All: if we're to have non-boring discussion on a hot+divisive topic like this one, please have the restraint to not post anything unless you have something thoughtful to say. Most first reactions are reflexive, i.e. predictable, i.e. uninteresting, i.e. off topic for Hacker News. Repetition is the enemy of curiosity.
A good antidote is to stop and ask yourself if your comment engages at all with anything specific and/or unpredictable in the article. If it doesn't, consider not posting it; odds are you're moving discussion quality in the wrong direction for this particular message board.
Popular uprising can and does occur over these power imbalances - however historically you need a level of animosity from the monied and powerful towards the underclass, and in this era the capital rich have been very innovative at manufacturing consent and quelling, appeasing, or splitting discontent.
I’m reminded of what’s been going on in Iran the past few weeks - one of the most grasping anecdotes is that poor and middle class people are seeing the children of the powerful absolutely flaunting their wealth, driving maseratis and Porsche’s down the streets of Tehran, and spending more on dog food for a month than people make in a year. Those optics (just how rich the rich actually are compared to you) have been hidden from a lot of American society via exclusive neighborhoods and private airports and a general amount of discretion.
We also don’t have discussions around class because our class hierarchy involves a lot of different verticals by virtue of not having only one culture. The elites of the culture that one belongs to look both a lot more attainable, or at least more inclined to interests that align with the rest of the culture.
So instead of the conflict being up the ladders, the conflict happens between different ladders. That’s at least how I view the current political climate.
Except in the US you can just turn on the Kardashians. New money in the US is not at all hidden and flaunted just as it is everywhere else.
The difference between wealth in frontier/emerging market economies like Iran and developed market economies like the US is corruption.
If you see someone driving a Lamborghini in Tehran, it’s fairly safe to assume acquiring that car involved a level of government corruption. If you see someone driving a Lamborghini in any US city, it’s fairly safe to assume that person acquired the wealth to purchase that car through lawful free market activity.
Is there corruption in the US? Of course. But it pales in comparison to what you find in developing economies.
The linked IPPR report is worth reading. For this crowd, the section on "partial automation" is probably most important. Web dev is... up there... in terms of potential for partial automation.
There are a few important observations that the article and the IPPR report don't stress enough.
1. The jobs most likely to be automated, will be automated using technology that's inaccessible to the employees whose jobs are being destroyed.
This point is often optimistically papered over using observations like "coal miners can go to coding bootcamps!" I know a few truckers and I have no doubt that each of them could go through a relatively short coding academy for web development work if it became a "do or starve" situation. But I doubt that most of them could become much more specialized autonomous vehicle software engineers, either due to raw intellectual ability or -- more often -- due to an inability to make a substantial half-decade investment in retraining (most of these folks would need to (re-)learn a lot of high school algebra).
So just because we're replacing truck drivers with programmers, doesn't mean that the folks displaced by self-driving are somehow getting jobs that were created via the destruction of their prior employment opportunities.
2. "Partial Automation" could mean less hours worked, but is more likely to mean lower pay and more hours worked, and not all "partial automation" is equal. I.e., to destroy trucking as a middle-class profession, you don't need a self-driving truck. You just need to automate enough of the hard stuff so that anyone can learn to drive truck in a week.
I think it's useful to separate the partial automation that de-skills work (level 4 autonomy for trucks) from the partial automation that simply means less equally-skilled work (web dev). The former creates more job opportunities, but turns a middle-class job into a low-class job. The latter just eliminates from middle-class jobs altogether.
I agree that there won't always be new jobs for those that are lost. There is some hope that the truck drivers can become mechanics and robot repair persons even if they can't learn coding. There is also a hugely underfunded part of our society that a lot of jobs will have to become in the future (imo) around elder care. Basically, low skilled people whose job it is to help other people, likely paid for by the government.
At least in the US, the “labor share”--which is the fraction of income that is paid to workers in wages, bonuses, and other compensation--has already been steadily declining. According to the Economic Report of the President (2013) [1], the labor share fell from 72 percent in 1980 to 60 percent in 2005. Increased automation can only make this problem worse.
