After the next four years of the crashing and burning of our democratic government, hopefully, we will be able to rebuild into a better America. But the challenges we will be facing will be unprecedented, and I can’t begin to imagine how we will rise from those ashes.

One of the challenges was predicted in a book I read back in the late 90s, The End of Work. I am re-reading it now and will share some of the ideas put forth in the book.

In the meanwhile, this is from the back of the book:

Rifkin argues that we are entering a new phase in history — one characterized by the steadily and inevitable decline of jobs. Sophisticated computers, robotics telecommunications, and other Information Age technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry. Near-workerless factories and virtual companies loom on the horizon.

While the emerging “knowledge sector” and new markets abroad will create some new jobs, they will be too few to absorb the vast numbers of workers displaced by the new technologies

Rethinking the nature of work is likely to be the single most pressing concern facing society in the decades to come.

Rifkin warns that the end of work could mean the demise of civilization as we have come to know it, or signal the beginning of a great social transformation and a rebirth of the human spirit.

The book does not even mention the threats of Artificial Intelligence, which makes his argument even more relevant.

His projections and suggestions offer hope to all of those future unemployable citizens and are especially important to those elderly, disabled and/or homeless individuals who, even today, suffer without a safety net.