Labor advocates point out that the new on-demand jobs have no guaranteed wages, and hold them in stark contrast to the steady jobs of the 1950s and 1960s manufacturing economy that we now look back to as a golden age of the middle class. Yet if we are going to get the future right, we have to start with an accurate picture of the present, and understand why those jobs are growing increasingly rare. Outsourcing is the new corporate norm. That goes way beyond offshoring to low-wage countries. Even for service jobs within the United States, companies use “outsourcing” to pay workers less and
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