Everyone has a stake in keeping the unemployment rate low. A single percentage point increase in unemployment is tied to a jump in the poverty rate of about 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points. Higher rates of unemployment are likewise associated with an increase in rates of depression among the unemployed and, in some cases, reduced mental health among their family members. Based on that finding, it's unsurprising that higher rates of unemployment are also correlated with higher rates of divorce. Finally, and somewhat obviously, unemployment leads to a surge in social safety spending. Everyone benefits when more folks have meaningful, high-paying work.
That’s why everyone needs to pay attention to the very real possibility that AI will lead to at least a temporary surge in unemployment. Economists vary in their estimates of how AI will lead to displacement. Gather three economists together, and they’ll probably offer nine different predictions—they’ll tell you that AI is advancing at different rates in different fields, that professions vary in their willingness to adopt AI, and that a shifting regulatory framework is likely to diminish AI use in some sectors. And, of course, they’re right!
Given that we all have a stake in navigating this uncertain unemployment picture, we need to lean into a bend, but don’t break economy: one in which AI is accepted as a driver of innovation, as well as a disruptor of the status quo, but not a destroyer of economic well-being and opportunity. AI, like waves of prior technology, can spur the sort of productivity gains that are associated with economic growth that benefits us all. A brief by the Penn Wharton Budget Model forecasts productivity gains and related increases in GDP of 1.5% by 2035 and around 3% by 2055.
While GDP is not a measure of human well-being nor economic security among the public, it’s a signal of growth and economic opportunity that at least presents us with the opportunity to invest more in our communities, institutions, and innovators. Those eager to put AI back in the bottle risk depriving Americans of the chance to help build the future by learning new skills and starting new ventures. As summarized by Robert D. Atkinson, “Without productivity growth to create a ‘bigger pie’ there is no way for living standards to increase, especially given that the worker-to-retiree ratio will decline over the next two decades as baby boomers retire.”
The key is that we invest more in the transition period between the jobs of today and those of tomorrow. Our track record on this front is sorely lacking. Retraining programs tend not to lead to long-term increases in earnings. Focused on helping displaced workers find “in-demand” jobs, these programs are more focused on the immediate needs of employers rather than the future well-being of the employee. For example, many programs direct participants into low-wage, high-turnover roles such as certified nursing assistant positions and long-haul trucking.
A clearer, more reliable path toward economic security in the Age of AI is necessary so that people do not fear technology but rather embrace it and the growth it may bring about. A few policy proposals can move us in that direction. For one, we should replicate and scale up the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) program. This effort may have saved more than 1,000 jobs through investments in novel projects across the country. A similar approach—private-public efforts that invest in emerging opportunities in regional economic hubs—could be applied across several sectors.
Second, it's time to reauthorize and expand the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Developed as part of America's Seed Feed, these programs target U.S. small businesses as engines of innovation and new jobs. Over the course of 1995-2017, support for small businesses resulted in an average of 65,000 jobs per year. That’s an incredible record of success that deserves ongoing support.
In sum, fear-mongering about the economic disruptions posed by AI is at odds with historical precedent and is unproductive. “Historically,” based on research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “the income-generating effects of new technologies have proved more powerful than the labor-displacing effects: technological progress has been accompanied not only by higher output and productivity, but also by higher overall employment.” Speculative reports and exaggerated headlines deny this reality and undermine efforts to invest in transition programs.
The progress forecasted by the OECD will only be paired with societal progress if we take the creation of economic bridges seriously—let’s help people connect to the jobs of the future rather than rile them up in defense of the status quo.
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.