Crash Landing: Wages, Wealth, and the Case for Universal Basics
A panel between James Hughes, James Newton-Thomas, Lev Lafayette and Adam Ford (chair) at Future Day 2025.
Video of the panel – ‘AI Automation: Human Wage Crash Panel’:
About
If AI drives human wages to the ground, should everything else crash too? Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen envisions a future where AI-induced wage collapse leads to abundance—but what about land prices, investor returns, corporate profits, and living costs? Should company owner capital, rent, and share prices follow suit? Or will we see a permanent underclass emerge?
This panel explores the implications of wage deflation in an AI-driven economy and the urgent need for Universal Basic Income (UBI), Universal Basic Compute (UBC), and Universal Basic Accommodation (UBA). Can we ensure prosperity for all, or will the economic elite shield their wealth while workers bear the brunt of disruption?
There is also the case for Universal Basic Everything (UBE) – if UBI alone, it is leakey, rental providers may inflate the rent, other service providers may price inflate too, food, energy, compute… Also, some people have addictions – UBI may end up at casinos etc.
Harder to implement, but ultimately we will need UBE (Universal Basic Everything) – making sure all basic needs are met.
UBI may be a good first stage, with UBC and UBA phased in later, and ultimately UBE once the dividends of technological progress can afford it – which might not be that far away.
Note: Lev and I (Adam) are working on a journal article surrounding these topics. Stay tuned!
In the media
Marc Andreessen, cofounder of the massive venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz — which has its fingers in pretty much every pie in tech — has revealed an eyebrow-raising detail in his “techno-optimist” vision of the future.
In a recent tweet, the American billionaire investor casually proclaimed that AI must “crash” everyone’s wages before it can deliver us an economic utopia — one that’ll definitely happen, and certainly not create a permanent underclass of have-nots.
“A world in which human wages crash from AI — logically, necessarily — is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero,” Andreessen wrote. “Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.”
So fret not, lowly laborer: you may be destined for financial ruin, but paradise is right around the corner. Pinky promise.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-investor-goal-crash-human-wages
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Automation and the Future of Work with James Hughes (Executive Director, IEET)
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