Benefits Of Technology

 Years ago, I was at a presentation about how technology was going to greatly improve our productivity.  The way that was going to happen was the elimination of many low skill, entry level jobs and of course the people who worked them.

Now this was geared to office work so certainly the people eliminated tended to be those working in typing pools, stenos, data input, etc.  They did have skills, generally typing and maybe stenography.  It all happened.

In general, those jobs no longer exist and for the most part the "professional" staff became responsible for that work. This trend continued and resulted in nearly a 50% reduction in staff.  Since the jobs being eliminated were lower paying, costs didn't go down at the same rate.

This tremendous increase in productivity was equaled in the manufacturing sectors as well.  The benefits of all these savings did result in some lower costs to the consumer but a lot of it led to the wealth inequality we now see.  

Technology should have benefitted everybody, and to some extent it did.  It just did do so equally.