The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

by Andrew Yang

How do the 40 percent of displaced manufacturing workers who don’t find new jobs survive? The short answer is that many became destitute and applied for disability benefits. Disability rolls shot up starting in 2000, rising by 3.5 million, with the numbers increasing dramatically in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other manufacturing-heavy states. In Michigan, about half of the 310,000 residents who left the workforce between 2003 and 2013 went on disability. Many displaced manufacturing workers essentially entered a new underclass of government dependents who have been left behind.

The important categories are not white collar versus blue collar or even cognitive skills versus manual skills. The real distinction is routine vs. nonroutine. Routine jobs of all stripes are those most under threat from AI and automation, and in time more categories of jobs will be affected. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, wealth advisors, traders, journalists, and even artists and psychologists who perform routine activities will be threatened by automation technologies. Some of the jobs requiring the most education are actually among the most likely to become obsolete. Some of these threatened workers, like investment advisors, may find themselves surprised to be on the chopping block after supporting the profit-growing potential of automated technologies.

There are presently a record 95 million working-age Americans, a full 37 percent of adults, who are out of the workforce. In 2000, there were only 70 million. The change can be explained in part by demographics—higher numbers of students and retirees—but there are still 5 million Americans out of the workforce who would like a job right now that aren’t considered in the unemployment rate.

capitalism, with the assistance of technology, is about to turn on normal people. Capital and efficiency will prefer robots, software, AI, and machines to people more and more. Capitalism is like our mentor and guiding light, to whom we’ve listened for years. He helped us make great decisions for a long time. But at some point he got older, teamed up with his friend technology, and together they became more extreme. They started saying things like, “Ah, let’s automate everything” and “If the market doesn’t like it, get rid of it,” which made reasonable people increasingly nervous.