Why did school graduates activate capitalism?

[ad_1] The heyday of the “high-skill” employee is ending.

As companies discover new methods to interchange labor with machines, increasingly professionals are seeing their vaunted credentials lose their worth. Many have been pressured into menial jobs — whereas others cling to their prestigious positions solely by accepting ever extra exploitative phrases of employment.

• Latest school graduates are much less prone to be underemployed than they have been within the Nineteen Nineties. • School graduates have moved left because of demographic change, the tradition warfare, and different components. • Information employees are doing high quality right this moment, although that would change sooner or later because of AI.

The category distinctions that after cleaved expert employees from widespread laborers are due to this fact eroding. And as they do, the previous are beginning to embrace the politics of proletarians: figuring out with the lots as a substitute of administration — and demanding structural change as a substitute of milquetoast reforms. At present, “high-skill” employees’ declining fortunes are an issue for them; tomorrow, they are going to be one for the oligarchic elite.

Or so Karl Marx argued in 1848.

The following 17 a long time weren’t sort to Marx’s prophecies. As an alternative of melting each strata of employee right into a uniform proletariat, capitalism generated myriad new gradations of talent, pay, and status. And relatively than immiserating professionals and proles alike, market economies drastically raised living standards for employees on the whole, and the extremely educated specifically (or at the least, they did so as soon as leavened with a spoonful of socialism ).

Nonetheless, some now suspect that Marx’s predictions might have been less wrong than premature . The steam engine won't have devalued all expert labor, however synthetic intelligence sure seems like it might . What’s extra, even earlier than the previous decade’s AI breakthroughs, many school graduates have been already struggling to search out white-collar work, rising disillusioned, and drifting left.

In a latest New York Times essay , the (excellent) labor reporter Noam Scheiber argues that the previous 15 years of financial change have taken a toll on younger school graduates, bequeathing them “the financial institution accounts — and the politics — of the proletariat.”

In his telling, latest grads really feel they have been bought a invoice of products. All through their childhoods, each authority promised that they may attain a cushty, middle-class life-style, as long as they secured a college diploma. However too many college students took this supply. The economic system began minting extra data employees than white-collar jobs, thereby consigning a traditionally giant share of graduates to unemployment or low-wage service work.

In consequence, in Scheiber’s telling, the politics of school graduates have been remodeled. Within the Reagan and Clinton eras, the extremely educated tended to see themselves “as management-adjacent — as future executives and aspiring professionals being groomed for a lifetime of affluence.” All through the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, college graduates voted to the right of working-class People, whereas holding extra conservative views on financial coverage.

Now, grads usually tend to determine with rank-and-file employees than their employers. The truth is, overqualified baristas, discontented coders, and precariously-employed journalists have spearheaded a boom in labor organizing .

In the meantime, college-educated voters have grow to be slightly more economically left-wing — and much more Democratic — than these with out levels.

Scheiber acknowledges that these political shifts have a number of causes. However his account of school graduates’ realignment remains to be largely materialist: The demographic was more and more “proletarianized” — which is to say, shunted into working-class jobs — and moved left as a consequence.

There’s a lot fact in Scheiber’s reporting. And in his new ebook, Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class , he affords eager insights into the radicalization of the overeducated and underemployed.

However his big-picture narrative about school grads’ shifting fortunes and politics is a bit deceptive. A wide range of forces have been pushing extremely educated voters to the left. However a broad collapse within the financial place of the well-educated shouldn't be one in every of them.

The (school) youngsters are all proper

With out query, the previous two generations of school graduates have confronted some distinctive financial challenges. The price of a college schooling has risen sharply for the reason that Nineteen Nineties, forcing college students to shoulder bigger money owed. And within the cities the place white-collar jobs are concentrated, housing costs have soared .

However, there's little proof that college-educated employees have been proletarianized, en masse. On the contrary, by some metrics, graduates are doing higher right this moment than they have been within the Nineteen Nineties.

