work week.
Absolutely.
the luddites didn't realize the possible growth of the non-land-owning and non-hereditary base of power which, at that time, was sparse and dependent on the favour of classes above.
Again, absolutely agree. However I disagree that we can necessarily extrapolate anything useful from that fact. I just don't see it as a given that we'll see the same level of job growth coming out of this bout of "creative destruction" over the next 50 years. As you pointed out even our leisure activities are requiring less and less workers even as their variety might be growing. We're going to have to find a fundamentally new source of employment or the numbers just don't balance out.
But as I said, I'm an optimist at heart and I think we'll be fine, but I also suspect the we have to fundamentally rethink things like the meaning of "full employment" and the nature of the 40 hour work week.