A little over a hundred years ago the world was in a paradigm shift away from farming to manufacturing. This was a very disruptive thing for many who were living during those times. Cars were replacing the horse and buggy which had been the primary mode of transportation for more than a century. Automation of farm implements resulted in much less labor needed to produce the same goods. Things were changing and changing quickly.

Fifty years ago cars were made by thousands of workers lined up each doing a small part of the assembly. It was mind numbing work but paid well.  Paychecks were determined and made out by thousands of workers in row after row of desks doing a very small part of the overall task. 

Today those assembly line jobs are being done by robots and the paperwork is accomplished by a bank of computers controlled by a handful of technicians. The jobs are now in fields that require more training and imagination than anytime in the past. Like the last few paradigm shifts this one will also require as the definition of paradigm suggests some radical changes in the workforce. 

Does automation create a permanent lower class society who will always be poor??

 That is the basic question for our times. Will there now be a class of people who are always poor. Yes, but the percentage of workers in that category is what is at stake. Flipping hamburgers and many other service jobs will never, and have never, been a high paying occupation. It was meant as a starting place or as the first rung of the ladder upward. Teenagers and recent immigrants started there.  Automation will be an ongoing thing for many years to come. That is a given. To “move on” requires a more knowledgable worker than ever before. 

Are we currently up to that task?  The answer is NO…

An educated workforce requires, well, education. That is a very simple matter but obtaining that education is not so simple. The cost of education is now beyond what many can deal with. Much of the rest of the world has moved to publicly financed education beyond the fundamental twelve years of schooling. We in the U.S. are stuck in the past in that regard.  Education in general just does not have the importance that it does in other parts of the world. 

Even the quality of the currently publicly funded education varies widely from one geographic area to another. Since education remains a local thing areas of affluence have a much higher quality educational facilities and staff than does the typical rural communities. Since there is no national process driving education this disparity will likely continue unabated.

In order to move into the new paradigm will require a basic change in thinking of how we train the workers of today and tomorrow.  It’s as simple as that.