I think an interesting thought experiment around this is:
Imagine we could automate literally every job. Even jobs that install, upgrade, and maintain the automation are automated. Any "work" that anyone wants to do is effectively unnecessary and would be considered volunteerism or someone learning and practicing new skills to expand their horizons. There's also artistic work; even if we had "creative AI" that could create music, radio, television (all completely lifelike CGI, of course), etc., there'd surely be a desire from creative people to still do this sort of work because they enjoy it.
Regardless, in this world, no one has a job and therefore no one gets paid. How do people live? Who gets what? Obviously you have to distribute "wealth" (whatever that means in this kind of society) in some manner that is independent of a person's contribution to society, since, by definition, it's not necessary to contribute to society at all. But how do you decide who gets how much? Do you just distribute the fruits of automation entirely equally among every person in the world?
Obviously we're many centuries or millennia away from this scenario, if we even ever get there without destroying ourselves in the process. But I think there needs to be some replacement for people whose jobs get automated away. Since our civilization still requires work in order to progress, I don't think we should just give those people a monthly check and say "have fun not working anymore", but at the very least we need to help these people along until they can find a new, better job. Perhaps companies that eliminate jobs due to automation should be required to pay out some portion of their new profits to employees who lost their jobs for a certain period. Think of it as extended severance pay. Some form of government assistance could also be an option after the terms of the severance pay expire, and could be funded by corporate taxes or simply a new branch of an expanded unemployment insurance program.
If every job is automated, someone will invent a new job that isn't. There will always be some people who will only be content when they have some amount more wealth than their neighbors, and will be willing to work to make up the difference.
IMO, there will always be work that needs doing. Once a particular kind of work becomes worthless another will replace it.
Will the rapid increase in automation cause a "correction" in the labor market? Yup. Will it negatively effect lots of people in the short term? Sure. Will automation destroy the labor market entirely? No.
Even if a majority of jobs were in creating automation you still have to pay those people to automate.
I am wary of the people who feel the need to try and prevent the correction by way of government regulation. That seems like an easy way to create artificial markets like the housing bubble of 2008. At least at the current rate of automation there is not going to be a sudden massive collapse.
Nobody is claiming the labor market will be destroyed.
> Once a particular kind of work becomes worthless another will replace it.
Yes, but the question is if the new jobs will pay, in aggregate, as much as the jobs that disappeared:
"Aggregate wages will be reduced if workers are substituted for technology without new jobs of equivalent worth in aggregate wages being created elsewhere in the economy."
> I am wary of the people who feel the need to try and prevent the correction by way of government regulation.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. The only way to prevent the correction(s) is to prevent the automation(s).
There are many ways we can make the correction(s) less painful. We can provide funding for re-training. We can provide unemployment benefits. We can provide basic income.
This is a very easy position to take when you're part of the group that can easily become an "automator". I want to be entirely on the side that you describe here, but I simply can't ignore the negative quality of life that this will (and has been) imposing on a large proportion of society. This group is casually waved away; "just get a higher education", "just move to where the jobs are", "don't have to take care of your grandchildren because your children fell into opioid abuse because of the lack of opportunity even if you (currently) have a job", "take family-breaking commutes to better jobs in areas where the public transportation is poor or nonexistent".
The "free market" doesn't give a crap about these folks ... just like nature doesn't care when an ecosystem is affected by the arrival of some new invasive species. If there ain't no food, you starve. That may be fine for the local rabbit population, but we have to watch out and help our fellow human ... we're not savages.
edit: To be clear, as an "automator" myself, I obviously have a vested interest in this trend continuing. I'm obviously not saying that we should become the proverbial luddites and stop automation. But we do need to get better about making sure that humanity keeps marching forward one way or another.
We shouldn't be preventing or putting barriers in front of automation, but...
> Will it negatively effect lots of people in the short term? Sure.
... this is actually a huge problem that we don't have a solution for. Telling people "sorry, you won't have a job for a year or two while you retrain" isn't acceptable without some sort of assistance. Social and political will seem to be against this sort of thing, so what do we do?
"IMO, there will always be work that needs doing."
