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I would call it consumeriat. Our consumption drives supply and we need it to fund things like infrastructure and technology that help us consume things better,

• labster 10y ago
  That's cool and all, but it's not exactly what unnecessariat idea is about. People who in the past would be considered the proletariat -- the source of labor and capital -- are no longer useful economically. The labor they offer is no longer useful to society. If a hundred people can be replaced by one skilled worker and some robots, that will always be the better deal due to costs like insurance, work speed, management overhead, lawsuit potential, and so on. So simple jobs that these people used to do simply do not exist. And while everyone can be a programmer, not everyone can be a competent one. So yes, the standard of living for the labor class has decreased relative to others, but is still high. It's still high enough they get access to addictive drugs. Which is a problem, but also a symptom. I feel like the root cause is that we really do not have a great economic theory to handle the case where labor cannot produce sufficient value to capitalists. (IANAEconomist, though.) Note that they're still human beings and we still have some duty of care to them as a society. Fixing consumption is not going to stop these people from killing themselves.