system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: In a day and age of ~7 billion people, more jobs, and more money than can be assumed in much of recorded history, why is it that everyone I talk who has a job to seems to be "overworked and underpaid," even with the recent raising of employment rates?
gpt
Real wages have been falling for decades. Workers know that the same amount of work yields less reward than it used to. The cause for this are many but in general it has to do with moving more investment out of the world of work and into the world of financial speculation. People used to invest money in companies and expected a nice rate of return over years. The company did well in part because it paid workers well for work done. Starting in the 80's more and more stock holders and financial management companies started to demand higher returns and faster return on investment. This meant companies had to do more with less. Fewer workers and lower pay in order to meet the expectations. Outsourcing and moving production out of the US was also done to meet these ends. Further companies stopped pension plans and made other changes to benefits plans to reduce costs to increase profits. And of course they were in a race with other companies doing the same so it was also to stay in business when other companies were cutting even further by getting rid of unions and hiring less skilled/experienced workers. 

We now find ourselves with longer work weeks and more days worked per year than any othr industrialized nation. We have all time high cash reserves in corporate strongboxes. But they are not adding more workers in general because now built into the system are expectations and agreements for pay packages for CEOs that they produce profit levels and returns on investment which can only be met by burning workers.

It does not have to be this way. People like to do good work. People like going to work at a place where sometimes they are running full tilt but at other times they can lay back a bit. But the top level of major companies are taking so much out of the company there is nothing left to hire new help with out affecting their performance numbers. 

In the end these practices are destroying the middle class.The way the US economy works is based on consumerism. the middle class does not have enough money to fuel the economy in a good growth curve any more. More and more now spend most of their money on essentials.  You have to have more employees and pay current employees more to fuel the growth of the economy. Thsi also helps our federal and state governments by getting people off subsidy programs.