• @Palkom@lemmy.world
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    211 months ago

    Post WW2 a lot of stock was put in scientism in industrial nad manufacturing jobs, which has led to the rise of new public management, cementing the dissolution of the bond between identity and job. The basic principle is that everything can be quantified and measured, and that every step carried out by a master craftsman can be exactly described and distributed. The replacement of actual manufacturing with the menial task of carrying out a single, repeatable step hour after hour after hour, day after day. Like a robot.

    That’s the death of skilled jobs, and it’s driving the collapse of the uneducated man, according to Richard Reeves among others. A shift towards cognitive work instead of labor has taken place, and a lot of the jobs that previously carried a large segment of the lower strata has simply moved to asia and lower wage countries.

    • @BigNote@lemm.ee
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      111 months ago

      Fortunately there’s still the skilled trades. What can be automated is, but there’re still a lot of tasks that require journeyman level tradespeople to be actively involved in the work. Get into a good union apprenticeship when you are young and you can make real money with good benefits and retire with a nice pension in addition to SSI. Unfortunately union membership is at around 10 percent of the US workforce.