Bob's Red Mill is now employee owned, and I think maybe SAS shoes? When I worked at 7-11 they had a profit sharing program you could participate in if you work

Bob's Red Mill is now employee owned, and I think maybe SAS shoes? When I worked at 7-11 they had a profit sharing program you could participate in if you worked there long enough (a year I think), although that was years ago they might not do it anymore. But yes, I think those are exceptions. In technology I still tend to get stock options and an employee stock purchase program, so there are still niches you can get in, but for the most part the people who can leverage their position is much smaller (I'm certainly not in the 1%, but easily in the top 10%, even though I don't feel like it) these days. There are some news of companies moving back to the US, but so far finding something actually made in the US is still a rarity, especially something cheap. Machines certainly improve our productivity, but that's been happening for a long time. Smith uses the example of nails, a skilled blacksmith made at most a few hundred nails in a day, an assembly line of a few specialized people makes many thousands. At some point maybe robots do everything, but at this point in time I think it still has more to do with cheap labor arbitrage. It's a lot easier for people to blame robots or something rather than their pursuit of profits, though.