Quote:
Originally Posted by SoCalFlamesFan
This. Wages are tied to the amount of money your job generates (and O/G generates a ton) or the skill/education and responsibility required to do the job. There has been a huge increase in the number of these high paying jobs due to the economy going global, ratcheting up the number of customers and the profits.
At the other end of the scale the jobs haven't changed much, they are still generally unskilled or low skilled jobs that require little education and therefore there hasn't been a jump in wages.
I'm not advocating that this is a good thing, because in the long run it causes social unrest and this is a time of huge economic change.
We've seen this before, during the Industrial Revolution and at the start of the 20th century. The economic pressures had large parts to play in big social upheavals that eventually benefited the poor and working classes (suffragettes, unions etc).
The downside is that these factors also contributed to 60 years of major wars and other upheavals (which also affect those at the bottom end of the income scale in a disproportionate way since they supply the bulk of the soldiers.).
Let's hope that this transition is smooth and let's fractious than previous periods of such major economic change and that the income levels of the poor and middle class can improve.
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So what exactly will the transition be? I mean there were poor people in the 1800s, and there are poor people in 2011. That will never change.
What changed is the opportunity for more people to not be poor. The rich and well do to were literally a select group of people back during the industrial revolution, while today there are a lot of nobodies that have done very well for themselves. In fact the majority of people in the developed world are doing well.
The problem I see is being able to help those that need help, and doing it as efficiently as we can. Are we doing enough? I think we have this idea, and the government has it to, that if we allocate a certain amount of money to helping the mentally ill, as an example, then we're doing something. I don't think that is fair.
There will always be low-paying jobs. The good part is that there are MORE high paying jobs these days than there were even 20 years ago.