Labor

It’s hard to avoid the constant prophecies of doom about how AI is going to take our jobs – with some of these already being borne out. However, AI leaders such as Elon Musk have declared that the population will be supported by Universal Basic Income (UBI) instead, in which the government will financially support everyone through the huge revenues produced by AI. “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk posted on X earlier this year. Musk imagines that we wouldn’t be unemployed but rather liberated – UBI would allow us to live without the mundane tasks of everyday life, like making PowerPoint presentations, writing emails or finding synergies in our deliverables.

Vladimir Putin likes good statistics. At a government meeting on April 15, even as he acknowledged that growth was slowing, he pointed proudly to Russia's unemployment rate: 2.1 percent, a record low. Proof, he suggested, that the economy remains fundamentally sound despite everything the West has thrown at it. The Russian President would do better to worry. A record low unemployment rate is not, in normal circumstances, cause for alarm. In Russia's case it signals something closer to a slow-motion emergency. For the first time in its post-Soviet history, Russia has run out of workers.

Some 14,000 cast members at Disneyland in California voted by an overwhelming 99 percent to authorize a strike on Monday; however, a coalition of union members reached a tentative agreement with Disneyland Tuesday, mainly revolving around wage increases. The coalition, titled Disney Workers Rising, will open a vote on the agreement at Disneyland for employees on July 29. According to Disney, there are more than 35,000 cast members (what they call their employees) who work at Disneyland in Orange County, California. The terms of the agreement have yet to be disclosed, but if Disney agreed to raise wages by twenty-five cents an hour — which certain employees have hypothesized could happen, though it will likely be by much more — that would cost them more than $18 million per year.

Low wages are bad for everyone in the United States — not just for the working poor. Every major social crisis Americans face today — falling fertility, the loneliness epidemic, bitter conflicts over racial and gender identity, and growing partisan polarization in politics — is worsened if not caused by the proliferation of low wage jobs caused by the collapse of worker power. For centuries, children in the English-speaking countries have learned a proverb that has equivalents in other European languages (“want of” in this context means “lack of”): For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.

Economic news over the last few months has been bleak. Whether it’s inflation, supply chain disruptions, or the threat of recession, worrying news abounds. But among the headlines, there was a topic that briefly bubbled to the surface before being all but forgotten: a potential strike by the country’s railroad workers. Amtrak, in anticipation, canceled all cross-country routes, but Labor Secretary Marty Walsh averted a strike at the eleventh hour by negotiating quite literally through the night to find an agreement with the workers. It’s easy to forget about rail. In a time when inflation and potential recession are dominating headlines, transportation issues just don’t seem as interesting.

Since its postwar rise, the American conservative movement has staked its reputation on defending the free market as an abiding principle. Conservatives pointed to the liftoff in the American economy caused by the Reagan tax revolution and the deregulation of heavily controlled parts of the economy. Less government and less regulation were better for the American economy. The left disagreed with this fundamental axiom of conservative wisdom. Now, surprisingly, many on the right have joined them. Something obviously changed in the post-Cold War period. China’s entry to the World Trade Organization in 2001 resulted in the so-called China Shock, or the loss of 15 to 20 percent of manufacturing jobs in America.