ECONOMICS

When ‘Trickle Down’ Hits the Rich

It was one thing when only the poor were affected, but now it’s about to hit everyone

This is exactly the type of worker AI is coming for next. Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash

Financial catastrophe isn’t just coming for the poor anymore. It’s about to gut the professional class. And nobody seems ready for it.

Will this force us to reckon with how we’ve always treated the poor?

The meritocracy myth we believed

It’s baked into American DNA: If you work hard in this country, you will succeed. The hidden subtext was that if you did not financially succeed, it was your own fault so nobody needed to worry about you.

We were promised that wealth would trickle down. Instead, it’s the consequences that are trickling down. What started with blue-collar workers is now flooding into boardrooms, marketing departments and engineering teams. Many will be swept away.

AI is displacing the skilled class

Ever since the industrial revolution, machines have taken the jobs of manual laborers.

Now, it’s erasing the futures of people who thought they had done everything right. People who earned advanced degrees, bought pricey homes and established lifestyles dependent on generous…