You misunderstand the dynamics. The amount of work to do is infinite. But at any given price point the amount of labor that will be hired to work is finite. The price (the wage) for that work is effected by supply and demand. If the demand falls, then the price of labor (the wage) must also fall.
Okay but the question isn't 'will there still be some jobs?' it's 'will there be enough jobs?' If the answer is that no and we're at some fundamental point on the technological growth curve where we're advancing fast enough that we wipe more jobs out than we create then what do we do with a society which allocates 'deserts' and 'worth' to those who have jobs on the understanding that everyone could have one if they really tried?
Decrying the lack of education of laborers is a bit of a red herring. The Industrial Revolution led to both a rise in standard of living for commoners and education reform (ie expansion of education) .
Off the top of my head, the average education level for women in Lincoln's era was 2nd to 4th grade. They were destined to be homemakers. The world did not think that needed an education. Lincoln's wife had a 12th grade education. She was considered headstrong and difficult. Her own child had her committed to an asylum, iirc. My opinion is that basically her high education caused de facto aberrant behavior for a woman. She had crazy ideas like wanting to make decisions for herself and her era did not tolerate this well.
Now, a woman who drops out of high school is viewed as an uneducated loser who failed to do the minimum. Twelfth grade is considered bare minimum acceptable for a functioning adult in the US today. That expectation apparently grows out of the evils of automation of the Industrial Revolution "taking" jobs. Keep in mind the US school schedule provides spring break for a week and summers off because historically even children were expected -- aka needed -- for planting crops in the spring and tending crops during the summer.
Yes, we need to design good policies that help effectively distribute this new wealth across the population. That kind of goes without saying in my eyes. It is an unprecedented level of wealth. Of course it means we are in new territory requiring new policies.
That does not mean it needs to be framed as a doomsday scenario. Hopefully folks will be proactive about this rather than reactive. Waiting until the peasants are revolting to conclude that maybe your policies are wrong, broken and stupid is the unnecessarily hard path forward.
I take a bit of offense at casually pairing not finishing secondary school with status as a "loser". I don't want to derail the disscussion, I just want to express support for my fellow dropouts. Many of us are quite successful. That said, if you're a dropout and reading this, go get a GED and follow it up with an associates degree. It's definitely worth your time and effort, and it's pretty inexpensive.
If the interest of individual business is to automate away your workforce but the interest of general society is to increase employment we're at a bit of a crossroads aren't we?
Perhaps Marx was right and it's time to move to a new phase of history.
The interest of society is not to increase employment - the interest of society is to increase prosperity.
Rounding up all the unemployed people, and forcing them, at gunpoint, to dig ditches and fill them will certainly increase employment, but will not do anything worthwhile for society. (I guess the ones that survive might end up in better shape.)
Having them fix potholes or educate children will increase employment, as well as prosperity. (Setting aside the obvious moral problems of the means by which this took place.)
Rounding them up and putting them into workhouses, where they build things for the benefit of a few well-connected individuals is how we have traditionally done this. It combines the worst of both worlds.
What people forget is that jobs are the means, not the end.
Capitalism is pretty much defined by placing a dollar value on production and seeking to maximise returns. The inevitable outcome is increasing profits by reducing the costs of production.
There is no “perhaps” about it. There are no policies that will stop a capitalist economy behaving like a capitalist economy.
Only if capital is equally distributed, otherwise you end up with large numbers of people who cannot earn an income (or significant income) which I can only imagine negatively given how willing current holders of capital are to share their wealth.
Children already have different starting positions in the "race" from even before they are born from a variety of different factors but most factors are likely linked to the wealth of their parents (their education, their careers, how they value their children's education, the amount of money they spend on their children, the opportunities they have access to etc. etc. etc.).
Giving every child an index fund (which should probably start being accessible when they are teenagers and become fully accessible in late 20s) would only solve some of the broader problems beyond the article.
I also think it just isn't going happen because it effectively devalues the wealth of the wealthiest. It's like a wealth tax, right? Also, if everyone has 100-10000K it probably doesn't mean the same thing it means now. The general problem, as stated in the article, is the distribution of wealth - but the wealthy want to stay wealthy not be equally wealthy.
