MAGA has a bone to pick with Tech

The upper middle class has thrived under globalism. Their upward mobility is an important pillar of our society

French peasants had been impoverished for centuries, but the storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution didn't start in earnest until the upper middle class, the bourgeoisie, became disillusioned. Modern technologies are becoming so woefully devoid of humanity and empathy they risk alienating and even worse, impoverishing the last remaining pillar of social cohesion in the US, the upper middle class.

AI use is linked with a loss of critical thinking. Short Video Addiction (SVA) manifests as structural changes in the brains of our children. Half the companies in Silicon Valley want to intermediate our senses with electronics, from which the data is harvested and sold without our consent or knowledge. The list goes on and on. When did technology go from being in service of humankind to the other way around?

Technology leaders outsourced middle class jobs decades ago. Social media oligarchs control the information that is acceptable for consumption. Technology and political leaders are preparing to use the remaining trillions of middle class savings to subsidize energy, water and data infrastructure that will compete with middle class consumption to ultimately compete with whatever remains of middle class labor. Is that really the plan?

AI in particular has the potential to impact the upper middle class much like automation and outsourcing did the lower middle class. Knowledge jobs are at risk and since software moves much faster than hardware, the social changes can be precipitous.

Moreover, the Pareto winner-take-all distribution of human contribution risks even more extreme concentrations of wealth then we see today. Universal Basic Income is one proposal being kicked around to redistribute the wealth and gains from AI but a couple of courageous papers from the NBER show that UBI leads to decreases in work, sleep and childcare.

Let's not fool ourselves. MAGA has taken note. And if our leaders can't blaze a sustainable trail that ensures prosperity, the upper-middle class will join MAGA and "Let them download bits" may become the modern equivalent of "Let them eat cake".