This sounds negative from an America-centric view. Seen globally, poverty has plummeted and countries have become more equal. If you care about people suffering

This sounds negative from an America-centric view. Seen globally, poverty has plummeted and countries have become more equal. If you care about people suffering, the cleaner at Apple is probably much better off than the farmer in China who could easily be dead from famine by now if it wasn't for the global economy - driven by companies like Apple. It may also be misleading to compare a contractor cleaner today to an employee cleaner 30 years ago. I don't know the industry but perhaps the modern job is easier to get and seen as lower status than it was in the past? Maybe someone who's a cleaner today would have been unemployed in the 1980s? In that case, the article is comparing lower socioeconomic status (SES) people to higher SES people and complaining that the lower one is worse off, which is a tautology.