The All-Collar Crisis: When White Collar Work Meets Blue-Collar Reality
Hold onto your collars. The AI-generated crisis of work is here, and the storm will concentrate on white-collar workers from the professional economy. According to Julia Hobsbawm, founder of Workathon.io, these workers are about to experience the dismal reality of blue-collar redundancy. 50% of the US workforce will be freelance by 2030, some experts warn, making this transition the biggest shift in the nature of work since the Industrial Revolution. Humans can't be completely replaced by machines, Hobsbawm says. But enough will be replaced to create mass suffering — the same conditions that generated the revolutionary movements of the 19th century.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
An American Epidemic of Speculation: Bubble Blowing in Silicon Valley and Washington DC
Should a College be a Museum or a Startup? Why Universities Need to Teach Failure
American Advocates of Foreign Devils: How Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden Sold Access to US Foreign Policy
Sometimes We Need a Calamity: How to Save the American Experiment
The Frankenstein Version of Neo-Liberalism: When American Business Overtook Government
America as a Contradiction Trapped Inside an even Bigger Contradiction: Princeton Historian's Explanation for Everything, Everywhere All at Once
Jeffrey Archer: How Margaret Thatcher would have disciplined a Naughty Donald Trump
Sam Altman's Rigged Imperial Gambit: Too Important to Fail & Too Well-Financed to Go Public
America's Most Wounded Generation: Returning Home after World War II
AI Hype is a Feature, not a Bug: Why We Can't Trust Big Tech With Our Agentic Future
Springtime for Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers and Hucksters are Bamboozling the Media, the Markets and the Masses
Navigating around Christopher Columbus: The Nine Lives of the Genoese Sailor Who Became History's Greatest Saint and Sinner
41 Years for a Crime He Didn't Commit: Gary Tyler's Journey from Death Row to Freedom