Critics often accuse economists of being out of touch or, as Marx called us, the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class. Three papers published in the last three weeks put the lie to both of those accusations. They all revolve around the realities of post-pandemic work, tying in decades-long changes with those impelled by our collective reaction to the pandemic.  The first paper by Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo looks carefully at the role technology – specifically automation – played in the rise in wages and earnings inequality over the last 50 years in the United States. They found between…