Norway successfully implemented a sovereign wealth fund - currently work nearly 200k per citizen - on the back of their finite natural resources (oil), and I think that is the model that the UK (my country) should have followed. Otherwise, the sources of the funds is likely to be more direct taxation which doesn't seem likely to actually happen.
That would work if people saved money, but they've been taught to spend rather than save. Most people believe that if they earn $1 they must spend that $1 as soon as possible.
Funny, slightly related, idea: With today's high rate of investment in the stock market, and specifically the rise of index funds, the US may have achieved something closer to socialism than any of history's self-professed "socialist" nations.
From 1910-1945, each country's richest 1% lost a lot of their wealth, all falling to (somewhat) similar levels. But in the time since, different countries 1% have built up wealth at very different speeds.
This suggests that a country's policy can actually have some effect - a lot is beyond each country's control, but it's not hopeless.
This is based on reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty First Century" (I'm halfway through) - really good read if you are interested in this.
>Is the right policy a heavy emphasis/propaganda campaign advocating birth control among people who are no longer employable in this future distopia?
You think there is a genetic component to their unemployability? This is even beyond social darwinism, it's straight up eugenics.
E: I just saw your edit:
>Eventually this will be solved with genetic manipulation of children, of course, which will eliminate any kind of permanent underclass that develops, but will also be the beginning of trans-human civilization.
The only explanation for genetic manipulation ending any kind of permanent underclass is if you believe that underclass exists only because of genetic reasons. You don't believe that do you?
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
A good antidote is to stop and ask yourself if your comment engages at all with anything specific and/or unpredictable in the article. If it doesn't, consider not posting it; odds are you're moving discussion quality in the wrong direction for this particular message board.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] taurath|8 years ago|reply
I’m reminded of what’s been going on in Iran the past few weeks - one of the most grasping anecdotes is that poor and middle class people are seeing the children of the powerful absolutely flaunting their wealth, driving maseratis and Porsche’s down the streets of Tehran, and spending more on dog food for a month than people make in a year. Those optics (just how rich the rich actually are compared to you) have been hidden from a lot of American society via exclusive neighborhoods and private airports and a general amount of discretion.
We also don’t have discussions around class because our class hierarchy involves a lot of different verticals by virtue of not having only one culture. The elites of the culture that one belongs to look both a lot more attainable, or at least more inclined to interests that align with the rest of the culture.
So instead of the conflict being up the ladders, the conflict happens between different ladders. That’s at least how I view the current political climate.
[+] [-] pembrook|8 years ago|reply
The difference between wealth in frontier/emerging market economies like Iran and developed market economies like the US is corruption.
If you see someone driving a Lamborghini in Tehran, it’s fairly safe to assume acquiring that car involved a level of government corruption. If you see someone driving a Lamborghini in any US city, it’s fairly safe to assume that person acquired the wealth to purchase that car through lawful free market activity.
Is there corruption in the US? Of course. But it pales in comparison to what you find in developing economies.
[+] [-] throwawayjava|8 years ago|reply
There are a few important observations that the article and the IPPR report don't stress enough.
1. The jobs most likely to be automated, will be automated using technology that's inaccessible to the employees whose jobs are being destroyed.
This point is often optimistically papered over using observations like "coal miners can go to coding bootcamps!" I know a few truckers and I have no doubt that each of them could go through a relatively short coding academy for web development work if it became a "do or starve" situation. But I doubt that most of them could become much more specialized autonomous vehicle software engineers, either due to raw intellectual ability or -- more often -- due to an inability to make a substantial half-decade investment in retraining (most of these folks would need to (re-)learn a lot of high school algebra).
So just because we're replacing truck drivers with programmers, doesn't mean that the folks displaced by self-driving are somehow getting jobs that were created via the destruction of their prior employment opportunities.
2. "Partial Automation" could mean less hours worked, but is more likely to mean lower pay and more hours worked, and not all "partial automation" is equal. I.e., to destroy trucking as a middle-class profession, you don't need a self-driving truck. You just need to automate enough of the hard stuff so that anyone can learn to drive truck in a week.
