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
America Never Was a Democracy—And That's Why It's Dying Now
That Frog in the Boiling Water is Us: Why Progress Won't Save Us From Climate Catastrophe
The Week AI Began to Act: The Dawn of an AI Stone Age in Which Machines Have Their Own Tools
Trump's Hot Summer of Disorder: How Short-Term Chaos is America's Long-Term Global Strategy
Why Julius Caesar was anything but Trumpian: How Rome's 'Dictator' Actually Saved Roman Democracy
The Resurrection of God: Why Europe's Bestselling Science Book Proves Materialism is Dead
Why Reports on the Death of the American Dream are Greatly Exaggerated
Why Podcasts Are Ruining Our Lives: On the Insidious Charm of Chat
The Chinese Communist School of Hard Knocks: How Xi Jinping's Father Shaped China's Current Tough Guy Leader
Going Soft on China: Is Xi Jinping really a Competitor, not an Enemy, of the United States?
Tech Insider Claims OpenAI Will Be Worth $10 Trillion: Has Silicon Valley Finally Gone Totally Bonkers?
Can Democrats Really Pull a Reagan? How the GOP's 1980 Playbook Could Work for Progressives in 2028
From Six Days of the Condor to American Sky: James Grady on Nostalgia and the American Dream