Decades and decades of unfettered Capitalism.

- Labor protections getting weaker over time, plus courts usually siding with employers. Overtime laws got chipped away, and a lot of folks get called "contractors" when they're basically employees.

- Jobs can move overseas way easier now, so workers don't really have the same leverage they used to.

- Big companies buying everything up, regional monopolies forming, and those non-compete clauses making it harder for people to switch jobs.

- At-will employment, temp work, gig jobs, outsourcing, just makes job security pretty shaky.

- Decades of anti-union talk, pushing this whole "you're on your own" idea, and selling "flexibility" like it's some amazing benefit.

- More workplace surveillance, algorithm-based schedules, and automated tracking, just gives the employer more control.

People quite literally fought tooth and nail with blood sweat and tears to gain their rights over the course of years and years during the 18th and 19th century. Many quite literally died, and a lot more were beaten to pulp by the job owners who hired muscle to do it.

Those gains we made have slowly been eroded.

And, as usual, you can trace the majority of this back to Reagan.

Busting unions, vilifying poor people, weakening and removing regulations, and (very crucially) changing the basic philosophy behind antitrust.

90% of the time, the answer is "Ronald Reagan". Most of the remaining 10%, the answer is "Jack Welch".

The price of the US being more "business-friendly" vs Europe. The problem with the race to the bottom is you might win, as they say.

Mass migration, meaning there’s an overwhelming supply of workers and not so much demand for them. In other words work turned into a buyer’s market. Cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783586