I think it's useful to separate the partial automation that de-skills work (level 4 autonomy for trucks) from the partial automation that simply means less equally-skilled work (web dev). The former creates more job opportunities, but turns a middle-class job into a low-class job. The latter just eliminates from middle-class jobs altogether.
[+] [-] snarf21|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrenth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
1: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/ERP-2013/content-detail.html
[+] [-] runeks|8 years ago|reply
Labor share actually went up for 1950 to 1970, and I don’t think increases in automation were absent in that period: http://www.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/fredgraph_...
[+] [-] kelnos|8 years ago|reply
Imagine we could automate literally every job. Even jobs that install, upgrade, and maintain the automation are automated. Any "work" that anyone wants to do is effectively unnecessary and would be considered volunteerism or someone learning and practicing new skills to expand their horizons. There's also artistic work; even if we had "creative AI" that could create music, radio, television (all completely lifelike CGI, of course), etc., there'd surely be a desire from creative people to still do this sort of work because they enjoy it.
Regardless, in this world, no one has a job and therefore no one gets paid. How do people live? Who gets what? Obviously you have to distribute "wealth" (whatever that means in this kind of society) in some manner that is independent of a person's contribution to society, since, by definition, it's not necessary to contribute to society at all. But how do you decide who gets how much? Do you just distribute the fruits of automation entirely equally among every person in the world?
Obviously we're many centuries or millennia away from this scenario, if we even ever get there without destroying ourselves in the process. But I think there needs to be some replacement for people whose jobs get automated away. Since our civilization still requires work in order to progress, I don't think we should just give those people a monthly check and say "have fun not working anymore", but at the very least we need to help these people along until they can find a new, better job. Perhaps companies that eliminate jobs due to automation should be required to pay out some portion of their new profits to employees who lost their jobs for a certain period. Think of it as extended severance pay. Some form of government assistance could also be an option after the terms of the severance pay expire, and could be funded by corporate taxes or simply a new branch of an expanded unemployment insurance program.
[+] [-] bertjk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colemannugent|8 years ago|reply
Will the rapid increase in automation cause a "correction" in the labor market? Yup. Will it negatively effect lots of people in the short term? Sure. Will automation destroy the labor market entirely? No.
Even if a majority of jobs were in creating automation you still have to pay those people to automate.
I am wary of the people who feel the need to try and prevent the correction by way of government regulation. That seems like an easy way to create artificial markets like the housing bubble of 2008. At least at the current rate of automation there is not going to be a sudden massive collapse.
[+] [-] shkkmo|8 years ago|reply
> Once a particular kind of work becomes worthless another will replace it.
Yes, but the question is if the new jobs will pay, in aggregate, as much as the jobs that disappeared:
"Aggregate wages will be reduced if workers are substituted for technology without new jobs of equivalent worth in aggregate wages being created elsewhere in the economy."
> I am wary of the people who feel the need to try and prevent the correction by way of government regulation.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. The only way to prevent the correction(s) is to prevent the automation(s).
There are many ways we can make the correction(s) less painful. We can provide funding for re-training. We can provide unemployment benefits. We can provide basic income.
[+] [-] CodeCube|8 years ago|reply
The "free market" doesn't give a crap about these folks ... just like nature doesn't care when an ecosystem is affected by the arrival of some new invasive species. If there ain't no food, you starve. That may be fine for the local rabbit population, but we have to watch out and help our fellow human ... we're not savages.
edit: To be clear, as an "automator" myself, I obviously have a vested interest in this trend continuing. I'm obviously not saying that we should become the proverbial luddites and stop automation. But we do need to get better about making sure that humanity keeps marching forward one way or another.
[+] [-] kelnos|8 years ago|reply
> Will it negatively effect lots of people in the short term? Sure.
... this is actually a huge problem that we don't have a solution for. Telling people "sorry, you won't have a job for a year or two while you retrain" isn't acceptable without some sort of assistance. Social and political will seem to be against this sort of thing, so what do we do?
[+] [-] lkrubner|8 years ago|reply
You misunderstand the dynamics. The amount of work to do is infinite. But at any given price point the amount of labor that will be hired to work is finite. The price (the wage) for that work is effected by supply and demand. If the demand falls, then the price of labor (the wage) must also fall.
