First, this sense of precariousness started with people in the lowest-paying jobs. But ever since, it has been rising further and further up the chain. By now, many middle-class people are working from task to task, without any contract or security. We give it a fancy name: we call it being “self-employed,” or the “gig economy”—as if we’re all Kanye playing Madison Square Garden. For most of us, a stable sense of the future is dissolving, and we are told to see it as a form of liberation.
