Are America's poorest better off because of technology, or better off because of America's dominance over the rest of the world's resources? My suspicion is th

Are America's poorest better off because of technology, or better off because of America's dominance over the rest of the world's resources? My suspicion is that as the developing world becomes more educated, the poor and middle class in the US will look poorer. Some of this might be an actual loss in standard of living as the share of global resources the US can consume drops. This change, induced by technology (mass education) is going to be a bigger issue for the developed world sooner than computers-taking-away-jobs will be. Presumably more educated people are less likely to give away their resources for cheap (or in corrupt countries for free), less likely to work 16 hours a day in a factory, to accept mass pollution as a by product of manufacturing, etc. That is just an assumption, it could be wrong and education will have no impact on these things. The psychological aspect -- comparatively, might have more to do with whether an individual thinks their condition is improving as opposed to the distance between individuals. If you generally believe what Ray Kurzweil predicts, none of this will really matter in 2100 as we could be well in to the post-human era. Humans, in their natural form, could very well be relics in a zoo.