Why Silicon Valley is a disaster for working class

Our local economy continues to become even more like an hourglass--rich people on top, poorer people on the bottom, and nobody in the middle. Joel Kotkin explores the roots of this development in National Review.

The working-class future may be further clouded by the loss of what were once respectable, upwardly mobile jobs--postal workers, switchboard operators, manufacturing laborers, computer operators, bank tellers, and travel legend. For the 90 million Americans who work in these kinds of jobs, and their equivalents elsewhere, the future could be bleak.

Even if they find jobs ,the decline of private trade unions has weakened the political clout that workers once enjoyed.

Many working class people have descended into what has been described as the "precariat," a group of workers who have limited control over the length of their workday and often live on barely subsistence wages.

Conditions for these workers represent a throwback to earlier times. In ultra-expensive places like Silicon Valley, many conditional workers live in their cars. The typical Uber driver is not the one seen in ads, the middle-class driver picking up extra cash for a family vacation or to pay for a fancy date; most depend on their "gigs" for their livelihood. Nearly half of gig workers in California live under the poverty line. These workers often face a dismal future as they age; few have any sort of pension savings for their retirement.

Read the whole thing here.

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