Agreed. That piece reads a bit too much like a HuffPost 'article'. The idea that industrial workers' skills would become obsolete is not only wrong, it's also

Agreed. That piece reads a bit too much like a HuffPost 'article'. The idea that industrial workers' skills would become obsolete is not only wrong, it's also an idea that far predates Drucker. The skills aren't obsolete as much as they are under competition from previously unreachable pools of labor in other parts of the world. As the comment above notes, a real problem with income distribution in American society comes more from a tax code that allows/favors corporations over small businesses and passive income over income derived from labor of any sort. This is not just about money - it is about personal control. It isn't even enough to compare wages; the picture is much worse when one considers personal debt load in relation to earnings. What emerges then is really two parallel countries - rapidly drifting apart. On one hand you have the wealthy and super-wealthy insulated from economic shock and personal debt. On the other hand you have a class of people who seem 'middle-class' but who are in hock for housing and education and stand a small distance away - a job loss, a serious illness - from disaster. Earnings supported the birth of the middle-class in post-war America but, sadly, it is only debt that has sustained it. That kind of state-within-a-state is not unique to post-industrial economies at all - which makes the author's closing opinion rubbish. That situation - whether in Russia or Brazil or Colombia or even Israel - is much more a result of social and economic policies and the OWS group is instinctively correct in feeling like such policies are not in their favor.