You probably don’t read the same nerdy stuff I do – but have you noticed the number of news stories about “wage stagnation” lately?  The term means that the economy may be growing again, but average wages are not. The headline statistic in the US is that the average wage today has the same purchasing power as the average wage in 1979.  In other words, the average worker has been standing still, economically, for nearly 40 years. In the UK, the bottom 90% of earners (which is most of us) had more or less the same income in 2012 as in 2000.  In Germany, the bottom 90% earned less in 2008 than they had in 1992.  In seven European nations, the average worker has seen wages fall every year since 2009.

And you’ve been wondering where all this populist anger is coming from?

Is Robby the Robot casting a covetous eye on your job?  Or on the jobs of your friends, colleagues, citizens and taxpayers?  A 2013 study by an Oxford University researcher forecast that as many as 47% of jobs in the United States were at risk of being automated out of existence in the future.  These are jobs with a lot of routine work in them that do not, on the other hand, require the soft skills of interaction with human beings.