In portray the other image, Scheiber leans closely on anecdotes. A lot of his reporting facilities on college-educated employees who're caught in low-wage service jobs. And he means that the destiny of those scholarly waiters and well-read retail clerks is turning into more and more widespread.

To make this case, Scheiber cites Federal Reserve data on the types of jobs held by “underemployed” school graduates — which means, graduates whose occupations don’t require a level. He notes that, amongst this subset of younger grads, the proportion with well-paying, non-college jobs — reminiscent of insurance coverage agent or human useful resource employee — has declined over time, whereas the share with low-wage jobs has elevated.

That is true. However Scheiber’s presentation of the info level is deceptive.

Low-wage employees do account for a rising share of underemployed school graduates. And but, the proportion of school grads who're underemployed has declined over time. Because of this — in response to Scheiber’s preferred data set — latest school graduates have been much less prone to maintain a low-wage job in 2023 than they'd been three a long time earlier.

Extra critically, all through this era, the share of latest graduates in low-wage jobs was all the time tiny. In 2023 — the latest 12 months within the Fed’s knowledge — simply 4.5 p.c of younger college-educated employees held such positions. Amongst school graduates of all ages, in the meantime, that determine was 2.2 p.c. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s early profession as a struggling bartender saddled with scholar loans is a key a part of her political biography, but it surely’s not the everyday expertise for the diploma set. Nor has it grow to be extra widespread over time.

In fact, simply because a job requires a university diploma doesn’t imply it’s well-paid. However school grads’ wages have additionally trended upward over time . And the gap between the pay of employees with a level and people who solely accomplished highschool has widened barely since 2003.

Scheiber argues that such wage knowledge obscures as a lot because it reveals. He concedes that school grads earn far more than working-class People “on common.” However he means that these averages are skewed by the data economic system’s inequalities: If a small minority of employees in tech and finance reap large pay beneficial properties, then the typical wage for school graduates can go up, even when most are treading water or falling behind.

And but, the median wage knowledge tells the identical basic story because the averages: Between 2000 and 2025, the median school graduate’s earnings rose each in absolute phrases, and relative to the median employee with a highschool diploma (albeit solely modestly).

All this mentioned, Scheiber identifies one indisputably regarding pattern within the college-educated labor market: For 5 years now, the unemployment price for recent college grads has been increased than the general jobless price. That is extremely uncommon; traditionally, younger grads have had a neater time discovering jobs than the everyday employee.

Nonetheless, it’s vital to place this pattern in context. Younger school graduates stay a lot much less prone to be unemployed than different employees of the identical age. And joblessness nonetheless afflicts solely a small fraction of graduates. In December 2025, the unemployment price amongst latest grads was 5.6 p.c; amongst all grads, it was solely 3.1 p.c.

None of because of this younger school graduates haven't any professional grounds for grievance or concern. The purpose is merely that, within the mixture, college-educated employees’ financial circumstances haven't dramatically deteriorated, whilst their political conduct has drastically modified. The “proletarianization” skilled by some school graduates due to this fact can’t clarify greater than a small fraction of the demographic’s leftward shift.

Why school graduates moved left (or “What’s the matter with Greenwich?”)

So, what can? Why have school graduates grow to be a lot extra left-wing — of their financial attitudes, concern positions, and voting conduct?

There are lots of proper solutions to this query. Right here, I’ll simply sketch 4:

1. The demographics of America’s college-educated inhabitants have modified.

“School-educated voters” are usually not a set caste of immortals, drifting by time — backing Calvin Coolidge in a single period and Kamala Harris in one other.

Quite, that phrase denotes a demographic class, whose inside composition is consistently altering. Over the previous 4 a long time, America’s college-educated inhabitants has grown less white and more female . In 1980, simply 13.6 p.c of American girls over 25 had a university diploma, whereas simply 7.9 p.c of Black People did, in response to US Census data . By 2024, these figures had jumped to 40.1 p.c and 29.6 p.c respectively. (Charges of school attendance amongst white and male People additionally rose over this time interval, however at a a lot slower price.)

