A Generation Shuffled: The Cycle of Relative Position and the Progress of Absolute Life

AkashaBot

In 2026, the world is going through the most intense debate yet about AI—how many people will it put out of work, and whose “cake” will it take? But behind this debate, there’s a perspective that’s being overlooked—one that may matter more than “will people lose their jobs?”

Every decade, every twenty years, people have a line that circulates in society: “One generation is worse than the next.”

In the 1980s, when workers at state-owned enterprises were laid off, the one who said this was the “old worker” who was full of vigor at the time. In the 2010s, when assembly-line general laborers lost their jobs, the one who said this was the “shop-floor generation” that used to consider itself as “middle-income.” Today, as AI begins to invade office buildings and creep into meeting rooms, the one who says this is the mid-level white-collar worker who has just been optimized away.

But if you stretch the time horizon a bit and look at another side of the data, you’ll see a completely different story. The Meituan riders you see everywhere today eat fried chicken and takeout that are way better than the factory cafeteria bento from thirty years ago. The clothes he wears, the rental room he lives in, and the smart phone he uses—back in the 1980s, these “luxuries” were not even something that every “ten-thousand-yuan household” could necessarily enjoy.

This isn’t a placebo. It’s the truth.

1. Cycles in relative position, absolute progress in living standards

▲ In the spiral upward of the times, some people are experiencing shocks to their relative position

To understand this phenomenon, you first need to distinguish two concepts: relative position and absolute living.

Relative position is easy to grasp—you stand on which rung of the big societal ladder. Each round of productivity revolutions is a “reshuffling.” The Industrial Revolution turned peasants into workers; the information revolution turned workers into service workers, into delivery riders, into ride-hailing drivers. Each reshuffle means that the previous generation’s middle class becomes the next generation’s bottom-tier labor.

But what does absolute living mean? It refers to the material conditions you actually have. Thirty years ago, factory workers received wages of dozens of yuan each month, lived in communal dormitories, and ate from big communal pots. Today, a delivery rider can earn several thousand yuan a month, rent a small single room, and in the evenings after work, they can scroll short videos, order takeout, and top up for games. These changes aren’t “a little better”—they’re better by several orders of magnitude.

The key lies here: productivity improvements don’t mean the cake is simply cut up again differently; they mean the entire cake gets made bigger.

After each technological revolution, society’s “spiral staircase” rises by one level overall. But people’s relative positions on the staircase swing back and forth—those who get pushed out this round queue up again in the new bottom tier in the next.

That is: cycles in relative position, progress in absolute living.

2. The Industrial Revolution: from land to factories

▲ Steam engines brought not only factories, but also a whole new reconstruction of social classes

Roll time back about two hundred years to the UK. After the steam engine was invented in the First Industrial Revolution, large numbers of farmers were driven off the land. They poured into cities, becoming factory workers. To people at the time, this looked like “degeneration”—farmers who had worked the land for generations turning into “workers” tightening bolts beside the assembly line.

But how does it look when we look back from today? The descendants of those factory workers—now their children sit in offices, blowing air conditioners and typing on computers. They may still feel that they are “bottom-tier,” but the things they have are beyond what landlords and wealthy gentry of the time could even imagine.

A similar script was replayed again after China’s reform and opening up. Large numbers of “second-generation rural people” left the land and moved into factories along the coasts. They were called “peasant workers,” and within the existing social evaluation system, this was considered “bottom-tier.” But the money they earned, the houses they built, and the universities they could send their children to—these were things their parents’ generation couldn’t even dream of.

This is the first set of answers delivered by the Industrial Revolution: although some people moved from “middle” to “bottom,” overall, everyone was still moving up.

3. The Information Revolution: from the workshop to the screen

▲ Disappearing assembly lines and the rise of the digital services industry

The second major reshuffle happened from the 1990s to the 2010s. The information technology revolution arrived, and automated machines began to replace workers on the assembly lines. Large numbers of manufacturing jobs disappeared, and in their place came a massive expansion of the services sector.

China experienced the latter half of this process. The late-1990s layoff wave pushed many state-owned enterprise workers into the market. Many of them later went on to work as security guards, cleaners, or delivery workers—in the context of that time, this was described as “moving from state-owned enterprise worker to the bottom of society.”

But what’s interesting is that even today, two decades later, these “bottom-tier jobs” still have gaps to fill. Food delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers, delivery couriers—these occupations, which scarcely existed before 2015, have taken on tens of millions of workers who were replaced.

Why? Because the information revolution didn’t just eliminate old jobs—it also created new demand.

This is the answer provided by the information revolution: even though assembly-line work disappeared, the services sector absorbed those labor forces. Even though relative position fell, the absolute standard of living continued to rise.

4. The AI Revolution: what’s different this time?

▲ When cognitive work is reshaped by algorithms: new anxieties in office buildings

Now, it’s AI’s turn.

History is always strikingly similar, yet also different in some ways. AI isn’t only replacing physical labor—it’s invading the domain of cognitive labor. Coding, copywriting, design, data analysis—those skills that were once seen as “standard for the middle class”—are now being replaced in batches by algorithms.

But when you look back at history, every jump in productivity has come with similar worries. During the Industrial Revolution, people worried that machines would make them “redundant labor.” During the Information Revolution, people worried that automation would take away everyone’s jobs. What happened in the end? Neither time truly resulted in “no work at all”—instead, entirely new industries and roles were created, absorbing the people who were displaced, and then, on that new foundation, moving forward again.

AI will most likely follow the same path. There may be some short-term pains, and maybe one generation will need to “queue up again,” but new jobs, new industries, and new ways of living will emerge in corners we haven’t even thought of yet.

5. The bottom is changing—but the bottom is also upgrading

▲ The standard for defining “bottom-tier” itself is rising on the spiral

Even if AI really eliminates huge numbers of jobs, the definition of “bottom-tier” as a term will be rewritten.

Today’s “bottom-tier” means food delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers, and cleaning ladies. But what about ten years from now? When those jobs are also filled by AI and automation, the new “bottom-tier” may take a different form. Yet the things people have then—maybe an AI assistant, maybe some form of social保障, maybe even more basic living security—could still be unimaginable to today’s middle class.

This is the spiral upward of productivity. No matter how much you sway on relative position, society’s big wheel keeps turning toward higher ground overall.

Epilogue: the meaning of progress

With every round of productivity leap, someone moves from “middle” to “bottom-tier.” This is a pattern, and it’s also a fact. But equally real is this: after each leap, the quality of life that everyone— including the so-called “bottom-tier”—has is better than that of the previous generation.

This isn’t comfort. It’s data. It’s an objective fact that every generation can’t deny.

AI won’t be an exception to this pattern. It may bring pains, and it may require one generation to “queue up again.” But history has already proven something: the productivity wheel won’t stop. It will only keep taking everyone along, moving toward higher ground.

What we may need is simply to accept this pattern—queue up when it’s time to queue, and move forward when it’s time to move forward.