agoodwinsmith | They who have get more, they who have not get none.

So. We know that income inequalities have been increasing since the late 70's (http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/society/income-inequality.aspx), and it now appears to be part of a cycle (Capital in the 21st C, Thomas Picketty), and is likely to get much worse, and perhaps require horrible violence to arrest.

Someone has done some research (http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/william-watson-its-the-inequality-of-firms-stupid) and while income inequality is real, it is not uniform. In firms where the highest CEO paycheques occur, the rest of the firm's staff are proportionately compensated, so a file clerk there gets more than file clerk at a lesser firm. Which has led to predictions that some people in the future are going to receive very high paycheques at the expense of a personal life (https://u.osu.edu/zagorsky.1/2015/05/26/futurework/).

Does this mean that families will then put all their resources towards launching at least one member to such exhalted heights and then all the dependents will perform services for the person, so that they can make the most of what little personal time they have? How many can such a person support? In a world where many families have only one or two children, is there enough familial cohesion to get everyone pointed towards one champion?

I'd say no, especially in light of recent generational expectations. We joke about the Millennials and their Helicopter Parents, but that group of children (young adults) is under enormous pressure to be the next Nobel Prize winner in their field; the person who changes the zeitgeist for everyone. None of these people is prepared to step back and be an extra in someone else's movie. And they are not going to be seduced by promises of big piles of money from firms that are unlikely to be able to deliver (the really *big*piles, that is), although no doubt the firm will still want all of the employee's time.

Such people are striking out on their own, away from corporate card houses (http://mashable.com/2015/06/09/post-hipster-yuccie/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link). I am quite attached to this quote, "But I need to be told, repeatedly and at length, that I have valuable ideas. That my talent is singular. That I'm making a dent, the size and location of which is less important than the fact it is shaped like me."

Every generation feels like that, but each has it more or less suppressed or diverted, depending on the previous generation's needs. The soldiers of World War 1 & 2 were told they were making a difference. You can discover your own examples. The Yuccies are propelled by their parents' needs for the one perfect offspring for whom all barriers must fall and before whom all will express their envious inferority.

It's not like there are any sure choices; one might as well enjoy what one does. Besides, who *wants* to be the whole hope and support of a group of strangers?