When ‘Trickle Down’ Hits the Rich

It was one thing when only the poor were affected, but now it’s about to hit everyone

This is exactly the type of worker AI is coming for next. Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash

Financial catastrophe isn’t just coming for the poor anymore. It’s about to gut the professional class. And nobody seems ready for it.

Will this force us to reckon with how we’ve always treated the poor?

The meritocracy myth we believed

It’s baked into American DNA: If you work hard in this country, you will succeed. The hidden subtext was that if you did not financially succeed, it was your own fault so nobody needed to worry about you.

We were promised that wealth would trickle down. Instead, it’s the consequences that are trickling down. What started with blue-collar workers is now flooding into boardrooms, marketing departments and engineering teams. Many will be swept away.

AI is displacing the skilled class

Ever since the industrial revolution, machines have taken the jobs of manual laborers.

Now, it’s erasing the futures of people who thought they had done everything right. People who earned advanced degrees, bought pricey homes and established lifestyles dependent on generous salaries are about to learn how quickly it can all disappear.

While we were worrying about immigrants taking the jobs of the working class, AI quietly began taking the jobs of the college-educated upper class.

Many people who believed the system was fair (because it was working great for them!) will become its newest casualties.

Remember when coding was key?

The same professionals who once told the poor “just learn to code” are now watching AI write better code than they can. There’s tragic symmetry there.

When I worked for an advertising agency, someone told me I’d never have to worry because we’d always need storytellers. That was just a few years ago, but now AI can generate text that’s perfectly suitable for marketing decks much faster than I can.

Shawn K wrote a chilling account of delivering for DoorDash and living in an RV while trying to replace the solid engineering job he lost to AI. Everybody has advice for him, and he seems willing to try every possible option, but he’s had no offers, even though he’s applied for almost a thousand jobs. He writes:

“I don’t think my story is unique, I think I am at the early side of the bell curve of the coming social and economic disaster tidal wave that is already underway and began with knowledge workers and creatives. It’s coming for basically everyone in due time, and we are already overdue for proposing any real solution in society to heading off the worst of these effects.”

I think he’s right.

Most white-collar professionals are not particularly upset when we lose factory jobs to automation, cashier positions to self-checkout, server jobs to order kiosks and writing jobs to AI.

Maybe you felt comfortable telling the former factory worker or grocery store cashier that they needed some job training. You might have told people like me that we’d have to figure out something to do besides writing.

So what’s your answer to people like engineers? These are highly skilled people who used to command premium pay, and plenty still do, but for how long?

The coming wave will affect a lot of people who thought they were safe

How many other jobs that we thought would last forever are about to disappear? Start talking to people in all different fields, and notice how many of them will tell you they’re starting to use AI in ways that hint at broader job erosion.

If you see a counselor, AI might be compiling the therapy notes after each of your sessions. That doesn’t necessarily make therapists’ jobs easier; it just means they’re expected to take on bigger caseloads.

Similar things are happening in the medical, legal, education and journalism fields. People don’t report that AI is making their jobs easier. They say it is making it possible for one person to do more work, and usually for no more pay.

If one worker can use AI to do what would have been the jobs of two people, we now have one less job. That’s great for the owners, who cut their labor costs, but terrible for everyone else.

We face a moral reckoning

What happens when we just don’t have very many good jobs anymore? What happens when the formerly well-paid professionals have filled every gig and side hustle?

Only so many people can deliver DoorDash or succeed on Substack. At some point, not enough people will be able to afford to have food delivered or to subscribe to newsletters.

Will we keep blaming unemployed and underemployed people for just not trying hard enough, not working hard enough or not being educated enough?

Or will we finally wake up and accept that individuals can’t heroically solve every problem via grit? And then can we take one more step and realize that that’s always been true?

Pay attention to all the people who are telling you how hard they’re struggling to find a job. Those stories are everywhere right now.

When we believed the bootstrapping and meritocracy myths, we refused to consider introducing societal changes like universal basic income, let alone labor protections for gig workers. What about now?

Our collapsing system was never as fair as we claimed. If we couldn’t muster any compassion for the grocery store cashier, maybe we’ll find some for the neighbor with a PhD.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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