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Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by anovikov on Saturday January 31, 2026 @10:44AM (#46837614)
Great Depression is thoroughly unrelated. It was because of excess agricultural production by overleveraged farmers that forced them into further undermining themselves by overproduction, and eventual contagion of bad debt of those farmers propagating across the economy - made worse by unhinged, and unregulated, leveraged stock trading.

It did not happen because of sudden productivity increase that put too many people out of work. No economic crises ever happened that way, and there is no reason to believe any will. This is what every economy strives to achieve and it's kinda stupid to be afraid of it. Some people can be hit hard, and it always happens during every technological revolution, but with sufficient investment into predictive policing and law enforcement overall, this is a manageable risk.

Surely, a stock market shock can happen other way around - if AI will turn out to be a flop - but i believe this is not the risk you are talking about.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by verdverm on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:18AM (#46837945)
You're looking at causes, that's the wrong side. Your prior claim was about how you couldn't see the downsides of high unemployment.

Look at what happened during the Great Depression, when unemployment was high. It doesn't matter how we get to high unemployment or depression status, but for sure there will be a lot of bad things, many more than you proclaim.

Look to the Great Depression to see what the human condition and spirit was like if you are having trouble imagining possibilities

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by anovikov on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:28AM (#46838047)
During the Great Depression there was also an economic collapse with deep decreases in production and consumption of just about everything - except useless production of what was already overproduced anyway. That could naturally make people depressed, strive for radical changes like Communism, etc.

But we are speaking simply of mass unemployment. That alone is not enough to cause widespread despair.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by verdverm on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:39AM (#46838160)
Unemployment is one of the conditions

I think a simple question, where do the unemployed eat and sleep during extended, high-unemployment?

Are breadlines in 21st century America not a thing you foresee in a 21st century depression?

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by anovikov on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:55AM (#46838319)
If there is a plenty of revenue, profits, and taxes paid by businesses - and if there won't be, there's nothing to talk about - it will mean there will be no AI productivity boost - why won't society find something for those people to do? Even if solution is as simple as "conscript men to the army and send them on conquest, and pay women to have children"? Older ones usually have enough investments so in conditions of economic boom => rapid stock appreciation, they will be OK.
Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by benSaiyen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @12:46PM (#46838827)
President raped kids.

Cops kill almost daily with immunity.

Spouses across world abuse each other and their children.

You rely on slave labor so you can perform useless IT work.

But no one ever acts so uncivil as I have on HN.

Oh look another ...old... account. That explains the Mr Rogers-like-view-of-reality.

Thoughts and prayers.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by verdverm on Saturday January 31, 2026 @02:21PM (#46839845)
> Oh look another ...new... account

How many accounts have you had? How many have been banned?

yes, I'm still on my original account I made when a college roommate told me I needed to be on HN

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by benSaiyen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @03:48PM (#46840678)
No substantive response to my tearing your twee world apart with examples of much much worse behavior?

Just an insipid social flex?

Oh man; people of the future will sign songs about your account age achievement!

It's nice being the benefactor of slavery not the slave, huh, out-of-touch-first-worlder?

So long as we keep the slavery out of our country it's cool. We earned freedom, material excess, the deference of billions of others cause America ...zero real obligation to ourselves, just a life of paid quick fixes cause we rich beotch

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by verdverm on Saturday January 31, 2026 @06:13PM (#46841877)
[flagged]
Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by dang on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:55PM (#46842556)
You broke the site guidelines several times in this thread. That's not good.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by benSaiyen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @06:54PM (#46842138)
[flagged]
Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by dang on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:56PM (#46842558)
You also broke the site guidelines several times in this thread, and it looks like some of your other comments (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46838413) have been doing that as well.

We ban accounts that do that repeatedly, and I don't want to ban you because some of your other comments have been substantive and fine. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules in the future? We'd appreciate it.

p.s. I've added more here than I did in my mod comment to the GP because your account is new and I thought the extra information might be helpful to orient to the kind of site we're trying for.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by benSaiyen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @08:13PM (#46842667)
Oh noes! Anyway; will log off another throwaway.

Once in a while I get bored and need a social media bump and then remember social media is dystopian af (ignore your own eyes/ears and abide the mods! Their final most important command).

Tech bros; helping 2034 be like 1984.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by benSaiyen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @11:54AM (#46838296)
> But we are speaking simply of mass unemployment. That alone is not enough to cause widespread despair.

Hahaha ...hahaha

Just wave off 10s if millions of able bodied people in the US alone, with 3 guns per adult; without an assurance they can stay in their home while things are sorted all those lives are more than "simply" upended

Your literacy, ability to put things into simple terms, to skeletonize in rhetoric, is tricking you into false belief.

Based on the age of your HN account, going to assume you're of an "out of touch generation" who still thinks of language as magic incantation.

"Well I say it's simple so it must be."

Touch grass. Your literacy is a sign of mental illness. It leads you to assume reductive statements like yours are iron clad immutable physics. That you just willed the future to react to major social upheaval "like nbd, bro."

Literate people are capable of being quite fucking stupid.

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by verdverm on Saturday January 31, 2026 @12:28PM (#46838661)
> ... is a sign of mental illness

Your post is not the sign of someone who is healthy either, people don't say things like you just have.

Nor is it the level of discourse HN finds acceptable

Re:AI: the US is headed for mass unemployment by benSaiyen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @12:40PM (#46838767)
President raped kids but in the real world people never act so vulgar as I have on HN?

HN is a bunch of ostriches

Thoughts and prayers!