You're Not as Smart as a Fifth Grader

A continuing thread in these endeavors is that the rose-colored glasses assertions of the billionaires and their fellow travelers, that we're going through the same sort of transition as happened during farm-to-factory, is bunk. The main point made in these missives is that the higher incomes from factory work over farming didn't demand higher skills or IQs. If anything, assembly line drones needed smaller brains than any marginally successful farmer.

So, today we get the experience of an AI expert. He agrees.

Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the A.I. revolution is not taking certain jobs (artisans, personal assistants who use paper and typewriters) and replacing them with other jobs (assembly-line workers, personal assistants conversant with computers). Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs -- mostly lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too.

Anyone who thinks Donald J. Quisling will stop the carnage is an idiot (nearly all of those "saved" jobs in Indiana, fewer than he claimed of course, are headed South). It's no surprise that the article addresses the key question: new jobs will be a small fraction of removed old jobs. And mostly at lower wages, if social darwinism is the sole wage setting mechanism.

Who will pay for these jobs? Here is where the enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands comes in. It strikes me as unavoidable that large chunks of the money created by A.I. will have to be transferred to those whose jobs have been displaced. This seems feasible only through Keynesian policies of increased government spending, presumably raised through taxation on wealthy companies.

Do you really think that Donald J. Quisling will support that? Well, do you punk?

It's also worth remembering, though not mentioned by this author, that the current procession of job creation is in FIRE. Which is to say jobs that cater to the 10% and 1%. Or, to put it another way, back during the farm-to-factory migration, output was geared to the masses, which is to say, aggregate demand kept expanding. Today, FIRE doesn't create demand for anywhere near the displaced workers, much less new ones.

Have a nice day.