This shift absolutely pushed the college-educated inhabitants leftward. For the reason that Eighties, girls have been extra probably than males to espouse progressive views on the economic system and vote for Democrats in elections. And the identical is true of nonwhite voters relative to white ones. Thus, the feminization — and diversification — of the college-educated voters probably accounts for a lot of its liberalization .

Put in another way: If nothing else had modified about America’s society or economic system since 1980, the altering demographics of college-educated voters would have been enough to maneuver that inhabitants to the left.

2. The tradition warfare led many socially liberal school graduates to grow to be Democrats.

School graduates have been extra socially liberal — and cosmopolitan — than much less educated voters, since at least the 1950s . Within the mid-Twentieth century, nonetheless, cultural points have been much less politically salient. Republicans and Democrats didn’t have uniformly divergent positions on immigration, feminism, racial justice, or the setting.

However the main events started polarizing on these subjects in the 1970s . And such points grew to become more and more central to our politics within the ensuing a long time. Partly for that reason, school graduates have been drifting towards Democrats — and working-class voters, towards Republicans — for half a century. The French economist Thomas Piketty illustrated this trend in 2018 . Within the following chart, unfavourable values imply that Democrats did higher with working-class voters than college-educated ones in that election 12 months; constructive values imply the other:

<img alt="A line chart showing changes in Democratic voting in the US from 1948 to 2017." data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.36.36PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> In different phrases, the extremely educated’s realignment started lengthy earlier than the (actual and supposed) Twenty first-century financial traits that Scheiber describes.

To make sure, the “diploma divide” widened dramatically in recent times. But the inflection level for that shift was not the Nice Recession, however relatively, Donald Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign — which related the GOP with an unprecedentedly anti-intellectual, authoritarian, and xenophobic model of nationalism.

And there are different indicators that it was the tradition warfare — not financial strife — that drove school graduates towards Democrats.

For one factor, throughout Western international locations, there's a tight correlation between how central social points are to political battle and how likely college-educated voters are to help left-wing events.

For an additional, the college-educated voters who’ve joined the Democratic coalition in recent times are disproportionately prosperous. Of the 57 counties which have persistently moved towards the Democratic Get together in all three presidential elections since 2012, 18 have a median household income above $100,000.

The identical sample exhibits up in individual-level voting data . In 2012, white voters within the prime 5 p.c of the revenue distribution voted to the suitable of People as a complete. In each presidential election since 2016, nonetheless, wealthy whites have been extra Democratic than these within the backside 95 p.c of the revenue distribution.

<img alt="Charts tracking the white presidential vote from 1948 to 2024." data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/Screenshot-2026-04-06-at-5.37.52PM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> Merely put, Greenwich didn't swing towards Democrats as a result of its individuals have been proletarianized, a lot as as a result of the GOP was Trumpified.

3. When socially liberal school graduates grew to become Democrats, many adopted the financial orthodoxies of their new coalition.

To his credit score, Scheiber acknowledges that the tradition warfare performed a giant position in school graduates’ partisan realignment. However he means that this will’t clarify the transformation of educated voters’ financial views.

Which is cheap. Maybe, the rising salience of immigration, feminism, and authoritarianism have made school grads extra prone to vote Democratic. However why would it not have rendered them extra pro-labor? Absolutely, one might imagine, the latter should have extra to do with altering financial circumstances than tradition warfare allegiances.

As I’ll be aware in a minute, I do assume that school graduates’ shifting financial views partly mirror their materials challenges.

However it’s additionally believable that, to a big extent, the demographic has grow to be extra economically progressive as a result of it’s grown extra Democratic.

Voters typically change events on the idea of some key points — these core to their political identities — after which take dictation from their new coalition on different topics. One can see this anecdotally within the evolution of “By no means Trump” Republican pundits like Invoice Kristol or Jennifer Rubin. Every broke with the GOP over Trump’s authoritarianism and international coverage views, however subsequently embraced a variety of liberal coverage positions.

