Edited on Sun Sep-25-11 11:48 AM by FredStembottom
.... I am a blue-collar worker. Always have been. But my parents weren't. Both were unlucky to be highly paid professionals in careers supplanted entirely by computers.
I took blue-collar work as a "temporary" position as I tried to establish a professional career. I was unable to. I was disappointed and blamed myself for years.
Then I began to to see my blue-collar co-workers begin to change. Soon, nearly everyone around me was a college-educated chronically unemployed "technocrat". The high-school only guys were disappearing (where to?).
Soon, I was clinging to my temporary job as it began to look like a fairly stable island that could not be out-sourced (a phone-banker in Mumbai still can't drive my truck... though I'm sure someone is working on that).
The Middle Class has slid down, folks. And I can only assume that the former working class are the guys standing on the off-ramps of America with the "Homeless. Please help." signs.
New models may be needed. History is different this time.
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