Welcome to the Big-Data-driven hyper-meritocracy, as Cowen calls it, of those who are STEM-smart (smart in science, technology, engineering, and math) or who understand how technology can be used for marketing and management. Cowen analogizes with “freestyle” chess competitors who — even though they are not necessarily the best human players — adeptly use a variety of computer programs to best both unassisted grandmaster and machine.

As for the rest of us who aren’t entrepreneurial self-starters and whose skills don’t mesh so well with technology, “you may want to address that mismatch, ” Cowen writes. If you don’t, you’ll end up — assuming you are conscientious and hardworking — as one of the employable 85 percent whose job it will be to serve the needs of the 15 percent as personal trainers, valets, nannies, and “other forms of direct personal services.”

Hey, the pay won’t be great, but the Internet will provide more opportunities for cheap entertainment, education, and health care. And more people will move to low-service, low-tax, cheap-housing states such as Texas where a buck goes further. Low earners will have to “reshape their tastes . . . toward cheaper desires.”

Is this future of lowered expectations, as plausible as it is, one that must be or may be? Cowen for the most part adopts a detached “It is what it is” posture.