I was reading an article in MIT Technology Review. David Rotman discussed the revolution in technology that’s contributed to the end of the middle class. New studies indicate that a change in automation by robots started in 2000 and has contributed to employment drop as productivity rose.

A study of where most of the robots have been sold has revealed 80 percent went into the services industry including warehouses, food stores (self-checkers) and manufacturing. As these sales started to take off, the people displaced ended up in lower paying jobs. Manufacturing in this country has dropped in half since 1980. Low- to medium-skilled jobs dropped while high salary high technical jobs soared. There are two groups who predictably will be left by the year 2030: the upper income and the low income.

Many will point to mega-corporations moving their headquarters and manufacturing overseas. When I taught business at U of Phoenix I told students that we will continue to see a growth in loss of corporations to foreign countries because of taxes and a better technically trained work force who work for lower wages.

It is no secret we are revamping education again to meet the challenge. We may produce a more technically oriented work force, but it will be decades until the wages around the globe catch up to U.S. standards and jobs flow back.

Jobs in this country grew a whopping 37 percent in the 1940s mostly due to the war. By the 1960s it shrunk to 30 percent growth over the decade. Over the 2000 to 2010 decade the growth was a loss of -1 percent. We lost our growth and we are losing our middle class jobs.

As automation wipes out all the low-end jobs and now the middle technical jobs, our country is in a political crossfire with other nations. Our nation will look like France in the middle ages.