No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass
Western societies are creating a permanent underclass excluded from stable employment due to automation, deregulation, and weakened safety nets. No amount of individual effort or education guarantees escape from this precarious economic trap.
Background
Fernando Borretti's essay "No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass" argues that extreme wealth inequality is creating a durable, hereditary underclass in wealthy countries — and crucially, that this is not a temporary problem resolvable by individual effort or education reform. The term "permanent underclass" draws on sociologist William Julius Wilson's work on jobless ghettos, but extends it globally: Borretti contends that automation, financialized capitalism, and political capture by the rich have made upward mobility a statistical anomaly. The piece is notably pessimistic even by left-leaning standards, rejecting both meritocratic reformism and revolutionary optimism. It reflects a broader post-2016 turn in English-language tech/political writing toward class-structural analysis, influenced by thinkers like Yanis Varoufakis (technofeudalism) and the antiwork movement, though Borretti's tone is more analytic than polemical.