The main message of 2016 was that we are entering a period of economic and political upheaval comparable to the industrial revolution of 1780-1850, and nothing expressed that message more clearly than Donald Trump's desire to appoint Andrew Puzder as his secretary of labor — even though it's clear that neither man understands the message.
Puzder will bear a large part of the responsibility for fulfilling Trump's election promise to "bring back" America's lost industrial jobs: 7 million in the past 35 years. That's what created the Rust Belt and the popular anger that put Trump in power. But Puzder is a fast-food magnate who got rich by shrinking his costs, and he has never met a computer he didn't like.
"They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age-, sex- or race-discrimination case," he rhapsodized. They also never take lunch or toilet breaks, they'll work 24 hours a day, and they don't have to be paid. So out with the workers and in with the robots.