Are we moving from a consumer economy to an individual economy? I’ll give the typical attorney response and say, that depends.
I have observed on YouTube more rumblings about consumers losing jobs. Approximately 1.1 million people have lost work over the past year. What the press has not reported is that approximately 400,000 or so of those workers were able to find employment. If you’re YouTube choices are to listen to the gloom and doom, then you will swear that the world is coming to end, especially after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic’s finding that a total of 64,000 jobs were added in November 2025.
On the other hand, while American workers have to make between $100,000 to $140,000 a year to break even, we are seeing in the technology industry jobs that pay over $200,000 in the area of artificial intelligence. For those of us who cannot for a myriad of reasons get on with firms that pay $200,000 a year, we are forced or given the permission to create one-person firms that use multiple artificial intelligent agents to do the work that fifty people were doing before.
Staying in the labor force and hoping that one can get by on a hundred grand, fighting for a $200,000 a year job with an AI company, or going her own way by using AI are the decisions that are pretty much left up to the individual these days.
One could argue that a person could take universal basic income, but given that state or federal UBI does not even exist, is that an option that Americans can count on?
I’ll step back for a minute and give my take on where archnonic energy would like the nation and the world for that matter to go. In short, labor is going exactly where it supposed to go. Specifically, labor is moving away from relying on corporate entities for work and moving toward providing specialized skills to one or a few employers. The skills provider will have to be top notched in her field.
Also, I cannot say for certain when it should happen, but the Earth will have to severely reduce its population. According to the site, Worldometer, the Earth’s population is approximately 8,264,786,240. The less income humans make and the less of that income that humans are able to save will weigh heavily on the decision to work more hours or have more children.
While I have no problem listening to what the artificial intelligence prognosticators have to say about reduction or changes in the labor force, my job is not to follow them. My job is stay ahead of them.
If they are right, then artificial intelligence is knocking on its third door of relevance, having picked up in notoriety in the 1950s and 1960s before going quiet. Artificial intelligence made a comeback in the 1980s and 1990s only to go silent until its latest big reoccurrence in 2022.
Personally, I believe that artificial intelligence is the head fake. Narrow intelligence is all we have for now. What people should be more concerned with is whether or not their route intelligence is needed today, right now. The answer appears to be … no.
Alton Drew
18 December 2025
Lawyers Write the Bets. Bankers Sell the Bets. 