Last week, Microsoft laid off 6,000 workers — most of them coders. That followed last year’s layoff of 10,000 more. Meta, Oracle, Amazon, Google — the list goes on. Together, they’ve shed tens of thousands of high-paid tech jobs once thought untouchable.
Just a decade ago, software engineering was a golden ticket into the upper-middle class. Now? It’s an unstable, shrinking profession.
Artificial intelligence is devouring its creators. The creature has seized the controls. The humans are being shown the door.
And this is just the tip of the AI disruption iceberg.
I know some of these young coders. Bright, driven, trained for the digital economy. They were let go in a blink. And the door behind them? Slammed shut.
There may be temptation in Rust Belt and Southern towns to say, “Welcome to the club.” They remember Ross Perot warning about that “giant sucking sound” of jobs going overseas. He was more right than wrong. Had we managed globalization with foresight, we might’ve protected American livelihoods. Instead, we got cheaper stuff and hollowed-out cities.
Now, a new generation is again crashing into walls of our own making. This time, built not by foreign factories — but by our own technology.
Where is government in this moment of reckoning? What’s the plan?
Unemployment and underemployment are no longer just a blue-collar problem. Losing a job is traumatic. Failing to find another is devastating. Financial pressure and personal despair follow — and they’re coming for America’s middle class next.
Capitalism, by design, rewards capital. When AI and automation become cheaper than human labor — and they already are — companies will switch in a heartbeat. No loyalty. No looking back. That’s not cruelty; it’s the code of the system.
And the system is accelerating.
We are headed into a perfect storm:
Disappearing jobs.
An aging population with massive care needs.
A tech revolution designed for efficiency, not equity.
Political systems paralyzed by tribalism and big money.
Meanwhile, tech billionaires sell us new futures — monetizing our digital footprints while gutting labor markets. They promise innovation but deliver surveillance. They pitch convenience but erode privacy. They talk freedom while constricting it by consolidating wealth for themselves at historic levels.
Today, the top 1% holds more wealth than half of America. And it’s growing. This isn’t just inequality — it’s democratic instability in the making.
So, where is the leadership?
California Democrats throw money at symptoms — homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, rising crime — without solving the root problems.
National Republicans, now steering federal power, offer culture war distractions, tax cuts for the rich, and savage slashes to health care, science and social services. These aren’t solutions. They’re sabotage.
America stands at a crossroads, yet neither party dares to ask:
How will we retrain millions displaced by tech?
Who will care for aging Boomers without bankrupting families?
How do we secure health care, housing, and human dignity in an age of relentless disruption?
Instead, we get tariffs, deportations, Medicaid reductions and hugely increased deficits. We get Fox News cosplay masquerading as leadership. We get empty noise — while the real threats gather force.
This is dereliction of duty — from the White House to state capitals.
We need serious leadership. Thoughtful, principled, informed.
We need economists, not entertainers. Strategists, not social media stars.
We need grown-ups.
And we need to finally let go of the destructive and distracting culture wars that allow this political pillaging and ineptitude to perpetuate.
It’s time to remember: We may run on capitalism — but we’re still a nation of humans. If we don’t begin to reengineer our society for the public good — not just private profit — we risk losing the very middle class that made America what it was.
This is no longer business as usual. The stakes are personal, and the future is now.
Gary Horton’s “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
