Global unemployment has now reached its highest level since the great depression of the 1930s. Technologies which have brought miraculous improvements in efficiency and productivity have also slashed the numbers employed in manufacturing and agriculture, while the service sector is quite unable to take up the slack. While a tiny elite of knowledge workers -scientists, entrepreneurs an consultants - will still be in demand, most jobs are disappearing fast, resulting in the creation of a morose underclass, caught between apathy and criminal violence. Such, argues the author in this powerful polemic, is our true situation today. We can either bury our heads the sand or urgently rewrite the social contract by expanding the independent (non-profit) third sector, cutting the working week and sharing out the fruits of progress. The choice will determine the future of us all.