This is why I fucking hate The Economist:

Artificial intelligence (ai) is giving workers, particularly less skilled ones, a productivity boost, which could lead to higher wages, too.

"Hey, Siri - what does 'artificial intelligence' for 'less skilled workers' actually look like?"

Meanwhile, actual economists have been debating the actual cause of this massive wage shift and its long-term implications:

It's pretty neat how The Economist starts by going

ackshully, it started in 2016

and is somehow related to AI

which proves Piketty and Graeber wrong dhyuk dhuk

When the reality of the situation is

- A paralyzed federal government was taken advantage of wholesale in 2020 to provide an absolute liberal wet dream of pork barrel projects

- that then rolled into a Democratic administration with effectively zero legacy programs or employees thanks to Trump hollowing everything out

- followed by a massive groundswell of labor frustrations with the status quo when it was revealed that 70% of the workforce could stay home without impacting productivity at all

- while the other 30% decided that if they were going to be called "essential workers" they might as well get fucking paid like it

Hey, Economist! Say something stupid!

A survey of small American companies found that more than 90% seek to retain employees if possible.

Holy shit I'm sure they never thought they needed to do that before! It's not like every employee turnover in a skilled position costs the equivalent of six months' labor to fill! Surely this must be somehow related to the Trump tax cuts, right?

What blows.my.mind. is that this is clearly and obviously a conscious policy choice. But since the choice is to turn away from Reaganomics/Thatcherism, The Economist needs to make it about AI somehow.