Two different articles point out an interesting trend AI is Eating the Economy - A Wealth of Common Sense Big tech capital spending is booming,mostly in AI. The AI capital spending provided more growth than all of consumer spending This article is points out the spending among the wealthiest is the only thing holding up the economy. It could be due to stock market gains - due to the AI spending above https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/06/economy-jobs-middle-class-recession-tariffs/ “Even more alarming is how reliant the economy has become on spending binges by the richest Americans. The top 10 percent of earners now drive about half of spending, according to Moody’s, up from 36 percent three decades ago. These people will determine if the U.S. economy avoids a recession. These are households earning $250,000 or more, and they are largely doing just fine, buoyed by strong stock-market gains, mansions and rental properties that have shot up in valuein recent years, and a rebound in business dealmaking. The wealthy continue to spend on lavish vacations, parties and events, and that masks the strain that many middle-class and moderate-income families are experiencing.”
Trickle down’s inevitable destination. The “trickle” part of that was inexplicably embraced by the middle class. Basically welcoming the descent to struggle for sustenance. Full bucket! Yeah, but frog tongue those drips, you’ll probably live another day!
Envy is a detriment to bettering one’s self. Those posting on too hot with the kind of view posted in the OP have nothing but themselves to blame for not making their community better! Stop blaming those with more than you and just make your community better. Yes that means you are a conservative (maga?!?! LOL)!
We’ve been a 2 tier economy for a while. It had been moving that way since the early 70’s, but 2008 did much of the finishing work on it. I know personally, that was a dividing point. That when my fortunes started to get better, even after getting laid off because I was on the right side of the job market as far as the skills I had. Many of the large number that weren’t as lucky never recovered. That divide is also what largely drove the current president’s election, he spoke to and even channeled their anger/anxiety, and it’s coded in almost everything he does and says now. Even the racial dog whistles have an economic undercurrent. It’s a main reason why he’s bullet proof with them.
Perfect. No one struggling works likes you. No strugglers care like you. No one gives more to the community than you. And if you dare to say hold up Q, I bet I do! Double answers, just in case one ain’t enough: 1) Envy 2) Effort Insecurity is probably the best explanation. But I am not magnanimous. I say it’s choosing to be a Richard. The irony of you accusing struggling people of envy is beyond rich, and I hope that if it is based on some sort of dogma is dead opposite of how you perceive it, in case it turns out true. Because that would be a double-irony eternal blow that I doubt, but I would get at least one last chuckle at before whatever all that. The effort is the best. Constantly fishing pics, here and there, living dat life. I suggest all these people you ENVY work harder than you. More effort. Much higher effort. No boats. No docks. No storage fees. Maybe they have a pole and a public bank to stand on. Total parasites, standing on your ground. Is it possible that a person who works harder than you AND has never wished a moment of pain to a person on Earth (your veiled “envy” slings) is struggling to survive? And if your answer is no, then I’ll root for the most likely negative outcome for your life: I hope one of your jet skis loses a prop, so you have to just simply buy another. HARD worker! SOO righteous! What a Paragon!! Humility, that part, ugh, super inconvenient.
Interesting rant. Not sure the point of the rambling. That said. I don’t own a jet ski. And not sure how many jet skis have props that can fall off…
AI is the most significant interrupter in the US/global economy ever. It should be the number one priority of our leaders and unfortunately they're too busy arguing about culture wars. I don't think most people understand the amount of layoffs that are coming from AI.
Seems like it is likely to be the next tech "bubble" to burst. Right now it seems like they are just circulating money around building data centers and hoping the tech catches up.
With the tech bubble there were a bunch of losers but it revolutionized our economy with who remained. The winners of the AI race will be similar.
Ahh, the defense contractor who got got rich off government largesse is weighing in. Dont worry, no one envies merchants of death sucking off the government teat!
I'n hindsight, purely from an AI perspective, it seems our choices in the election were "move way too slowly on AI" or "hand over the keys to the AI tech bros." Not sure which will end up being worse in the end.
Was it really the “tech bubble”? A lot the same arguments were made about Wal-Mart in the 1990’s, that it was wiping out main streets across America, it’s just that populists replaced Walmart with Amazon as the corporate devil. The union busting and offshoring of production had more to do with the erosion of middle class jobs as anything. Tech itself has been net additive imo (at least the e-commerce side of things, I have an opposite take on the intellectual degeneracy it’s wrought). If there is a mass wipeout of white collar jobs caused by AI one would wonder if that “net additive” could continue to be the case even economically.
I can guarantee this to be the case. I work in tech/software, have my whole career. Yes, AI is the big buzzword right now. Everyone in the C-suite is pushing us to explore and adopt AI technologies to accelerate productivity. I have yet to experience an AI that can do anything more than be a helper/assist. And the bits they can really help with make up a relatively small percentage of a software engineer's activities. This is what people don't get about AI. It's not intelligent. It's a predictive model, trained on whatever material is fed into it. When you give it a task or pose a question, it aims to predict what a human might respond with. No more, no less. There is no actual intelligence. AI doesn't understand the question, doesn't even really understand words. It tokenizes inputs and queries into multi character chunks (called tokens), and runs a bunch of probability statistics in deciding how a person would be likely to respond. And if an AI doesn't have the answer to your query from it's training data: IT WILL MAKE SOMETHING UP. As in, a complete fabrication. Fiction. It'll just string together some garbage and present that as actual information. Caveat emptor... You cannot trust AI in its current state. Yes, I can use an AI to knock off a little bit of time. I'm not trusting it to design my mission critical software. Oh, it can't design, it can just do rote coding.... with human guidance/oversight/review/cleanup. AI isn't going to eliminate a software developer job anytime soon. There's too much monitoring/oversight required. Too much architecture/design that requires real skill and understanding. Stuff that AI doesn't have a handle on, and isn't likely to anytime soon.
Don’t underestimate lazy people looking for a quick buck by accepting anything AI spits out. Now it is a giant data aggregator building profiles on all.
I think people still think Walmart is bad, and they certainly came up when it was reported that they encouraged their workers to apply for government benefits so they could keep their pay low. Amazon, Uber, Tesla etc, have simply sold investors that they are "technology" companies rather than what they actually are, shipping, transport and car makers. Keeps stock prices high and attract more capital when you say "maybe we can do drone deliveries" or provide subscription drugs, or whatever. Walmart cant sell themselves as a "tech" company even though they basically do much of the same shit Amazon does with shipping and logistics.
