Others, however, are job pessimists and argue that this time is different, and that an ever-larger number of people will become not only unemployed, but unemployable.52 The job pessimists argue that the free market sets salaries based on supply and demand, and that a growing supply of cheap machine labor will eventually depress human salaries far below the cost of living. Since the market salary for a job is the hourly cost of whoever or whatever will perform it most cheaply, salaries have historically dropped whenever it became possible to outsource a particular occupation to a lower-income
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