this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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I mean, the idea that all white-collar jobs could be automated is obviously stupid. But even if just 50% could be made redundant by increased productivity, or 20%, that would generate enormous downward pressure on wages and salaries and turn this kind of job into college-degree burger flipping, economically.
The world went through the very similar blue-collar job destruction in the 80s and 90s. Back then, Conservatives decided this was all a Very Good Thing, and Neoliberals shrugged. The made vast swaths of industrial areas suddenly derelict and impoverished. It's hard to believe that Detroit was once one of the wealthiest cities in America.
We must tax companies that use AI to reduce workforce to offset cost benefits. Society will have to deal with the suddenly impoverished accountants and lawyers and needs extra revenue.
The worst part of this AI revolution is that it affects most directly those that have the least experience, as it's easier to replace an entrant with software. Yet another way young people are screwed, yet another way society absolutely needs to step in to make sure the next generation has a fighting chance.
And now it's $80 an hour or more to hire a plumber. This is a bad deal no matter how you slice it.
And the commenter above is correct. If AI could do these jobs, so could cheap labor overseas. So the $80 an hour plumber is much more likely than the outsourcing that resulted in the destruction of Detroit as. manufacturing hub.
it would likely generate no-college graduates. even now some schools have enrollment issues, due to job prospects of already graduates telling thier friends/family entering college how bad it is.
I can't even begin to imagine what it must feel like to start college, to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and not to have the faintest idea if there is actually going to be a job at the end of all that work. At least, where I live college is almost free.
Blue collar jobs were mostly not automated, just sent overseas.
It sounds like your problem is with capitalism and not AI and automation. You don't like the extra productivity going towards private institutions rather than the workers they displaced or society as a whole, right?
Even with capitalism there is distributivism and there is "neoliberal" capitalism and there is mercantilism and oligopolism. The former two don't become worse or better from automation. More likely better. The latter two become worse because everything new is power-guarded from benefiting anyone other than elites having power.
It's the old question that was being explored in science fiction even before computers. It just took hundred years to reach the problem itself.
I would agree. I find that AI does have useful applications, for example in language translation, medical imaging, etc.