Jobs Of The Middle Class People example essay topic

The future of America does not look too prominent. The gap of wealth is widening. The rich are getting richer and the poor are poorer. Pretty soon the gap between the rich and the poor will become irreversible.

People who would have had solid jobs in past generations are getting laid off or fired in this day and age. The middle class seems to be disappearing because of new advances in technology such as machines and computers. The computers and machines are taking over the jobs of the middle class people. People that still have jobs are expected to work extra long and grueling hours. These people will eventually be replaced due to costs of production. The government tries to lessen the gap between the rich and the poor but their efforts are useless.

If the gap continues to widen we will see a grim future. Since the golden age of post World War II, the financial gap of the rich and poor has dramatically increased. In "America's Anxious Class", Robert Reich describes how the traditional middle class, has been broken down to three sub classes, which are the under class, the over class, and the anxious class. The under class, trapped in the inner cities and has little chance of making a better life for themselves.

The over class moves with the new economy and enjoys prosperity. The anxious class is in between the under class and the over class. The anxious classes are the people who are uncertain of their future but they hold decent jobs. As the economy grows the gap will widen more and more as time goes on. The under class will get poorer, the over class will get richer, and the anxious class will end up deciding to go towards the over class or the under class. Before computers and automation were used widespread in manufacturing, people were able to get a job right out of high school and live comfortably for the rest of their lives working at a mill or some other hard labor.

They would get benefits, social security, and retirement from their jobs. Back then, anyone who wanted to work and was wiling to work were able to work. Minorities were even able to get decent jobs because there was still the widespread need for human labor in the workforce. As time went on, technology became more and more advanced. Technology started taking over jobs that humans used to do and specialized in. Technologies like the auto assembly line are replacing workers because the machines could get the job done quicker than the humans could.

Machines are also less cost effective for the company. This disrupts the social advance of the workers while it greatly increases the value of the makers of the robots doing the replacing. The workers, who were in the middle class, are pushed into the underclass and the anxious class while the people that make the robots move up into the over class. In a previous generation both the engineer and the worker would have been in the same class, the middle class, but in the new technology economy the educated group is valued much more highly over the less educated worker. There has been increasing support for a shortening of the workweek among people in recent years. Lynn Williams, "We need to start thinking about shorter hours... as a way to share the improved productivity".

Companies have even taken the initiative in implementing this idea as is seen by Volkswagen's 1993 decision to adopt a four day work week to save 31,000 jobs (Rifkin, 621). When Volkswagen to tried to ease unemployment by adopting a four-day workweek, they were trying to reverse a natural phenomenon. There is less and less demand for hard labor as technology grows. Companies would have fewer workers working longer hours than to have many workers working for them.

This is because the company would not have to pay for benefits. Less people working means that there are more being pushed into the anxious class. New technologies that allow for more efficient time spent eliminates the need for excess workers, which leads to lay-offs and unemployment for those who are deemed expendable while those who still have their jobs are expected to work longer hours. A decreased workweek means that the government has to get involved.

The government will have more power over the companies. By letting the government tampering with businesses our society would be no better than the communist society such as the former Soviet Union. Our society can see how their governmental and business practices have done to their country. If the government tampers with the businesses then the economy would not be based on free trade anymore.

The result of the technology boom will bring the elimination of capitalistic values. Our society will show emergence of socialism much like that of Europe right now. This idea is held by many technological utopians, that technology will someday free people from formal work (Rifkin, 619). But people will always have to do work, no matter how much technology is present and we only have to look at history to see why. Throughout history there have been the haves and the have nots, those that are wealthy and those that are poor. It has been a constant struggle as old as humanity.

The Digital Revolution almost certainly will exacerbate the stratification of global and American society into the have and the have-nots (Star). Those that are rich will have all the new technology, which makes their lives better while the poor get stuck with the old. The poor struggle to do better but they have no help. It is expected of the poor to do badly. The natural progression of business is to maximize its efficiency and product output. A company is going to favor technology over human labor in most every case because the company does not have to pay machines, and the people that it does have to pay, it wants to work overtime to avoid paying benefits to more workers working less hours.

The trend of widening wealth levels is likely to continue to rise until we have two extremes, the masters and the subjects. If the advances in technology slow down and technology does not advance much beyond the current level we might be able to preserve our current way of life - a fairly large middle class. However if the growth continues at its current rate we will likely see drastic changes to how people live, with the end result of the very rich and the very poor. It would be exactly like the movies where we think it could never happen to us, but it will.