The central problem is that since the 1980s, jobs with good salaries and benefits in the great big middle, both blue-collar and white-collar—machine operators, mechanics, clerks, assistants, bookkeepers, salespeople—have disappeared ever faster. And 90 percent of those jobs, according to a new study, disappeared right after recessions, each recession the prod or pretext for businesses not only to get rid of some current employees but also to eliminate those positions permanently. (Watch for that to happen again in 2021 and 2022.) That sloughing of routine jobs has been accelerated by
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