Post-industrial Jobs, Employment and Entrepreneurism in a 1% Dominated World

In Gallop Chairman Jim Clifton's book The Coming Job Wars, he lays out the coming competition amongst the world's nations for creating and attracting necessary wealth creating jobs and the destructive dangers of long term unemployment and substandard education to a nations competitive stance in a rapidly changing world economy. A Gallup business journal link to the book notes:

Leaders of countries and cities, Clifton says, should focus on creating good jobs because as jobs go, so does the fate of nations. Jobs bring prosperity, peace, and human development -- but long-term unemployment ruins lives, cities, and countries. Creating good jobs is tough, and many leaders are doing many things wrong. They're undercutting entrepreneurs instead of cultivating them. They're running companies with depressed workforces. They're letting the next generation of job creators rot in bad schools. A global jobs war is coming, and there's no time to waste. Cities are crumbling for lack of good jobs. Nations are in revolt because their people can't get good jobs. The cities and countries that act first -- that focus everything they have on creating good jobs -- are the ones that will win.

Clifton notes some of the exact issues that the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be addressing. We have seen a decade where job growth has been stymied and long term unemployment has swallowed a growing percentage of American workers. Where Corporate/1% interests have dominated the political and economic processes and doing exactly as Clifton describes, "They're undercutting entrepreneurs instead of cultivating them. They're running companies with depressed workforces. They're letting the next generation of job creators rot in bad schools."

Economists have noted that throughout history as a nations financial elites gain an ever larger percentage of a nations total wealth, economic growth of the nation was hindered and middle class entrepreneurial opportunity and growth restricted. A point that I don't see registering in this debate are the implications of exponential growth in productivity in job creation. Consider that in the local Nucor steel mill 100 men produce the same amount of steel a 1000 men produced 20 years ago, and in a decade 10 men, leveraged by AI and robotics, will produce what a 100 men produce today. That is not a recipe for job growth. AI chat programs are predicted to soon be replacing call center workers in a variety of industries. Again, this is not a recipe for job growth. This is not a recipe for equalizing of income distribution necessary to achieve the stability some research suggests our civilization needs to survive.