Charles Hugh Smith – My theme this week is the changing world of work. The goal of this week’s five-part look at the changing world of work is to look forward, rather than dwell with misty-eyed longing for what is now firmly in the past.

Let’s start by establishing a socio-economic context for the discussion: the class and income structure of the U.S.

The conventional class structure is divided along the lines of income, i.e. the wealthy, upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class and the poor.

A few years ago I suggested that a more useful scheme is to view America through the lens not just of income but of political power and state dependency, as a Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012).

But this 3.5-class structure did not capture the changing nature of employment, income and wealth/political power, so last year I subdivided America’s socio-economic spectrum into nine classes.

This nine-class structure is not feudal, in the sense of extremely limited social and economic mobility; only the Oligarchy Class is nearly impervious to upward social mobility, and even this class can be cracked open by anyone amassing billions of dollars in productive assets.

It is however neofeudal, a term I use to describe a society and economy dominated by financialization and the apex of wealth and political power that wealth buys. The classes below this apex are either tax donkeys, Upper Caste technocrats serving the apex, or the lower classes that are bought off with social welfare and various modern iterations of bread and circuses.

I described the tax donkeys in Neofeudalism 101: Strip-Mining the Upper Middle Class.

The bread and circuses class is aptly described in this first-hand report: I live better on Welfare then I ever did working.

The working poor now toil to serve the well-paid technocrats: The Shut-In Economy: In the new world of on-demand everything, you’re either pampered, isolated royalty, or you’re a 21st century servant.

Let’s review the nine classes Continue reading →