AI? If you're a Brain Worker, Don't Worry!

 I talked with Chat GPT4o

Me:

Can you estimate the quantitative impact of AI on the US GDP over the next decade?

Chat GPT4o:

Predicting the exact quantitative impact of AI on the US GDP over the next decade is highly speculative due to the complex interplay of various factors such as technological advancements, adoption rates, regulatory policies, and economic conditions. However, several studies and forecasts have attempted to estimate the potential impact of AI on economic growth.

For instance, blah, blah, blah...

Or to summarize more summarily:

 AI has the potential to significantly impact US GDP over the next decade, period.

LOL

But ChatGPT4o can chat, and that is scarey, for what many of us do for a living is little more than chat.

For example, how long before your call to the doctor's office when little Jimmy has a rash on his chest or Grandpa is complaining of a buzzing in the ears to find yourself speaking with ChatGPT5o, 6o or whatever.

Doctor's telephone receptionist:

Hellow, this is Doctor Seus's office. How can I help you.

Me:

My son, Jimmy, has come out with a rash on his chest and has a temperature of 101. What should I do?

Doctor's telephone receptionist:

I'm not the doctor, but it sounds like Jimmy might be experiencing symptoms of an illness or allergic reaction. Here's what you can do:

1. Monitor his symptoms: Keep an eye on Jimmy's temperature and the rash. If his temperature rises further or if the rash spreads or worsens, call back to speak with the doctor.

2. Give him fluids: Make sure Jimmy stays hydrated by offering him plenty of fluids like water or electrolyte solutions.

3. Keep him comfortable: Dress him in lightweight clothing and keep the room temperature comfortable. You can also give him acetaminophen or ibuprofen to help reduce his fever and ease any discomfort, but make sure to follow the dosage instructions appropriate for his age.

If Jimmy's symptoms worsen or if you're unsure about what to do, it's always best to err on the side of caution and call back promptly.

Actually, those are slightly abbreviated comments from Chat GPT4o, which have radical implications.

First, your doctor can eliminate the expense of employing a telephone receptionist. He needs merely to subscribe to an AI phone answering service, at a cost that will be a small fraction of what it cost to employ that pleasant young woman who used to answer the phone.

But, second, your healthcare provider can dispense with your doctor since the doctor's AI receptionist can tell you as much, and indeed much more, than the doctor knows relating to your particular condition.

The same trashing of jobs will occur across vast swaths of the economy.

Restaurant waiters? Forget it.

At a restaurant, approach a vacant table and, from a microphone concealed in a vase of plastic flowers, a synthetic voice will inform you whether the table is vacant or if it is reserved for patrons presently enjoying a cocktail in the bar. In the latter case, it will direct you to Table 23 or 17 or any other table that happens to be vacant. Unless, that is, it does not like the look of you. In that case it will simply express in tones of more or less sincere regret that there will be no table for lunch available today.

However, if you have the appearance of a desirable patron, it will be happy to seat you wherever you wish before announcing:

Today we have lentil and oyster soup garnished with chives, etc.

Likewise, AI will displace countless millions of store clerks, civil servants, and others who now earn a living by exchanging information by word of mouth.

What that means is that AI, widely implemented, has the potential to create unemployment worse than that of the Great Depression of the 1930's. Governments will attempt to combat the worst of this effect, which they can do in many ways. For example, allowing public servants to work from home, which will reduce bureaucratic productivity (is that even possible) and hence justify massive expansion in the number of people employed (sort of) in the public sector, matched by a massive increase in taxation to pay public sector wages.

Meantime, the private sector will shed workers at a great pace, driving profits sharply higher in those industries best able to replace people with AI.

But one thing is clear. AI, at it's current stage of development, cannot, except in the most rudimentary way, think. So, if you are a brain worker, your job may be secure for a few years, anyhow. But if ChatGPT eight "o" or nine "o" starts to give specific answers to questions such as how will AI affect US GDP over the next decade, then it will be time to think about early retirement.

Why Trumpism Will Not Die

The chief responsibility of the government of a democratic nation state is the welfare of its own people.  And the best welfare program, as Ronald Reagan stated, is a job. 

Donald Trump gained office by proclaiming what the media and the political class have long tried to ignore, which is that sending manufacturing jobs abroad and permitting mass immigration destroys American jobs and drives down the wages of those whose jobs in America remain.  

In office, Trump enacted a corporate tax cut to encourage manufacturing investment at home, built a wall to halt the flood of illegal immigrants, and imposed tariffs of cheap Chinese manufactured goods. By these means Trump drove US unemployment sharply down, with African-American unemployment reaching an all-time low.

That is the essence of Trumpism. That is why Trump received more votes in 2020 than in 2016. And the lessons of Trumpism have been noted throughout the world, which means that any Western government  presuming to continue with the globalist project for free movement of capital, technology, goods, jobs, and labor is liable for early retirement. 

