My grandparents worked quite hard. Harder than my (Silent Generation ) Dad, harder than I do. Paternal g-pa was in oilfield, then a carpenter. At his age, you w

My grandparents worked quite hard. Harder than my (Silent Generation ) Dad, harder than I do. Paternal g-pa was in oilfield, then a carpenter. At his age, you worked til you wore out, then after ten years... Maternal g-pa was an entrepreneur of some sort, kinds hazy what really. Paternal Grandpa as it turns out was in some labor unrest in the Mid-Continent oil labor-strike ( with actual Wobblies! ) and that is why he went into carpentry. Violent business; gunfire, explosives. Wow. Grandpa? Really? I was in gummint contracting from 2004-2009. It's not good in there. A few contracts are really large but it's not a good business any more. healthcare.gov is sadly probably more typical than not. I think we're somewhat frog-boiled in luxury myself. Really look at what was the style in 1960; it was pretty spare - about what you'd have now if you were quite poor. I got new clothes basically once a year - from Sears, and they came on a train six weeks later. From Sears to Amazon in three decades... The... uh .. Vietnam War made young men have more options then, but we don't wanna go there... I think the higher returns constitute "winner take all" - and that means competition is actually less. Each option is much like the other, so the winner can leverage out the losers - winner take all. Of those, some fraction will persist. If innovation is heat to Schumpeterian change, then the heat is up. The rest is just endless laying off of risk through contracts/contracting. But the basic thing is - you'd just expect more growth at the right of the curve.