Anthropic’s early labor-market evidence finds no increase in unemployment in the most AI-exposed occupations, but slower hiring for younger workers, while overall US unemployment remains at 4.3%. AI will undoubtedly disrupt more jobs over time, but comparative advantage doesn’t disappear because AI gets better: when machines do more of certain tasks, humans will shift toward other jobs, and whole new industries will emerge.
More modest US universal basic income trials have found recipients worked less and enjoyed more leisure, but showed little evidence of better entrepreneurship or lasting mental-health gains. Yet a basic income’s fiscal cost is high. Even $1,000 monthly payments to every American would cost $3.7 trillion annually — 50% of today’s federal budget.
It seems fruitless to debate a bigger new entitlement we cannot currently afford to solve a labor-market apocalypse we haven’t yet seen.