I was back on CNBC this week to make the case that we should tax AI – and eventually robots – and not humans. They invited me back because I think they’re worried about the impact of AI.

First, the big question – is AI going to displace human workers? Of course it is. You’re going to spend a trillion dollars on AI infrastructure and data centers... and then it won’t affect the labor market? That doesn’t make any sense. You need to have corporations paying hundreds of billions of dollars a year for AI in order to justify the trillion-dollar IPO valuations for OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic. That money’s got to come from somewhere, and workers’ wages are the obvious source.

Let’s say the AI companies’ revenues continue to grow. Right now, they still won’t pay meaningful taxes because they are still losing billions of dollars and not generating taxable income. So you’re in the worst of both worlds - a diminishing need for human labor and no new tax revenue to show for it.

We have made people expensive to employ in myriad ways. For example, let’s say I hire a new whippersnapper at Noble Mobile. My costs will include 10% or so in FICA, state unemployment insurance and other payroll taxes. I’ll pay another 10% or so for that person’s healthcare. Then, the worker will pay 15–25% in income taxes depending. That’s almost half of the amount I might budget for this person that he or she won’t see in their take-home pay, all of which discourages both me from creating the position and hiring and the worker from accepting and showing up on Monday.

Or, I could use Claude or some AI tool to do the work. I pay Anthropic for some tokens and... that’s it. No payroll tax. No healthcare. No income tax.

We have set up a system that dramatically advantages AI when it doesn’t need the help to compete.

So what do we do? We need to try to balance the scales by taxing AI and then lift the taxes on people. Tax AI, not humans.

This isn’t just me talking.

Dario Amodei of Anthropic says, “You should tax AI via a token tax.”

Sam Altman says, “Create a national wealth fund via AI revenue.”

Vinod Khosla says, “Don’t tax the bottom 80% of workers.”

John Arnold says, “We should tax compute to make workers more competitive.”

A lot of smart people are figuring out that we have set ourselves up for a calamitous picture because we punish employers for hiring human beings relative to machines.

Addressing this imbalance is going to be one of the biggest challenges of our time. Are our leaders and institutions up for the challenge?

Of course not. Trump is doing whatever he’s doing and the Democrats are jockeying for position and lying in wait for the ’28 primary.

Multiple trillion-dollar AI IPOs are on tap – we are likely to mint the world’s first trillionaire - and things are changing quickly. What to make of these impending IPOs? The valuations don’t make sense at the topline – and the S&P 500 just balked at changing its rules to accommodate SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. That said, I have never seen so many banks bending over backwards to encourage investment in an IPO. I have the feeling that being first out of the gate will be a lot better than being third given the amounts of demand needed to soak up these shares.

It’s unprecedented.

If we’re going to bet the economy and everyone’s retirement savings on AI, the least we could do is tax it.

For my conversation on CNBC click here. For my recent convo with Gavin Newsom, governor of California, on his podcast click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up.

The sentiment is nice, but there were several people who were jumping up and down about automation and jobs even before I was. One of them is technologist Martin Ford, whom I interview on the podcast this week.

“People are arguing right now about whether we are seeing AI replace workers,” Martin observes. “My point is that, even if it’s not happening now, it will be happening eventually. With the development of both AI and robotics, it’s inevitable that the bulk of human workers will eventually be replaced. And some data shows that it’s happening now with entry-level jobs, particularly in computer programming and customer service roles.”

Martin wrote the seminal book, “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” way back in 2015. He had an earlier book, “Lights in the Tunnel” that made a similar case way back in 2009. I was profoundly influenced by Martin and read both books before I ran for President. What can I say? I read a lot. Martin argues for Universal Basic Income in Rise of the Robots. “In my view, the most effective solution is likely to be some form of basic income guarantee.” He describes a vision of a consumer market as a renewable resource with people receiving money that they then turn around and spend.

Right now though, Martin fears that the current changes are going to get rocky indeed. “Many of the workers whom I believe may be most subject to replacement by AI are highly-paid white-collar workers, like accountants and lawyers. As they lose their salaries, it’s going to hurt their ability to pay their mortgages or consume. The top 10% of earners account for 50% of spending in the consumer economy, and even if a basic income were to be implemented it wouldn’t be enough to make up for the loss of buying power.”

Martin also observes that labor replacement isn’t linear, but tends to spike in a downturn. “History shows that automation technologies get rolled out most actively in a recession, and there’s a chance we might be heading toward one now.” For example, 13% of credit card accounts are now delinquent, the highest rate in over a decade.

Martin also thinks that the current spending assumes substantial labor replacement. Here’s the math: $725 billion will be spent on AI data centers and infrastructure this year. How could corporate America spend $725 billion and not expect some of it to come back via reduced labor costs? I just came back from Michigan where they are trying to clear the way for more data centers in their state because the centers bring with them significant ongoing tax revenue. Martin says, “One argument is that it will increase productivity and enable big companies to do more. But with that much invested, reducing labor costs will be the low-hanging fruit.”

AI is in the news this week as several major companies have seen shaky returns from their early spending; one major company spent $500 million on AI tokens to little return, and is now reducing its spend. Other companies are reporting similar experiences. Simultaneously, Anthropic, OpenAI and others are gearing up for the biggest IPOs in history. You can almost sense them trying to reach the public markets so that they can realize hundreds of billions of dollars worth of liquidity before their ability to reach their lofty revenue projections gets called into question. It’s a footrace on which the entire stock market depends, as a lot of the recent growth has been fueled by belief in AI. “I think the valuations are too high based on what these businesses are bringing in for revenue,” Martin comments. But his concerns about labor replacement are bigger than any current valuation cycle. “This has been building up for years.”