So, at least does the future seem to be shaping up in Canada for Justin Trudeau's globalist liberal government, which now faces an opposition under a dynamic new leader focused not on greenery, and global do-goodery, but on the interests of working Canadians.

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Donald Trump may win the state of Georgia where 132,000 ballots may be ineligible… Over 600,000 mail-in -Nevada with NO voter roll signature or envelope signature… Michigan counted 149,772 votes in 5 seconds, and less than 6,000 of them were for Trump

Trump Campaign Files Suit in Arizona Claiming Election Day In-Person Ballots Were Rejected

Pennsylvania Mail Carrier Says He Was Ordered To Collect Late Ballots; Graham Demands Action From DOJ

Trump's Treason?

What is treason?

Technically, it is:

the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.

So, in a democracy, treason consists in an attempt to destroy the sovereign people, or overthrow the government elected by the people.

How does that relate to Donald Trump?

Well here, before addressing that question directly, is a comment by Yusef, one of our few but highly intelligent readers:

One of the things bugging me is I believe suffering in the USA will be more intense than elsewhere in the West is the USA pretty much dissolved, or drastically reduced, its social safety net, most dramatically starting in the 1980's. I'm not even sure if enough of the remaining administrative infrastructure is sufficiently strong to be revved up in this soon-to-be emergency situation. As you mentioned above, the politics of both parties, and their policies, have been in the interests of one class, and that's not been the working class. The working class had been sold out by its representatives and "leaders" and the consequences of this were becoming all too apparent even before Covid-19 delivered its coup de grace. I still think there's a lot to be said for the speculation both Covid-19 and the BLM riots and violence, are ways of deflecting blame and rage away from those sell-out politicians and those for whom they sold out. Especially the BLM riots.

In response to which we would say that, for ordinary folks, the best welfare program is a job creation program. However, in the US today, the labor of many Americans at the legislated minimum wage is not cost-competitive in a globalized labor market.

 In reaction to that fact there are two common views. There is the NeoCon view as expressed in 2016 by Kevin Williamson writing in the National Review about the white American underclass, i.e., the inhabitants of towns that lost their reason for existence as manufacturing jobs were off-shored to the sweatshops of Asia:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul."

That last bit about "they need U-Haul" being added to soften the essential message which is: "Let the useless scum die, and the sooner they kill themselves with opiates or whatever, the better."

The alternative to the "let the scum die," position, is the view that it is the government's job  to create conditions insuring the availability of work at a living wage. 

The latter was precisely the position that Donald Trump adopted during the 2016 Presidential election. And where are we now? Eleven percent unemployed versus 4% when Donald Trump took office in 2017, or about 31% according to John Williams' Shadow Stats report. 

So is Trump a traitor to the sovereign people of the United States, relying on the Covid pandemic and the BLM rioters and Abraham-Lincoln-statue tossers to provide cover, as Yusef suspects? Or is there nothing the US government could do to alleviate widespread unemployment and poverty?

The answer is clear. US unemployment is an unnecessary evil that can be largely eliminated. 

How?

(1) Restore the tariff wall behind which America rose  to be the world's dominant manufacturing power, a protectionist measure in place from 1816 until the adoption of free trade in 1945. 

(2) Enforce immigration law and restrict immigration, legal and otherwise, whenever unemployment rises above the frictional rate. 

Trump has waffled and fiddled to suggest adherence to a belief in tariffs and immigration control while achieving essentially nothing. Trump is thus, either a useless blatherskite of a traitor. As a long-time employer of thousands of low-wage immigrant hotel chamber maids and desk clerks, you might be able to guess which. 

But whichever is the case, Trump's fiddling while much of America's working class suffer the seering emotional and physical consequences of poverty serves Trump's own class—that is to say the very rich—extremely well, for as the famous British economist David Ricardo noted, 

Wages plus profits, together, are always the same.

meaning the simplest way to raise profits is to lower wages. 

And in America today corporations lower wages by: 

(1) offshoring jobs to more or less unregulated Asian sweat shops with collapsible factories and nets to stop workers killing themselves by jumping off the building; and

(2) sucking in illegal immigrants to work in the black, tax-free, economy where third-world wages prevail.

And it should be remembered that a policy of screwing the workers serves the great bureaucracies of the Western world very well too. Public sector wages are paid by the long-suffering tax payer, and are not therefore subject to the same stringent Ricardian control as those of workers in the goods and useful service producing, private sector. Thus, those in the public sector benefit from the low cost of living to which low wages give rise, while skimming high wages at the expense of rich and poor alike. 

So what do readers think? Is Trump an incompetent fool, or a traitor?

      Related     
CanSpeccy: GLOBALIZATION IS GOOD (For the Rich)
Kurt Nimmo: Year Zero in America: Pulling down statues is only the beginning