Paul Krugman’s late to the party again, but I guess it’s good of him to show up. Today, he takes up the banner of the Luddites, the workers who revolted against the mechanization process that was putting them out of jobs and leaving their families to starve:

Mechanization eventually — that is, after a couple of generations — led to a broad rise in British living standards. But it’s far from clear whether typical workers reaped any benefits during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; many workers were clearly hurt. And often the workers hurt most were those who had, with effort, acquired valuable skills — only to find those skills suddenly devalued.

So are we living in another such era? And, if we are, what are we going to do about it?

Many workers were clearly hurt — well, that’s one way to put it. But not so fast, Paul — what do you mean “we”?  “We,” of course, means the middle class, which is, I believe, the New York Times’ editorial policy for framing problems which people have faced for decades as “new.” Now “highly educated workers are as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and devalued,” meaning pretty soon there will be no one with the disposable income to spend on Times subscriptions.