That pesky middle class is always sticking up for their rights and freedoms. Just a little more price inflation and a little more wage stagnation and they’ll be owning nothing and being happy about it right according to the WEF’s plans.
I think this view is overly pessimistic. I’ve started to find statistics like the ones in this article to be more or less useless. No error bars, no distributions, no detail - maybe that trend is really just the top 2% (by pay) of the (tech) workforce being laid off. If bigtech lays off a bunch of people and those people end up working for less at startups, then perhaps this is better for everyone, especially in a high-interest-rate economy where those startups need to build real value and become durable businesses.
Private markets are still going to look for alpha in the tech sector (most relevant to readers of HN), and there is still lots of dry powder that can only be held for so long. The next 5 years could produce some really strong businesses that are currently only ideas - as long as we’re optimistic and willing to keep going
Not everyone is in tech. Most wages have been either stagnant or increased well below actual inflation. Housing, food, and energy costs are way up, far higher than the official inflation numbers imply. Middle class purchasing power is decreasing year on year and people are relying too much on credit to maintain their previous standards of living. It’s all going to come apart once people exhaust their credit.
That pesky middle class is always sticking up for their rights and freedoms. Just a little more price inflation and a little more wage stagnation and they’ll be owning nothing and being happy about it right according to the WEF’s plans.