It seems to me that the programming industry is in a race to the bottom. If we take the practices of:

1. Not taking time to implement best practices
2. Using other's people code as much as possible (custom code as a liability)
3. Using increasingly higher level languages to improve productivity
4. GUI based development "tools" that greatly simplify "programming" and do not require people to understand the plumbing behind the code

These things imply to me that we are in a race to becoming like any other office worker. It is in the employer's interest for things to not require skill (easier to replace), for things to be prebuilt (less project time).

My point here is that a) is there a misalignment between skill and the economic interests of the employer? and b) if there is, how do you mitigate it to enforce professional standards?