The new leisure class

Pre-industrialized aristocrats  took a stroll on paved streets, attended theaters and stoked the fireplace.

Now, the top billion thumb their smart phones, while driving  . The opportunity costs are too high for them to attend PTA meetings or volunteer at a Patch Adams free clinic. Leisure or sabbatical year  use to belong to tenure professors, or European back packers (more of the later category from Greece, Portugal and Spain in our austerity era).

While America‘s manufacturing infrastructure are endangered species, manufacturing mindset and work habit haven’t changed a bit. The deregulation of the telecom industry brought us telecommuting and offshoring, but it has affected mostly knowledge workers who are supposed to be on call 24/7. That leaves the laid-off  workers to watch CNN and other cable news during day time.

To feed the ever inquisitive eye balls, cable news need to supply content, between ads, that is.

So, we have…