On: AI has entered the workforce: tax tech profits, not people
The news arrives like a ledger entry in red ink - bold, unmistakable, and already settling into the accounts as if it were always there. “AI has entered the workforce: tax tech profits, not people.” A headline so blunt it might as well be a confession. And yet, it is not a confession at all - it is an announcement, a declaration of victory for those who have long treated labour as a cost to be automated rather than a human necessity to be sustained.
The welfare state, that fragile edifice built upon the assumption that work and dignity were intertwined, now faces a new arithmetic. The machines do not tire, they do not demand wages, and - most damning - they pay no taxes that might fund the very systems that once supported those they displace. The Treasury will call this progress. The accountants will cheer. But progress for whom? The balance sheet expands for the shareholders of these tax-tech firms, while the ledger of the unemployed grows heavier with every line of code written.
They will tell you this is inevitable - the march of technology, the iron law of efficiency. But inevitability is a mask for choice. Who benefits from the perception that automation is the only path? The same hands that have always preferred capital to labour, that have always measured human worth in units of productivity rather than in lives. The beauty contest here is not between algorithms - it is between two visions of society: one where the state steps in to redistribute the gains of mechanisation, and one where the gains are hoarded by those who own the machines.
And what of the long run? Ah, the long run. The theorists will assure us that new industries will emerge, that the displaced will find new roles, that history will smooth the rough edges. But history is written by those who hold the pens - and right now, the pens are being handed to the engineers of unemployment. The short run is where the hungry eat, where the jobless stand at the welfare office, where the children of the displaced wonder what kind of future they might inherit. The long run is a theoretical comfort for those who do not need to worry about the next paycheck.
The most dangerous phrase in the lexicon of the powerful is “this is how it must be.” Today’s headline is not just about AI - it is about surrender. The welfare state was never a given; it was a choice, a political act of solidarity. And now, as the machines take their place in the workforce, we must ask: who will make the choice to defend the alternative? Or have we already decided that some ledgers matter more than others?