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The amount of education required to make a decent living has increased, to the point that today you might need a graduate degree to make a middle class white co

The amount of education required to make a decent living has increased, to the point that today you might need a graduate degree to make a middle class white collar living. Whereas 50 years ago, high school was enough. Pre-tractor farming days you hardly needed middle school. This is a significant mobility problem when you virtually have to crapshoot your life and hope you chose the right field. With increased automation, the level of understanding of a subject or business needed is so great that the average person may never find a genuine opportunity to break out on their own. Try being a rockstar entrepreneur straight out of college outside of app development. At some point even apps will be full of entrenched players like other fields. Contrast that to that not too long ago even a neighborhood corner store could compete and offer an alternate to the wage system. This is why I believe this time is different - a basic income is needed or else the populace will be like serfs with little mobility from their trade. In other words, a caste system.

johngalt 13y ago
If you wanted to work as a banker prior to the adoption of computers you'd need an education advanced enough to calculate amortization tables. Now you'd simply need to know where to put the numbers into a spreadsheet. Same for accountant. Attorneys can now run instant searches for relevant case law rather than spending time in a law library. Construction workers have instant access to information on a variety of materials and methods. Doctors have computers giving guidance on diagnosis as opposed to consulting experts. Students worldwide can learn from the best teachers in many subjects. I could make this list much longer. In general, the individual knowledge requirements for most jobs have gone down drastically, and the potential paths to acquire that knowledge have grown.
- nicholas73 13y ago
  The caveat is middle class living. If all those jobs were easily done or trainable, thereby removing the tendency towards credentialism, then by and large those workers should be interchangeable. That lowers the pay and forces the would-be middle class to specialize further in yet something else.

johngalt 13y ago

If you wanted to work as a banker prior to the adoption of computers you'd need an education advanced enough to calculate amortization tables. Now you'd simply need to know where to put the numbers into a spreadsheet. Same for accountant. Attorneys can now run instant searches for relevant case law rather than spending time in a law library. Construction workers have instant access to information on a variety of materials and methods. Doctors have computers giving guidance on diagnosis as opposed to consulting experts. Students worldwide can learn from the best teachers in many subjects. I could make this list much longer. In general, the individual knowledge requirements for most jobs have gone down drastically, and the potential paths to acquire that knowledge have grown.

nicholas73 13y ago
The caveat is middle class living. If all those jobs were easily done or trainable, thereby removing the tendency towards credentialism, then by and large those workers should be interchangeable. That lowers the pay and forces the would-be middle class to specialize further in yet something else.