"We’re used to thinking that offshoring “took” jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler — and more ruinous. They blew apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang effect happened. The machine discovered that it could do in rich countries what it had done in poor ones — and so it began stripping away everything that made a job “a job.” Because the economy was increasingly composed of monopolies, giant companies, banks, and investors had the power to do so with impunity. Speculators began raiding pension funds. Managers began stripping away benefits of every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the “at-will job” and the “zero-hours contract” were created — social contracts that were only “jobs” in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility, or opportunity. People who didn’t have benefits could now be fired on a whim — and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk of what, precisely?
Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south, who’d take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety, all those people for whom “a job” now meant something more like “a temporary soul-crushing way to avoid destitution.” They’re the ones who’d be fired, instantly, lose what little savings they had, have their already dwindling incomes slashed, be ruined."
