AI & Robotics: Preventing Economic Collapse
Restore the labor share that built the American middle class — adjusted per industry, enforced through the tax code.
AI and robotic automation are already triggering mass layoffs across white-collar and blue-collar work. Labor's share of value-added — payroll as a percentage of what each industry actually produces — has been falling since the 1970s, and AI is about to accelerate that collapse. Without guardrails, displacement outruns retraining, demand collapses, and the economy follows. Universal Basic Income is not a real answer — it makes citizens dependent on the same corporations and governments causing the disruption.
Every industry has a 75-year track record of how much of its value-added went to the humans who made it possible. AI shouldn't be allowed to quietly erase that. Innovation must lift the country, not hollow it out.
Anchor each industry to its own historical labor share of value-added — payroll divided by (revenue minus input costs) — averaged over the last 75 years using BLS data and NAICS 4-digit industry codes. Industries younger than 75 years use their full available history; brand-new industries (e.g. generative AI) use a weighted average of the closest analog sectors for their first 10 years, then their own data. Enforce through the tax code, not mandates: companies below their industry's historical baseline pay a Labor Share Restoration Surcharge on the shortfall; companies at or above baseline receive a Human Employment Credit. No operational mandates, no criminal penalties — same structural approach as R&D credits and depreciation. Pair this with mandatory AI security baselines — kill switches, sandboxed execution, signed model provenance, and real-time anomaly detection — for any model touching critical infrastructure, financial systems, or personal data. Federal investment in AI-fluency, trades, and 'expert-in-the-loop' jobs. Clear AGI/ASI readiness standards put in place before, not after, the next capability jump.
American AI leadership without an American economic collapse. The post-war social contract is restored industry by industry, workers keep a fair share of what they help produce, and Washington doesn't tell any business how to run itself — the tax code just stops rewarding the hollowing-out.