Many of the folks commenting on the washingtonpost site seem to miss the article's main thesis, which is that the problem is bigger than conservative vs liberal (or Repub vs Dem, etc). The problem isn't caused by too much or too little regulation, too high or too low taxes, too much or too little social services.<p>The problem is caused by computerization, automation, and globalization. It's a hard pill to swallow because those things also bring amazing benefits that we as a society probably wouldn't want to give up.<p>Just look at the description of the jobs Thompson did in the article: run plans from one side of a factory to another? Fabricating plastics? Spraying foam? None of those things would be done by a human today.<p>There may have been, for a time, some balance between the value of labor and the force of capital, but labor is increasingly devalued, so the end result is naturally a decrease in wages and employment.<p>Human workers today are like the working horse as industrialization arrived.