Death of the Middle Classes?

Thrugelmir

kabayiri wrote: »

so why shouldn't the same happen for white collar roles in the 21st century?

In the world of finance they already have.

The boom in "computer related" employment won't last forever.

MFW_ASAP

Thrugelmir wrote: »

In the world of finance they already have.

The boom in "computer related" employment won't last forever.

Why not?
.....

pqrdef

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Personally, I would predict that any measurement of wage distribution in the future will continue to show broadly the same shape as now.

The historical norm was a large working class and a very small ruling class. Not so much a pyramid as a low flat mound with a spike.

The explosion of the middle class was a 20th century thing. A significant factor was the growth of Direct Grant schools and the emergence of council grammar schools, followed by the expansion of universities. The middle classes could always invent more and more work for their sons and daughters to do, given a way of keeping the plebs out.

There are presumably many sons of doctors, lawyers, etc. born in 6-bed country houses delivering pizzas or driving vans for a living.

The 1944 Butler Act was almost a disaster for the middle classes. Previously the grammar schools had designed their 11-plus exams to select the right people, but by the 60s, councils were getting good at setting 11-plus exams that were tests of raw native intelligence. Too many posh but dim kids were getting sent to secondary moderns, so the system had to go. The middle classes decided that if they could no longer pretend their kids were the brainiest, they could make comprehensives work for them by playing the house price/catchment area game. Not perfect, but they're getting better at it all the time. Gove's games with academies and free schools and the C of E are entirely designed to make sure the middle classes get the university places.

The Labour Party has already rued the day it failed to tackle the education system, having now realised that there wasn't any other way.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Hasn't John Lewis done really well during the recession? Surely an indication of the middle classes being in rude health.

Loughton_Monkey

michaels wrote: »

....... I'll continue to take the blue pill please.

........

Be very careful. I think that's the one Graham's on. Look what happened to him.

Linton

Technology will continue to improve efficiency as it has done for the past 250 years. However the economic relationships will surely remain much the same.

As I see it the "Middle Classes" have reduced partly because they were never a homogenous class. In Marx's time they were mainly what we would now call small businessmen which he saw being marginalised by the owners of big business.

With technology we had increasing numbers of people who were from an economic point of view "working class" as they were employed, but saw themselves as more akin to the small businessmen as their possession of scarce skills enabled them to demand wages that gave then a similar level of wealth.

Now the business man who lived in a large house paid for by profits from the biggest shop in town is long gone and his premises are owned by a multinational. Doctors, who 100 years ago ran their practices as businesses are NHS employees. Technology has dispensed with much of the old unskilled labouring Working Class, and the general availability of higher education has relatively reduced the wealth previously awarded to highly skilled professionals.

The net effect is that we have a new economic Working Class, many of whose members are doing work that would have been considered "Middle Class" in previous generations. Clearly some will find this difficult to accept.

kabayiri

Linton wrote: »

...
As I see it the "Middle Classes" have reduced partly because they were never a homogenous class. In Marx's time they were mainly what we would now call small businessmen which he saw being marginalised by the owners of big business.
...

I think they were enabling classes in many ways.

The large corporation needed lots of marketing people and accountants to work out how to promote their goods, and how to efficiently retain costs.

As technology makes access to finance expertise cheaper, or reduces entry costs to promoting your goods (internet), the needs in the numbers of these people will reduce.

They served a purpose; they had a lifespan.

In a smaller scale the computer industry has seen this changing role of an "enabling class". Originally, large numbers of coders were replaced by smaller numbers of configuration types and software engineers. When computer programs are able to write other programs, the next wave of rationalisation will continue. (In olden dayes of yore, ex machine code programmers would have played a tune on their computerised lutes, singing about the demise of golden times).

kabayiri

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

Why not?
.....

There are a few technological holy grails :

- the computer which designs computers
- the computer program which writes better computer programs
- the robot which builds robots.

In a Lab somewhere there will be a calendar on the wall with the date of of my planned obsolescence!

pqrdef

Conrad wrote: »

AI will require us to completely re-think the whole damn Human eco-system so we can all still enjoy a meaningful life somehow.

But computerised services will be cheap, so we'll have more to spend on other things. We just have to keep finding stuff for people to do that we can say justifies a high maintenance cost.

An obvious conclusion is that the sex industry in all forms will prosper.

Other personal services will also do well. When people are bored with their automated GP, they'll pay a human therapist to pretend he's listening. Loads of work there. People will want their hair done every day. Then they'll go for colonic irrigation every day, so much better than just having a !!!!.

People will put a snob premium on having things done by people, even if machines do it better. They'll insist that a chauffeur-driven car is safer than an automated car, even if it isn't. There could be a boom in domestic service, even if a lot of it achieves nothing much (as used to be the case - there was a lot more work done than really needed doing). The people who program the AI bots might live in small palaces with dozens of staff to pander to their every whim, and dozens of managers to supervise the staff.

MFW_ASAP

kabayiri wrote: »

There are a few technological holy grails :

- the computer which designs computers
- the computer program which writes better computer programs
- the robot which builds robots.

In a Lab somewhere there will be a calendar on the wall with the date of of my planned obsolescence!

I've been hearing that since I started programming in the 80s.

There's also the holy grail of AI, robots, hoverboards and fusion power. Perhaps in a few hundred years we'll have them all, but the research to get us that far will have opened up new technological areas and people will be employed in those.