The Coming American Renaissance
By Dr. Jim Castagnera, Esq.
Hard times lie ahead for the United States and the American people. From the “Golden Age” (1945-1980), we have witnessed a slow but steady decline in the American middle class. This is a direct result of Reaganomics, which never fulfilled President Reagan’s promises.
“Reaganomics, or Reaganism, were the neoliberal economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are characterized as supply-side economics, trickle-down economics, or ‘voodoo economics’ by opponents, while Reagan and his advocates preferred to call it free-market economics.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics]
Ronald Reagan believed in two things. One was the fundamental weakness of the Soviet Union. He was right about that and successfully set the stage on which the “Evil Empire” collapsed. He also believed in those neoliberal economic policies. He was dead wrong.
As a result, we have seen a corrosive decline in the once robust American middle class, a tragic erosion of organized labor (which in the Golden Age represented one in three workers and contributed mightily to building that middle class and containing the limitless greed of corporate executives), and an ever-expanding wealth gap between the top one percent and all the rest of us.
In the immediate future all these regrettable results of the so-called “Reagan Revolution” will proceed apace. Indeed, they will accelerate. The catalyst for this acceleration is Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI, if you please).
GAI is going to dramatically reduce our society’s need for many professionals, ranging from lawyers to doctors and beyond. The writers and actors, who have been on strike in Hollywood since May, know what I’m talking about. They understand that ChatGPT and its sisters (Google Bard, BingAI, and the rest) will soon be able to write the scripts and even animate the actors. In law firms, the legal research and writing that was the grist for my mill, when I was young associate attorney at Saul Ewing [https://www.saul.com/], will all be done by GAI in just a few years. And “docs in a box” will handle the routine healthcare issues that general practitioners now address. [https://thedocinabox.store/] Complicated surgical procedures, now performed by highly compensated superstars, will be done better and cheaper by robots.[ https://www.uclahealth.org/medical-services/robotic-surgery/what-robotic-surgery]
To the younger generations: Want a career that won’t be stolen from you by GAI? Become a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, or a mason. Those jobs won’t be done by robots anytime soon. And even if they are, homeowners such as myself will still want flesh-and-blood craftsmen (and women) we can count on.
How wrenching will this GAI disruption be? We can look to the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Almost any of the Charles Dickens novels will paint an accurate picture. In a nutshell, it looked like this:
“The nature of work in the new urban industries also had significant social impact. Before the
Industrial Revolution, artisans with specialized skills produced most of Europe’s manufactured
goods. Their work was governed by the traditions of their craft and the limits of available
resources. Human and animal muscle and the waterwheel were the era’s main energy sources.
With the coming of factory-based industry, the coal-fired steam engine and other machinery set a
new, faster pace for labor. In the factories, coal mines, and other workplaces, the hours were very
long, and the conditions, generally, dismal and dangerous.”
[https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/industrialization-labor-and-life/]
Substitute “professionals” for “artisans”. The difference will be that in the GAI
Revolution millions of workers will simply be redundant. We may see them re-employed in
menial positions. In Kurt Vonnegut’s remarkable first novel, Player Piano (1952)[
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)] he predicted an automated American society
managed by an elite of engineers and assorted other Ph.D. types. The rest of the population
worked on the road crews. Well, how bad was that, really? It ensured full employment, and
excellent, litter-free highways.
Or we may opt for a Universal Basic Income with no requirement to work.
“Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given
population regularly receive a guaranteed income in the form of an unconditional transfer
payment (i.e., without a means test or need to work). It would be received independently of any
other income. If the level is sufficient to meet a person's basic needs (i.e., at or above the poverty
line), it is sometimes called a full basic income; if it is less than that amount, it may be called a
partial basic income. No country has yet introduced either, although there have been numerous
pilot projects and the idea is discussed in many countries. Some have labelled UBI as utopian
due to its historical origin.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income]
Governments and corporations will feel compelled to adopt one of these solutions. The
alternative would be an unruly proletariat, disaffected and surviving in a gray or black market
system beyond the control of the powers that used to be.
If America chooses UBI over the Vonnegut model, this leaves a lot of time on everyone’s
hands. It also challenges our sense of dignity. Despite erosion in recent decades of the work
ethic in many quarters of our society, most of us still define ourselves by the work we do and the
professions we practice. We will need to think about ourselves and our sense of self-worth on
different terms.
Here’s where universities come in. A friend of mine wrote this to me in an email just the
other day:
“There was an interesting New York Times podcast today
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/podcasts/the-daily/is-college-worth-it.html) that
discussed the fact that there are now 2.5 million fewer students choosing a college education,
partly due to the cost, partly due to an evaluation that it's not worth it, and partly -- apparently
mostly among Republicans -- because they feel it's an unwelcoming environment infused with
liberal indoctrination. The long term impact on the nation is that it's likely to deepen the socioeconomic
divide.”
In the future I envision, colleges will be available for free and enrollment will be wide
open. Back in the 1960s, if you asked a college student what was her/his primary reason for
attending, s/he would answer, “To learn how to live a more meaningful life.” Only after Reagan
altered the paradigm in 1981 did the answer change to something like “making all the money and
owning all the stuff I possibly can.”
That answer can, must, and will change back again. Tiring of video games and TV,
redundant workers receiving a UBI will turn to the college campus for fulfillment in the liberal
arts and sciences. Once again, as in the sixties, these repositories of fundamental beauty and
truth will flourish.
This is the American Renaissance I envision. Unlike the platitudes I am reading daily
about how we must learn to humanize GAI, making it the worker’s friend instead of a foe, my
vision doesn’t rely on the illusory goodwill of billionaires and multinational corporations. These
entities, which often currently pay few if any taxes, will have no choice but to pony up.
Otherwise their customers will become an unruly mob. The control they hope to continue
exercising will compel a redistribution of wealth. This isn’t idealism. It’s hard-nosed
pragmatism.
These powers that be, and will still want to be, may prefer a docile population comprised
of highly medicated video gamers. It’s going to be up to the higher-education institutions, the
professorate and higher-ed leaders --- which all have a survival instinct and, thus a big dog in the
fight --- to make sure government policy includes tuition-free open enrollment.
Between now and this American Renaissance lies a hard patch, not unlike the one
experienced by the protagonists in those Charles Dickens novels. But the forces now afoot will
compel this revolutionary transformation. Just as Big Business was forced by the Great
Depression to share its power and wealth with Big Government and Big Labor [see J.K.
Galbraith’s The New Industrial State
(https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691131412/the-new-industrial-state)], the
disruptions caused by GAI will demand the kinds of responses I have predicted here.
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