"You'll own nothing and be happy" should have been taken as the threat that it was when the WEF first promoted the notion.
The "be happy" part is the threat, they want us smiling as we suffer.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm all for the REDUCE part of the three R's and am okay with doing with less, what I'm not okay with is a future where literally every aspect of human existence is a rent-seeking service.
They did not promote it. It was a keynote on the potential of the current economic trends. It was more a warning than anything else.. the problem is.. 1984 was also not supposed to be a manual.
Oh man am I feeling this right now. My CEO has decided that managers with fewer than 5 staff are faking it and will no longer be managers going forward. This has led to a mad dash by directors around the company to make sure they all have 5 reports. People have suddenly been put under managers that have nothing to do with their work, just to make the numbers all come out right. And here’s me, a senior manager with 4 reports. My annual review rating was in the top 2% of the company, but I was basically told:
“We already have too many useless Directors already so there’s no growth path for you, sorry. In fact, not only is your promotion cancelled, we’re passing out your staff to others who need the numbers.”
I was literally rewarded for top performance with a demotion. A shift in the marketplace, you say? I think I felt that shift go straight up my ass. But thank god those who got theirs already are being protected! /s
Brutal. I'm so sorry to hear about that for you man. Loyalty is always a one-way street with these people. They demand loyalty but will turn you out to the street the second its profitable for them.
Like I've said before, Donald Trump is America's Id, he represents all the worst impulses that exists in the minds of the so-called "elite."
These higher-paid workers used to be promoted to senior management or even executive roles. But since people are working longer than ever, those roles aren't available and people are getting stuck.
We're going back to the period between 2008 and 2020 where employers didn't want to pay for well educated and experienced professionals and it was impossible to negotiate your salary. We're back at having stagnating wages again. In a period of incredibly high inflation no less.
I only got a significant bump in 2021 when companies claimed worker shortages.
We’re going back to the period between 2008 and 2020 where employers didn’t want to pay for well educated and experienced professionals and it was impossible to negotiate your salary.
Is what you're citing industry or region specific? In technology those years represented explosive growth and wage increases.
I'm a software engineer. In Canada. There was no explosive growth. Only layoffs and stagnant wages. There was a huge brain drain to the US during that period. Many of my university friends ended up in the states.
I wonder if that had anything to do with low interests rates and Venture Capitalists practically throwing cash at startups?
Other industries just simply didn't have the same advantages, and now that tech companies no longer have those advantages either, they're becoming just like any other corporation.
Also, tech companies are on the forefront of businesses who sell services to other businesses which tends to be much more profitable than selling to consumers. Regular consumers have never been Google's customers, even though most regular people use Gmail. Their customers are the advertisers.
People were throwing money at tech because tech was "disruptive" which meant finding a way to skirt existing employment laws, destroy established industries with worker protections, and then boost the prices to insane levels once they've completely wrecked traditional competition. See: Uber.
I wonder why they were throwing so much money at tech? It wasn't about Union Busting, was it?? Oh wait, it totally was.