AI is threatening many North Carolina jobs

Why are we allowing this to happen? That is the question I’ve found myself asking as AI moves to incinerate the white-collar job market. Most readers will have seen the article estimating that Artificial Intelligence could automate up to 50% of white-collar jobs in a shockingly short period of time. The results of that kind of disruption would be catastrophic, to a far greater degree than most Americans seem to have reckoned with so far. Affluent professionals who invested years of their lives into honing cognitive skills would find themselves unemployable, unable support their families. The federal budget would lose a major stream—a river, even—of revenue, and the economic distress would almost certainly rock our politics. This is a social catastrophe that seems almost certainly to be in the making and America’s leadership class is doing nothing to avert or even to blunt its probable impact.

We know what happens when millions of people’s skills are devalued and whole communities lose their economic base. In the 1990s and 2000s, millions of blue-collar manufacturing workers lost their jobs to automation and global competition from countries with cheap labor. NAFTA cost the US 892,000 jobs. China’s entry into the World TradeOrganization caused another 2 million Americans to become unemployed. And those were just some of the job losses directly attributable to international trade. Many more blue-collar jobs were lost to automation.

Consider any given town in the Southern textile belt. Kannapolis, Eden, Burnsville, Salisbury. None of these communities were havens for the wealthy, but their mills supported a local working class that has since plunged into poverty. Kannapolis had the saving grace of being located in the booming Charlotte area, which enveloped the town and salvaged its local economy. But Eden? Ask Sam Page supporters how their town is doing.

North Carolina lost 42% of its manufacturing base in the 2000s. The nation’s political leadership let it happen. And now an even greater percentage of white-collar workers face unemployment and listless prospects. Multinational corporations demolished blue-collar America. Now Silicon Valley looks eager to demolish white-collar America. When you’ve demolished both blue-collar and white-collar America, there’s not much of America left.

The billionaires will stand tall and alone, basking in their limitless wealth.The main commonality between the blue- and white-collar catastrophes is that the billionaire class will harvest yet more trillions in wealth. We have allowed towns like Eden and Burnsville to disintegrate and languish in poverty so offshoring corporations could grind down labor costs. We may allow cities like Raleigh, Charlotte, and Austin, Texas to fall on hard times so Elon Musk can be the wealthiest person in human history. It doesn’t surprise me that blue-collar workers couldn’t resist the power of the billionaire class. But now we seem to be learning that even upper-middle-class professionals are powerless in the face of a monied oligarchy that clearly runs the country.

North Carolina’s film industry has lost a wonderful and devoted friend. James van der Beek, star of the 90s teen soap opera Dawson’s Creek, passed away at 48 after a battle with colon cancer. I was a bit too young to watch Dawson’s Creek, but I remember its ubiquity in the late 90s, and I know how deeply van der Beek and the show’s other stars came to love Wilmington. Van der Beek never lost his connection to North Carolina, speaking out when Republicans tried to eliminate the state’s film incentive program. As far as I could tell, van der Beek was a sensitive man who loved life and his death at 48 is a terrible, heartbreaking injustice. I hope all North Carolinians will take a moment to mourn this wonderful friend of our state.