Why Service Workers Should Get $25 an Hour

That's what the minimum wage would be now if it had kept up with inflation and productivity increases since 1968.

But if you can't figure out why you really don't want the home care worker changing your adult diaper to be distracted and resentful about her below-poverty wages and total lack of benefits, I can't help you.

Political Animal:

It’s also worth noting that it’s not highly skilled jobs that are most protected from automation, either: programmers and lawyers alike are all threatened by the trend. Rather, the most protected jobs are the ones that require the most personal touch, like in-home nursing care. Those are the jobs society truly needs most, but they’re also the ones that tend to pay the least.

The free market alone isn’t going to solve this problem. Fixing the obvious imbalance requires government to intervene and redistribute to keep life even remotely fair.

Conservatives can whinge and grind their teeth all they want. But given the trends, the only alternative to government intervention on behalf of economic fairness is far messier, far less pleasant, and far more dangerous to those who receive the surfeit of financial rewards in the modern economy.