In tandem with all this, a revolution in the life sciences is also
underway, doing things like allowing drugs to be tailored to a patient's
particular condition and genome.
If the current trend continues,
many more symbolic analysts (a Reichian term for knowledge workers who deal
mostly with complex abstractions) will be replaced in coming years. The two largest professionally intensive
sectors of the United States -- health care and education -- will be
particularly affected because of increasing pressures to hold down costs and,
at the same time, the increasing accessibility, and use of, 'expert' machines
in these fields.
For example, we are on the verge
of a wave of mobile health applications that measure everything from calories to blood pressure. This data will then be processed by software
programs capable of performing the same functions that costly medical devices
now perform. This new diagnostic software (using
the data just collected) will tell you what it all means and what to do about it, thereby doing the work of a great many medical
doctors, nurses and medical technicians.
Schools and universities will
likewise be reorganized around smart machines (even as replaced faculty scream
all the way through the transition).
Many teachers and university professors are already on the way to being
replaced by software -- so-called "MOOCs" (Massive Open Online
Courses that teach thousands, even tens of thousands of students at once, and
yet each at their own speed, with an automatic record and an easily reviewed summary of everything
taught), as well as interactive, online textbooks, along with help from relatively
low-cost adjuncts (teaching assistants) who will answer questions and otherwise
guide student learning.
As
a result of all this, Reich says, unless redistributive measures are taken to
avoid it, income and wealth will become even more concentrated at the top than it
already is. Increasingly, then, the rest of us will be forced to scramble for ever more scarce jobs that pay a living wage. Those who create or invest in blockbuster
ideas will earn unprecedented sums. The
corollary is that these super-privileged people will also come to have enormous
political power over the rest of us -- we who will continue to be "forced out
of the loop" in ever greater numbers, as computer applications multiply and
become ever more sophisticated and wide-ranging, taking ever more of our jobs
away.
Since the very large majority of
people will not share in the fantastic monetary gains to be derived from this
process, and since money buys political outcomes, the political power of everyone
outside of the nouveau/computer riche (and the old rich) will continue to disappear.
And if we fail in the attempt to
organize politically, so as to stop and possibly even reverse this process, the
middle class's share of the total economic pie will continue to shrink, while
the share going to the very top (and, in a more limited fashion, to certain
highly skilled professionals who will be all to happy to assist them) will continue to grow.
Therefore, we must ignite a political movement to reorganize the economy for the benefit of the many, . . rather than for the ever more lavish lifestyles of a Godly few and their heirs. (Reich has much more to say on all this in his upcoming book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, which will be out at the end of September 2015.) He also explains how income inequality helped lead to both the Great Depression and the financial crisis of 2008 in this short video.
(Article changed on June 17, 2015 at 22:59)
(Article changed on June 17, 2015 at 23:10)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
6
3
3
