Comment by Charles Fain Lehman

The economists and AI experts are correct—a permanent underclass is not coming. But the favored solutions of those enamored of the theory—an AI-funded universal basic income (UBI), jobs guarantee, or the like—do threaten to recreate an underclass of similar viciousness to and greater magnitude than the one Americans concerned themselves with in the 1990s. The real danger is not that AI will produce a permanent underclass, but that the panic over technological change will lead policymakers to build one themselves.