This seems very weird to me. From a WSJ op-ed by Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps:
it is important to note that advances in productivity, in generally pulling up wage rates, make it affordable for low-wage people to avoid work that is tedious or grueling or dangerous in favor of work that is more interesting and formative.
Really? Granted, we've got fewer extractive industries in America than we once did, but that's been the emergence of resource-rich developing countries that can open their environments to foreign investors now that transport is cheap. Are low-wage people, however, really so intellectually challenged by the service industry, by cashier jobs, by product stocking, by home nursing? What sort of jobs is Phelps talking about?
