The future of work is cooking, cleaning and caring for the infirm. No more steel workers, no more retail clerks, no more autoworkers. It’s just nurse’s assistants, personal aides, wind turbine maintenance guys and software developers.
All Healthcare?
But it’s mostly personal aides to older folks. That’s according to a recent Atlantic article that says 1/5 of new jobs created between now and 2026 will be in healthcare.
What concerns me even more though, is the growing inequality in the economy.
Capitalism FTW?
As a confirmed capitalist, it doesn’t bother me that as a writer I earn 1000x less than a CEO. If I wanted the burdens of being a CEO, I could have gone that route.
But it hurts my soul that there are kids growing up right this very moment who are stuck in traditional, Prussian-style schooling where they’re not learning to be the self-starting autodidacts that the future demands.
It’s just a fact that a lot of opportunities at the upper end of the income scale are unlimited for those who self-teach, who trial and fail, and who self-start. Whereas, those at the lower end are looking for income-earning opportunities to be made for them—because that’s what school taught them to do!
It’s About Mindset
That’s why a lot of these folks earn so much, because they have a growth mindset, because they aren’t afraid to fail and because their executive functions weren’t crushed in fourth grade by Sister Agnes yelling at them to shut up about Star Wars…
Sorry about that. Flashback.
But all this could change on a dime, I think. With AI and android robots, a lot of healthcare could be automated. Maybe some unschooled little girl is working on that in her garage right now?
And this Atlantic article doesn’t even take into account freelancing, which is truly the future of work, in this writer’s humble opinion. Of course, that has its own dystopian edge, like when clients don’t pay!
This Wedding Sponsored By…
For my non-US readers, here’s something new you can laugh at us about: corporate sponsorships for weddings are now a thing.
I can see it now: “This wedding is brought to you by Endit, Fast and How, Attorneys at Law specializing in divorce and custody disputes.” #LateCapitalism.
Halloween is, of course, the most appropriate time of the year to talk about marriage, don’t you agree? ???
P.S. Thanks to several of my readers who emailed me to let me know that my promised free book, Downfail, was not actually free in the UK and Australian Amazon stores, at least for some folks. I am working on understanding what Amazon is up to, because they show as free to me. I apologize and will have it fixed soon.
P.P.S. A generational-colony-starship-cruiser-full of gratitude to all of my wonderful readers who posted reviews of my books to Amazon and Goodreads this past week. You guys have me walking on a cloud. Thanks!!
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash