The postmodern rich poor gap divide

This quote below reminds me of the Automation project I did a few months ago on critiqing the arguments made by an author summarising the benefits and demerits of Automation in American society in a paper written in 1983.

Silvio, Carl. 2007. “The Star Wars Trilogies and Global Capitalism” In Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci (Eds) Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Pg 67

I suggest that the chief contradiction of this later period lies in the dissonance that many Americans feel between the supposedly benevolent and progressive nature of our new global economy and the way that this economy does not always appear to benefit the middle or working classes of the country. Over te course of the 1980s and 1990s, wages for working Americans consistently fell in relation to the cost of living, a trend offset in most cases by employees working longer and longer hours. Between 1989 and 1997, the earnings of a median American worker fell 3.1 percent, the income of a median American family declined by 2.1 percent, while the amount of time that such a family spent at work increased by six weeks per year. This steady erosion of middle and working class wealth occurred while the general productive capacity of the economy grew by eight percent and the average salary of CEOs more than doubled (Mishel). And yet we find ourselves constantly bombarded with hype about how the new information age, systems thinking, and globalisation are revolutionising our world for the better. For instance, in spite of what these economic trends seem to indicate for the future of the working and middle classes of America, Edward Simon president of Herman Miller, can actually argue that "[b]usiness is the only institution that has a chance, as far as I can see, to fundamentally improve the injustice that exists in the world" (qtd. in Senge 5).