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by rrggrr 3415 days ago
>McAfee pointed to newly collected data that shows a sharp decline in middle class job creation since the 1980s.

False. McAfee will find a corresponding increase in middle class jobs in India and China and elsewhere for the same time period. The narrative that says automation has destroyed the middle class is demonstrably overstated to the point of being close to false. Employers arbitraged labor rates across borders, pure and simple.

This issue is vastly more complex than the scope of the Wired article which suffers from temporal distortion about what has occurred versus what will occur and when.

4 comments

Absolutely. A lot of these people don't seem to see the world beyond US. If x job losses in the US is compensated by 2x-3x job gains in India/China, why is that a bad thing? Are Westerns somehow more worthy than people from third world countries?
While some jobs have been replaced over sees, it seems like more have been replaced by gradual automation.

https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9...

You're stating that a positive cancels a negative?