"We're coming to see that the period after the Second World War, and maybe even the period from the 1890s on, is the exception to the historical rule. It is a period of very high social security, relatively. Many more people living stabler lives than ever before. It's a period in which these jobs ... became the norm. To work was to have a job.
We fell into this, given our notion of progress. It was very easy to buy the idea that this was a higher state of civilization than the one that preceded it. In other ways, a job is a socially more sophisticated arrangement. The work of Taylor, and Henry Ford and all the other stuff convinced us that this was the way that the modern world was going to get its work done. And I don't think it ever occurred to anybody until pretty late in the '80s -- well, some scholars must have seen it ... that this experience we were having was historically unusual and might not last. And I think what has happened is that it is historically unusual and it hasn't lasted. ... "
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