ABSTRACT
American jobs are being eliminated and downsized. The benefits of a half-century of productivity, in which we and our parents and grandparents all played a role, have largely accrued to the relatively few people who know how to make money by coordinating all the technological components, or by managing the money that derives from American innovation. This chapter argues that similar concerns about the takeover of technology surfaced during the Second Industrial Revolution and the Space Race. Globalization has outsourced middle-income jobs, such as those in manufacturing, which is still dropping after the 2009 recession. Contract work is even invading the low-income ranks, making them even lower-income, as in Silicon Valley, where tech experts are increasingly being served by janitors, bus drivers, food service workers, and security guards who are no longer employees with benefits, and who make only about 70 percent of the salaries of hired employees. At the national level, it will work for the guaranteed income.
