“They gave your job to AI. They picked profit over people. That’s not going to happen when I’m in office. We’re going to tax companies that automate away your livelihood. We’re going to halt excessive use of AI. We’re going to make sure the American Dream isn’t outsourced to AI labs. Anyone who isn’t with us, anyone who is telling you that AI is the future, is ignoring the here and now — they’re making a choice to trade your livelihood for the so-called future. That’s a trade I’ll never make. There’s no negotiating away the value of a good job and strong communities.”
Persuasive, right? It’s some version of the stump speech we’re likely to hear in the lead up to the midterm elections that are just around the corner--in fact, they’re less than a year away. It’s a message that will resonate with Americans who have bounced from one economic crisis to the next — wondering when, if ever, they’ll be able to earn a good wage, pay their rent, and buy groceries without counting pennies as they walk down each aisle.
It’s a message that’s also destined to leave Americans economically worse off in the long run.
Technology causes job displacement. It’s a tale as old as innovation. In the short run, this can lead to a spike in unemployment and, as a result, a demand for political action to ease economic insecurity. One tactic may be to stop the development and spread of the technology itself. The thinking goes that if today’s jobs are artificially protected from tomorrow’s technology, then more Americans can hang on to their current role and maintain some degree of stability.
Politically, such thinking might make sense — politicians are rewarded for thinking about the here and now under our current electoral system. Yet, economically, this approach lacks support. The surest way to help everyday folks achieve the American Dream in the Age of AI is not the wrap them and our economy in AI bubble wrap. That’s actually a recipe for economic calamity.
The states and nations that survive and thrive through the disruptions brought on by AI will be the ones that focus on economic resiliency, not economic entrenchment. This tactic involves three key strategies: AI literacy, AI adoption, and economic dynamism.
On AI literacy, beware the party that effectively encourages you to ignore AI or even actively avoid it. Fundamental knowledge of whether and how to use AI tools will become as basic as Outlook proficiency in a few years. In the same way that most folks no longer include “Word” and “Excel” as core competencies on their resume, employers will soon come to expect that applicants and employees have familiarity with AI tools. Policymakers should help you prepare for that world rather than try to dodge it. Any delayed introduction to AI will diminish the long-term competitiveness of U.S. workers. It’s no secret that ongoing exposure and education to new technology make it easier to pick up the next tool. The individuals who continually experiment with AI and learn its faults and strengths will have an easier time keeping up with the rapid advances in the field. On the other hand, when protectionist measures expire and workers with little AI training find themselves back on the market, they will have a much tougher time.
On AI adoption, beware the party that chastises companies for using AI and otherwise attempts to block certain professions from trialing new AI uses. There are many unproductive ways to use AI — uses that detract from a company’s bottom line, that hinder operational efficiencies, and that harm consumers. Critically, however, there are uses that will result in new products, new services, and, most importantly, new jobs. Discovery of both the good and the bad will not happen by accident. If we’re going to uncover the jobs of the future, then we need businesses today to act as AI laboratories.
Finally, on economic dynamism, beware the party that treats it as its mission to freeze our economy in amber by constructing barriers to entry for AI-forward firms. At these early stages of AI, it’s easy to spot bad apples — firms that come up with the latest “AI” play that’s actually a poorly disguised scam. This may be particularly likely in areas like education, mental health, and financial services. Short-term political thinking may lead candidates to urge whole bans on AI in certain industries. This may generate applause at a pep rally, but it’s also likely to quash entrepreneurial activity in those areas. Startups that could have developed the next great app that empowers more Americans in the classroom or supports them through hard times will pivot to other fields or simply not get off the ground. That’s not a dynamic economy; that’s an economy that rewards entrenched incumbents.
In sum, the future isn't a trade-off between livelihoods and technology. That's a false choice, born of short-term political thinking and economic anxiety. The real trade is between a nation that chooses to bury its head in the sand—and one that chooses to adapt and lead.
Instead of trying to halt the inevitable march of progress, our focus should be on preparing Americans for the future. That means championing AI literacy in our schools and workplaces, so that every citizen can become an active participant in this new economy. It means fostering AI adoption by giving businesses the freedom to experiment and discover the new products, services, and jobs that will drive our growth. And it means cultivating economic dynamism by removing the regulatory barriers that stifle innovation and protect powerful incumbents.
The true American Dream isn't about clinging to the past; it's about building a better future. The path to a strong, prosperous, and resilient nation in the age of AI isn’t through prohibition—it’s through preparation. Now’s the time to anticipate and refute those who want to score political points with short-term perspectives.
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and author of the Appleseed AI substack.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.