That image looks AI-generated, but yes, the state of design in the US is appalling. And no, it isn’t due to cost (directly). It’s due to choosing. Overall, the cost of far superior and more human-centered design would only be about 10% more. Amortized over the length of a mortgage, in most places that’d be about $50 a month.
Paying $50 a month more to live in something that doesn’t look like a second-rate horse barn would be worth it to most people.
Zeynep is wrong and mostly so is Ernie. Most of the bust is due to AI. It’s early stages, but that’s the cause. The post-Covid hiring boom was mostly cleared out by the beginning of 2024. There was a lacuna, then AI-related job losses (in tech, but other areas too) started in mid-2025 and are increasing all the time.
Most people can’t even see the past, much less the present or the future. A bit disappointing from Zeynep, really.
Economic and political uncertainty will do that. And it’s going to get a lot worse.
Save your money now; you will need it later.
This is akin to Warren Buffet’s (correct) contention that the most important task is to survive in the market, not necessarily to make the most profit possible.
That’s how I’ve always done it.
It’ll be 2-3x that at least. That’s way off.
The economists are lying to all of us about AI. There will be massive job loss because of it. It’s already happening.
Econs have to prevaricate, dissimulate and fabricate. Being professional liars is what most of them do. It’s their entire purpose in life. Most of them would not have jobs otherwise.
This is cringe-worthy economist lying here. Displacement and job loss from AI didn’t really start in earnest until the second half of 2025.
Why do they do this shit?
Basically (but unsurprisingly), economists have been lying about immigration and its economic “benefit.”
That’s been a big change everywhere in my lifetime, the hidden fees and predatory up-charges that are pervasive in every industry.
Let’s use her example, ice cream. Back in the 1980s it was like a $1 for a cone. For that, you could get any kind of cone you wanted — waffle or plain — and usually a topping of some kind. No up-charge.
Now nearly everything is extra, often even with a hidden but mandatory gratuity on top of the normal tip as well as some BS “service fee.” All of this should just be banned, IMO.
The risk of AI is not that it doesn’t work. It already does, no matter what the BlueSky clowns claim.
The risk is that it eliminates jobs and funnels even more money to the rich while creating a permanent underclass of former white-collar professionals.
Unlike what economists believe, those people won’t find any other roles as anything else they could do can be performed better and vastly faster by AI. And no one seems to be dealing with this fact at all in any credible way.
Part of it is clownery, but part of it is understandable: a lot of people realize they will be out on the street if (now it looks like when) AI is able to do their jobs.
A large part of the left just wishes to take things away from people with no other goal at all, though. They just enjoy it and would do it regardless.
Anyone who believes that is smoking crack. Companies post something like 40% ghost jobs now. That number is just bunk.
Good. Deny every single H1B application; send them all home.
But, but, but…I was just reading the other day how economists were 100% certain AI was having no effect on the economy and probably never would.
LOL.
Of course it is having an effect. And it’s going to increase a whole lot. It’s painful to be surrounded by clown idiots.
Tax on unrealized capital gains strongly disincentivizes investment in a way that will actually (which doesn’t happen in most other scenarios where fear-mongering occurs) trigger capital flight and is guaranteed to eviscerate the productive industry of any country that implements it.
This is simply not the way you do what they are attempting. A better proposal is that more shares (voting and non) be allocated to the lower tiers of a company. For one. There are others. But this is about the worst possible thing you could do to make yourselves and your progeny poor.