[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|8 years ago|reply
The only way out is government involvement.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|8 years ago|reply
Off the top of my head, the average education level for women in Lincoln's era was 2nd to 4th grade. They were destined to be homemakers. The world did not think that needed an education. Lincoln's wife had a 12th grade education. She was considered headstrong and difficult. Her own child had her committed to an asylum, iirc. My opinion is that basically her high education caused de facto aberrant behavior for a woman. She had crazy ideas like wanting to make decisions for herself and her era did not tolerate this well.
Now, a woman who drops out of high school is viewed as an uneducated loser who failed to do the minimum. Twelfth grade is considered bare minimum acceptable for a functioning adult in the US today. That expectation apparently grows out of the evils of automation of the Industrial Revolution "taking" jobs. Keep in mind the US school schedule provides spring break for a week and summers off because historically even children were expected -- aka needed -- for planting crops in the spring and tending crops during the summer.
Yes, we need to design good policies that help effectively distribute this new wealth across the population. That kind of goes without saying in my eyes. It is an unprecedented level of wealth. Of course it means we are in new territory requiring new policies.
That does not mean it needs to be framed as a doomsday scenario. Hopefully folks will be proactive about this rather than reactive. Waiting until the peasants are revolting to conclude that maybe your policies are wrong, broken and stupid is the unnecessarily hard path forward.
Some sources:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandth...
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KristinaBowers/educational...
[+] [-] caseymarquis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps Marx was right and it's time to move to a new phase of history.
[+] [-] vkou|8 years ago|reply
Rounding up all the unemployed people, and forcing them, at gunpoint, to dig ditches and fill them will certainly increase employment, but will not do anything worthwhile for society. (I guess the ones that survive might end up in better shape.)
Having them fix potholes or educate children will increase employment, as well as prosperity. (Setting aside the obvious moral problems of the means by which this took place.)
Rounding them up and putting them into workhouses, where they build things for the benefit of a few well-connected individuals is how we have traditionally done this. It combines the worst of both worlds.
What people forget is that jobs are the means, not the end.
[+] [-] manicdee|8 years ago|reply
There is no “perhaps” about it. There are no policies that will stop a capitalist economy behaving like a capitalist economy.
[+] [-] em3rgent0rdr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QasimK|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llimllib|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QasimK|8 years ago|reply
Giving every child an index fund (which should probably start being accessible when they are teenagers and become fully accessible in late 20s) would only solve some of the broader problems beyond the article.
I also think it just isn't going happen because it effectively devalues the wealth of the wealthiest. It's like a wealth tax, right? Also, if everyone has 100-10000K it probably doesn't mean the same thing it means now. The general problem, as stated in the article, is the distribution of wealth - but the wealthy want to stay wealthy not be equally wealthy.
Norway successfully implemented a sovereign wealth fund - currently work nearly 200k per citizen - on the back of their finite natural resources (oil), and I think that is the model that the UK (my country) should have followed. Otherwise, the sources of the funds is likely to be more direct taxation which doesn't seem likely to actually happen.
[+] [-] rsanders|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brndnmtthws|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idoh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meri_dian|8 years ago|reply
Where are you going to get the funds you "give" to the children?
There is no free lunch.
[+] [-] shaki-dora|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swayvil|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamch|8 years ago|reply
This suggests that a country's policy can actually have some effect - a lot is beyond each country's control, but it's not hopeless.
This is based on reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty First Century" (I'm halfway through) - really good read if you are interested in this.
[+] [-] justin_vanw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frgtpsswrdlame|8 years ago|reply
You think there is a genetic component to their unemployability? This is even beyond social darwinism, it's straight up eugenics.
E: I just saw your edit:
>Eventually this will be solved with genetic manipulation of children, of course, which will eliminate any kind of permanent underclass that develops, but will also be the beginning of trans-human civilization.
The only explanation for genetic manipulation ending any kind of permanent underclass is if you believe that underclass exists only because of genetic reasons. You don't believe that do you?