I think it is very important not to forget another factor - the Protestant Work Ethic. This had a gigantic influence on US culture and we still live with it to

I think it is very important not to forget another factor - the Protestant Work Ethic. This had a gigantic influence on US culture and we still live with it today. It is the reason people reflexively object to McDonald's workers fighting for higher pay, and don't care that those workers are earning far more for their employer than they are being paid. The Protestant Work Ethic is the belief that the work itself, specifically the suffering endured while performing the work, which is of value. 'Hard work is its own reward'. It is a big part of why the improvements in productivity that came about in the 1980s due to computers and automation technology entering the workplace did not result in higher wages. Because the productivity was not a product of greater human suffering, the people did not 'deserve' any greater pay. The most virtuous are those who struggle and suffer the greatest for the lowest pay. They are paid primarily in the most valuable currency, the suffering, and to suggest that they deserve greater pay or to give them greater pay would denigrate them. Obviously this is not a viewpoint that most people would or can describe specifically. But it is what underlies the prevailing attitudes most people have about work. To desire easy work, is immoral or weak. To desire high pay for a job which is not tremendously taxing, is immoral or weak. A person who is not working strenuously is inherently a worse person than one who is. It's why the unemployed are looked down upon, and why the working poor, no matter how exploited they might be, are revered as the 'salt of the earth' and the like. It is why it is presumed that a person who is not doing hard physical work is not "really working". Mental work is of such a fundamentally different character from physical labor that our society simply doesn't know how to process it. The idea that a person, with the use of technology, can produce as much value as 100 people doing the same job manually seems a dirty kind of trick. Dirty either because the person is cheating and skirting the virtuous hard work, or dirty because being willing to accept such a situation is immoral. Wanting a job you love to do, and expecting to be paid well for it, is a fantasy tolerable only in children. To actually expect it is one of the biggest reasons older people say that Millenials seem "entitled" brats. In truth, the Millenials just seem to inherently understand that we're at the point where technology simply makes it the best (for everyone, employers included) course.