Working Classes: What's Really at Stake?

Much can be done to improve the lot of today's working classes, through conscious efforts on the part of society as a whole. There are many reasons, why our working classes deserve a more careful economic focus than what they normally receive.

In particular, requirements for housing, time based services and physical infrastructure are too excessive and extravagant, for the future income potential of many citizens. Importantly, however, much more is at stake, than any moral judgments about specific income levels. Should future low income realities not be proactively addressed, community sustainability will become progressively difficult. New cultural markers need to be experimented with. Any discussions about regulation, for instance, should tell specific stories. What do specific individuals wish to accomplish in specific settings? Turn every imaginable resource capacity to these ends, and make allowances for the fact each setting is unique.

Many among today's working classes, hold higher levels of motivation and aspiration to succeed, than is commonly recognized. Despite the fact that much of working class circumstance can be attributed to unconscious societal motivations, we can generate new institutions which include a conscious motivation for more positive outcomes.

Even though automation greatly reduced the need for hard physical labour in traditional manufacture, not much has changed in this regard, for low income services labour. And while the working class of traditional manufacture is in decline, the still plentiful low skill jobs of our services dominant economy, include physical labour which often make "normal" retirement age, a difficult goal to reach. This important health consideration, is by far one of the most important reasons we have, to share the work of intellectual challenge with everyone, so that excessive physical labour need not lead to extensive health problems in one's later years.

Nor can anyone realistically expect to improve the lot of working classes, through monetary redistribution from other income levels. What today's working classes need most, is a chance to participate in the kinds of work and intellectual challenges which make life worthwhile. If the productive use of knowledge use is not shared more broadly in the 21st century, societal divisions may continue to a point that the liberal aspirations of recent centuries could be lost.

We need to reorient our conscious efforts towards greater economic inclusion, instead of simply hoping everything will turn out for the best, should we do nothing. Not every individual can be expected to take low income service work, should better compensated work disappear. As Mosley Vardi (Market Watch) recently noted, "Automation will significantly change many people's lives in ways that may be painful and enduring".

Fortunately, we can build new forms of productive decentralization, which counter today's overly centralized and exclusive framework. Brink Lindsey is one who holds high hopes in this regard, for he recently wrote:

There is no iron law of history impelling us to treat the majority of our fellow citizens as superfluous afterthoughts. A more human economy, and a more inclusive prosperity, is possible.