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As fearmongering as this headline feels, it doesn't go far enough. It won't be just Amazon. And it won't be just warehouse workers. The robots *are* coming.

Yeah, I know the argument...displaced workers will find other work. Yes, that's been happening, at lower and lower and lower pay. Meanwhile, the middle class is rotting from the inside out.

There's an over-focus on unemployment rate and other fluffy metrics (that make politicians look good). And not enough attention to the mental, emotional, educational and financial health of the middle class.

The sociopolitical fabric is already frayed, no one seems committed to mending it. There's a tipping point. There's a breaking point. Past performance is no barometer for future results.

I absolutely agree with you, but I wanted to check some actual (non-fluffy) metrics to get a clearer picture. What I found was two interesting charts covering roughly the period of 1960 to 2020 in the US.

The first[1] shows "Real hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees", while the second[2] shows both the "Civilian Employment-Population Ratio" (in red) and "Wages and salary / GDP" (in blue).

While these don't specifically give much insight into the plight of the middle class, I think a case could be made that as more people entered the workforce, that lead to increased economic growth but proportionally less of that growth was enjoyed by each employee.

[1] https://assets.weforum.org/editor/Xkzpnpz_lnI-0WbTH1LJVUdu3J...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Goodwin2...