That's if AI goes full singularity. Barring this scenario, it might be the end of while collar dream and social mobility in general, but not nessarily the catastrophic "nobody buys anything" change

It doesn't make sense. If there is a collapse in demand, prices will follow.

It's also reasonable to expect prices to go down if there is a productivity boom.

> I doubt we will see most of these impacts for 10 to 20 years

Have you been to Seattle lately?

> The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP…

By a very narrow, technically-correct view, sure.

Preventing, say, people starving to death, dying of preventable disease, unchecked fraud, invasions by other countries, etc. probably helps GDP a bit.

> The government sector doesn't produce virtually anything that counts toward GDP,

This sounds very wrong?

I'm very skeptical of the idea that somebody working on, say, nuclear security "doesn't produce virtually anything," while a privately-employed rent-a-cop counts as productive GDP growth.

Even if we take your premise as given, isn't ~700,000 a pretty terrible number? Last year's headlines were, 2024 job growth was much lower than previously estimated, at only 1.5 million. 2023 was 2.7 million. Even if we put that down to pandemic recovery, typical pre-pandemic numbers were around 2 million outside of recessions.

This probably goes hard if you work at a SaaS company that monetizes interest on micro-loans or something.

This feels like such a weird non-sequiter argument, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. This comment seems to be asserting (1) government jobs don't produce value and (2) GDP is the only thing that matters.

I'm ignoring the fact that I don't actually know how government sector jobs contribute to or affect GDP.

Seems like by this logic, why not just cut ALL government jobs? Obviously that's a terrible idea...

~400k documented/authorized workers leave the US labor market through death (55+) or retirement (Boomers, ~4M/year still retiring) every month. Immigration is down, and net migration was likely close to zero or negative in 2025. Unemployment is relatively low, but there is robust evidence of widespread underemployment and it taking 6-12 months for the unemployed to find jobs. My analysis is that companies are reaching for historical ZIRP era returns in a macro with higher rates (which will likely remain higher with the neutral rate closer to 2.5-3%) through "cost efficiency" whenever possible, by offshoring, nearshoring, and avoiding hiring as long as their systems and processes continue to function "good enough."

Deportations have pushed wages up in some examples (Texas healthcare industry) due to employers having to hire authorized workers to replace undocumented workers who would work for lower wages, but I have not seen broad data on this topic, citations welcome.

The economic metrics are masking a brutal worker economy, being held up by labor shortages (but shortages not yet sufficient to improve labor power), AI capital investment, and healthcare jobs (which will remain durable and in demand due to a rapidly aging US population) is my thesis.

> What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks?

I’m suspecting something like Soylent Green, but perhaps with more proactive action taken to free up resources by removal of masses who are no longer producing enough value to justify their expenses.

Following up, I believe eventually it will all be replaced by something much more resembling feudal power. Where bound servants provide service labor in exchange for protection/survival. Something like fuedalism but without the agricultural focus of manorialism.

The problem is that it seems like wealthy people (capital owners) might be able to sustain the economy between themselves, which is basically what we're seeing.

On one hand richest top 1% own 30% of the total US wealth (and services/goods for the rich is a booming sector) but on other hand their wealth depends on a fully functioning economy. If 99% of population will be excluded form the economy top 1% will not be able to keep their current wealth either (even if they still be comparatively better off).

> What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks?

I joked with my manager when we were having a conversation about everyone being asked to use more AI, as an obvious precursor to keeping fewer employees to do the same amount of work: the end state of AI will be an AI manager having career conversations with the AI employee, discussing raises and bonuses.

> What will the economy consist of when there are no more paychecks? Thus nobody buying anything.

It could be possible to have high GDP with low paychecks… it basically means the entire economy mostly consists of the wealthy few buying and selling things to each other. It is easy to see how that could happen if more things become automated.

You could imagine a world where there are only two people who own anything, and the entire economic productivity is generated by robots owned by those two people creating things and selling them to the other person, who uses those things for their robots to work with. You could produce tons and tons of things with no workers, and the GDP would keep growing.

Of course, the high GDP doesn’t mean everyone is fed and sheltered. Having a functioning and growing economic market is required for capitalism to serve its purpose of providing for the citizens, but it isn’t the ONLY requirement. If the form capitalism takes as we move into the future is one that stops providing for enough of its citizens, it won’t be able to sustain itself. I think there are things we can do to shift our capitalism to do a better job of providing for everyone, but there are a lot of forces fighting against that.

I mean, even ignoring the recent GenAI narrative, vast portions of the economy have already been significantly automated for decades.

Additive Manufacturing, industrial robotics, the Internet, and the proliferation of computers had already made large portions of manufacturing and low skill white collar jobs redundant by the mid-2010s.

Furthermore, the brutal reality is most businesses can generate growing revenue just by concentrating on the 90th percentile and above of households [0].

For example, despite all the love Costco gets on HN - the reality is it only targets customers in the top 50% of households by income [1]. You may delude yourself into thinking that you are a thrifty underdog when you shop at Costco, but the reality is most Americans cannot and will never be able to afford Costco.

A K-Shape Economy is actually the historical norm.

[0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-of-the-top-1...

[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-sams-club-shopper...

> We can't all get rich being a middle man between the doctor and our neighbors

I'm not familiar with the healthcare sector. Is this where the job growth is?

The country is getting older and I expect there would be a lot of demand for non-AI-replaceable nurses and elder care. Many of those workers have also been deported or scared out of the country.

The Trump clan literally does not care. The most pressing issues are to further legalize crypto so that the whales (including Trump's World Liberty Fund) have an exit. So there is a family/industry crypto conference at Mar a Lago while the economy is crashing:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/goldman-nasdaq-ceos-headlin...

There does not appear to be a recession.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME

To be fair, the healthcare employment flows are small (1.6M) compared to the total employment stock (160M+ people). And you would expect the healthcare labor supply to increase to match the bulge created by the baby boom. I don't think this means we will all be a healthcare middle man though; it assumes this large flow is permanent, and overstates the fraction of the labor stock.