Office jobs that pay enough to achieve "middle-class" lifestyles are decreasing and mostly closed to new generations. Software engineering and similar STEM fields that were once one of the few that promised the illusion of meritocratic security and class mobility are fading away. And like Upton Sinclair's quote[0], when I sounded the alarm (prematurely) ~2018-2021 in industry to other software engineers that big salaries and high demand were on the decline, I was met with resistance and disbelief.

What the future holds for 99.999% of humanity who isn't an owner or somehow locating a lucrative niche specialty is more or less globally flattening into similar states of declining real wages for almost everyone. Meanwhile, megacorp capital owners and their enabling corrupt government regimes are more and more resembling racketeering and organized crime syndicate aristocracies with extreme wealth distribution disparities that generally aren't getting any better.

The situation of greater desperation for income invariably drives people to non-ideal choices:

a. Find a new field of work that make less money

b. Sacrifice ethics to work at companies that cause greater harm in exchange for more money

c. Assume the on-going risks of launching a business or private consulting practice

d. Stay and agree to greater demands for productivity, inconvenience, bureaucracy, and micromanagement for less pay

e. Give up looking for work, semi-retire, and move to somewhere like another state or country where the cost-of-living cheaper

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0. It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.