For decades those in the Creative Class were lulled to sleep by the thought that they were partners in the places they worked at.
One story of 2024 that has been under covered is how thoroughly that has changed.
It’s not just the layoffs in tech that make a career programming in C++ look like you were flipping burgers. It’s the huge pay cuts that have come, or are coming, to millions of workers around the country.
Return To Office is a pay cut.
Think about it. You now must buy outfits that look nice to other people. Then you must spend about 2 hours (or more) every day in your car. You must either make lunch for yourself (more time lost) or buy it from somewhere (money lost). Someone has to take care of the chores while you’re gone.
Add it up and it’s a 20% pay cut. Along with a 20% longer workday.
The bosses are paying too, a bit. They’re having to pay rent on big spaces that hold the computers you were safely using at home. But they’re taking that out on consumers, raising prices for goods and services. All the big Cloud players have been doing this all year. You have bigger streaming bills, higher Internet bills, and higher costs for subscriptions of all kinds. Which you pay with that 20% lower salary.
I’ve worked from home for 4 decades. But I recently got an e-bike, and I am out-and-about more. Traffic is murder, especially around rush hour, even in the center of town, even on the two-lane roads. Drivers are irritable. Instead of waving at me as I go past, they push their huge pick-ups to the edge of the road to cut me off. Accidents are increasing, and people are being killed.
For what?
Why Is This Happening?
It’s true that many people need to commute to work. If you work at a hospital, or in a factory, if your work involves using big machines as at a university, then you need to be where the work is.
But not all work is like that. If your work can be done on a laptop, that laptop can be anywhere. The only valid purpose for getting the group together is training, the experienced showing the inexperienced the ropes. That’s not a five day a week thing. It’s also something employers should be paying employees for. Instead, they’re taking money away from the people they’re demanding give free training to their colleagues.
The reason they get away with it is AI.
The GenAI software companies, and the Cloud Czars, have convinced the rest of the business community that they’re not going to need us in a few years. They’ve convinced other businesspeople of the lie that is Artificial General Intelligence, the full automation of human brains, goods and services produced by intelligent robots and no human intervention required. Blade Runner Utopia.
This is not just a lie. And it is a lie. GenAI is a tool, based on database computing, which was based on the Cloud, which was based on the Internet, the PC, all the way back to the first IBM mainframe. It takes a variety of inputs, delivers a variety of outputs, but it requires reliable data to do anything. It also requires new data, from new sources, to continue to do its work. That comes from people.
This is also stupid. Who is going to buy these fully automated outputs? With what money? Earned from where? Because I know the same idiots who are dreaming this big dream aren’t going to support taxes needed for a Universal Basic Income.
The Coming Labor War
2024 has seen the first shots fired in the coming Labor War. Those workers who are organized have taken advantage of a general labor shortage to demand, and get, higher wages and better working conditions.
The media isn’t paying attention because we like to think we’re in a white collar job. Journalists like to think we’re all entrepreneurs. We’re our own bosses.
Bullshit.
Office workers are workers just like other workers are. Millions are going to start realizing this soon. They’re going to start organizing, soon. And that will be one of the biggest U.S. economic stories of 2025. Not all labor shortages can be cured by immigration.