This dynamic — wherein partisanship can drive financial ideology — is arguably seen in a number of the polling that Scheiber cites. In his essay, he notes that school graduates are more likely to approve of labor unions right this moment than they have been within the Nineteen Nineties. And he interprets this as an indication that graduates have stopped seeing themselves as “management-adjacent.”

And but, within the Gallup survey he references, school graduates have been 15 factors extra prone to help unions than these with a highschool diploma or much less. In the meantime, People with annual incomes above $100,000 have been 6 proportion factors extra pro-labor than these incomes lower than $50,000.

Notably, this seems to be a novel growth. In response to American Nationwide Election Research data , school graduates expressed hotter emotions for “large enterprise” than for “labor unions” nearly yearly between 1964 and 2012. Then, in 2016, they abruptly grew to become extra pro-union than pro-business. By 2024, America’s most educated employees have been its most pro-labor.

Conversely, the least educated phase of People —-- these and not using a high-school diploma —-- went from being probably the most pro-union phase of the workforce within the early Eighties to the least in 2016 (though, they nonetheless authorized of labor unions by greater than large enterprise in that 12 months).

This sample of help is troublesome to clarify, if we assume {that a} voter’s opinion on unions is a dependable index of their (perceived or precise) adjacency to administration. Alternatively, if voters’ financial opinions are formed by each their materials pursuits and partisanship, then the disparities make good sense. Labor unions are related to the Democratic Get together. So, as school graduates have grown extra Democratic, they’ve appeared extra kindly on unions. Because the “poorly educated” (in Trump’s famous phrase ) grew to become extra Republican, they grew to become much less prone to approve of labor than different People.

If true, this could be in step with a large body of political science data exhibiting that partisans categorical extra sympathy for teams that favor their political celebration.

4. Millennials and capitalism acquired off on the mistaken foot.

In saying all this, I don’t imply to disclaim that some college-educated voters have embraced radical, pro-labor politics, in response to materials difficulties.

Though latest graduates haven't been proletarianized en masse, many millennials did graduate right into a labor market scarred by the Nice Recession. Throughout our first, childhood as employees, we regularly struggled to safe well-paying jobs, as a direct consequence of Wall Avenue’s malfeasance.

Millennials’ earnings and net worths finally caught as much as these of prior generations. However individuals’s political views are typically forged throughout late adolescence and early maturity. The 2008 disaster due to this fact left many millennials persistently skeptical of capitalism, even when it didn’t render them durably underemployed. The 2011 Occupy Wall Avenue protests, which crystallized these grievances for a lot of latest graduates, have been an important precursor to right this moment’s left-wing activism.

Individually, younger professionals within the media and academia have seen a real collapse of their financial prospects: It was a lot tougher to earn a middle-class dwelling at {a magazine} or humanities division in 2016 than it was in 1996. And it's tougher nonetheless to take action in 2026.

The “concepts” industries comprise a small share of the general economic system. However they exert wildly disproportionate affect over political discourse. Thus, the declining fortunes of aspiring journalists and teachers has probably coloured the worldviews of different politically engaged millennials and zoomers, even when their very own industries are pretty wholesome.

This mentioned, these components in all probability don’t have that a lot to do with the motion of college-educated Romney 2012 voters towards the Democratic Get together. Quite, the Nice Recession — and jobs crises inside journalism and academia — assist clarify why perennially left-of-center subsets of the college-educated voters have gravitated towards socialism in recent times.

AI may nonetheless show Marx proper

Capitalism nonetheless hasn’t turned educated professionals into immiserated proletarians — or unified the working class in opposition to the bourgeoisie.

This can be about to vary. Actually, AI poses a greater threat to data employees’ class standing than any earlier technological breakthrough. Certainly, many tech CEOs are explicitly promising to place millions of white-collar employees out of a job. So, stories of the college-educated’s financial dispossession — and political mutiny — might show prescient. However such declarations stay, for the second, forward of their time.