Wu Caros . S . INFOSERFING: THE EDUCATED SLip TOWARD Poverty Descriprion Could we be moving toward a signiti- cant drop in the incomes of most col- lege graduates and professionals? In the 1950s, a blue-collar job with lange American manufacturing firm ‘was a ticket to the American middle- class dream—owning a home fit fora couple of kids and the family dog and driving a car you could replace every few years. In the past 30 years, how= «ver, automationandcompettion from less expensive foreign labor has eaten, away at the earnings of unskilled American labor, By the 1990s, this group had fost easy access tothe com- Fortable lite ‘Todate, the well-educatedhavebeen insulated from this kind of erosion of relative income. A number of trends ‘may coalesce in thenext decade, how- ever, to likewise degrade the incomes ofthis heretofore unassailable group + Education levels continue 10 rise worldwide, and college-educated workers hecome available elsewhere at salaries far below their American counterparts. India, for example, pro- vides talented computer expertise for a fraction of Silicon Valley salaries. + Information technology advances— algorithms that mimic human thought i 1098 Tas Yenn Fomicast processes, computer performance that ‘continues to increase exponentially, and powerful databases—lead to ex- perssystemsthatautomate many white- collar jobs and will likely put many professionals out on the street. + Global communications technology allows superstars to leverage ther tal~ ents across a wider market, to the det- iment of smaller, local talent. This trend can be seen emergingin the super salaries eared by the big names in entertainment and sports. Similarly exorbitant compensation might becom- ing for super teachers, doctors, com= puter programmers, lawyers, and con sultans of al stripes as they replace their merely good or medioete peers ‘Though the information age puts high valueon leading-edgeknowledge, this value is likely to accrue largely to the elite who hold intelectual property rights or superstar abilities, not to the educated workforce at large. Recall that throughout much of the agricul- tural age, landowners amassed great sums while most others hovered near abject poverty. Likewise, until the last few decades of the industrial age, in= dustry owners raked in huge wealth ‘while most industrial workers seraped by, Inoicators Such a development is signaled by a 25% decline inthe median salaries for ‘managerial and professional oceupa- tions relative to the grossnational prod uct per capita ImpucaTions + Income and class differences widen significantly between the haves and have-nots, with more and more ofthe college-educated joining the ranks of the have-nots. + Desperation increases dramatically in the nouveau poor, leading to the spread of social misbehavior untilnow ‘mostly concentrated in urban ghettos. + Unions and socialist-style political ‘movements reemerge, this time run by ‘members as educated a the power- wielding elite Prosasiury By 2006, 10%. —David Hansen Instr ron Futut * Meio Pas, Cuca