Martin is nothing if not consistent - I saw him at TED in 2017. “I used to talk about this and people would see it as an interesting topic for the future, maybe twenty years out. Now, they think it’s very relevant to the present day. I see my job as trying to get smart people talking about this so we can address some of these issues.” He’s not the only one.

For my conversation with Martin Ford, the author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future” click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For 3 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, click here or email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up.

A four-day workweek.

In early 2025, I got an email asking, “Do you want to be interviewed for a book about a 4-day workweek?”

“Sure,” I said. This was a topic that I was very fond of.

The book is now out. I interview the authors of “Do More In Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek” Joe O’Connor and Jared Lindzon on the podcast this week. I advocated for a 4-day workweek during my presidential campaign in 2020. I believe a shorter workweek would enable us to benefit from AI’s ability to do more and would also preserve a few jobs at the margins. It would also preserve our health, our mental health, our time, and our relationships.

Right now, it feels like we’re working harder and harder. Meanwhile, Keynes predicted years ago a 15-hour workweek because our productivity would be so high and techies like Bill Gates have recently predicted the same.

“Work expands or shrinks to fill the time you allocate to it,” Joe observes. “This has become known as ‘Parkinson’s Law’ after someone who lived this rule in her own life.”

Most of us have experienced this - if we have to get something done in a couple days, we get it done. If we’re given five days for the same task . . . it somehow takes us to the end of the period.

“Numerous studies with dozens of companies have found that we get the same amount of work done in 4 days as we do in 5,” Joe states. Most of us have experienced this too. If we’re going on vacation for a weekend, we work harder to make sure we get our stuff done so we can leave on time and relax.

“There’s nothing magical about a 5-day workweek,” Jared points out. “It originated during the Industrial Revolution and Henry Ford. People actually thought a forty-hour workweek would ruin the nation’s work ethic because previously, people worked much longer hours at factories. That obviously didn’t happen. But this industrial setup has essentially lasted a hundred years till today. Now, with AI and knowledge work, our jobs are vastly different but we are still adhering to the same schedule.”

Joe’s company, Work Time Revolution, helps companies make the transition. “41 American companies adopted a 4-day workweek as a pilot, and the vast majority of them elected to keep it after six months. They saw an average increase in company revenue of 15% per year, as well as a marked improvement in morale and retention.” Early adopter companies will have a real advantage in keeping the best people; who would want to go from a 4-day workweek back to a five day?

Joe and Jared believe that this is the path to change – “Historically, a change like this has been made in the private sector by organizations, not through legislation. If anything, the legislation follows after it’s already been adopted by companies.”

As you’d imagine, this made me think about my own company, Noble Mobile. We’re less than a year-old and still need to work hard and grow. But years from now, would I like to see us adopt a 4-day workweek? I’m sure the team would enjoy it, and I’ve always believed in investing in talent and morale. This is, fundamentally, a different way to invest in people that most companies can afford.

Joe and Jared are thinking big. “A four-day workweek is better for the environment. It benefits our mental health, our physical health, our stress levels, our creativity, our relationships and our productivity. It could even encourage people to have children since they’d be able to spend more time with their families, as there are numerous findings that parents distribute more responsibilities when they have another day at home.” Imagine if every weekend was a 3-day weekend. That’s a change that most of us could get behind.

For my conversation with CEO of Work Time Revolution Joe O’Connor and journalist Jared Lindzon, the authors of “Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek,” click here. To check out Forward Party candidates in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, an absolutely crazy value that will save the average family $1,000. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Look up.

This week on the podcast, I interview Paul Rieckhoff, one of the leaders of the independent political movement and the founder of Independent Veterans of America. Military veterans are often independents, as they are more about a spirit of service to the country than partisan politics. “If America is a religion, veterans are its clergy” is a quote I picked up from Paul.

I reflected on my experience leaving the Democratic Party in my recent book, “Hey Yang, Where’s my Thousand Bucks?” Here’s an excerpt:

Chapter 24 - Leaving the Party

When ‘Forward’ came out at the end of 2021, I left the Democratic Party. I put out a little social media video and a brief blog post saying I was now an Independent.

People lost their minds.

It made national headlines. Millions of people googled me. Millions read the blog post – I wished I had been more lengthy and prosaic in my explanation.

I got accused of being a wannabe Fox anchor, a grifter, a loser, a whiner, out to profit by selling books and on and on.

It was very odd.

The bookselling thing was particularly weird. You don’t actually make a ton of money on books most of the time, and Democrats are big book buyers. Trying to become a gazillionaire as an author by leaving the Dems would be insane. How much am I getting paid to write this book? I don’t even know, but let’s just say it’s not paying for anyone’s college tuition. Maybe enough to buy some textbooks? Tell you what, I hereby pledge to donate all proceeds from this book to an anti-poverty org or democracy reform. Now you can tell others about it and know that the money is going someplace good! This pledge isn’t hard to make because, again, there isn’t that much money at stake, unless this book becomes a megahit, at which point I retract this pledge and will instead bathe in the money.

I had been a CNN contributor up through this time. I was getting paid something pretty significant – about $125,000 a year - to be exclusive to them. Evelyn thought it was the best job I’d ever had. “You just talk for a few minutes and they pay you? Keep that job!!” It was a lot easier going on air when they just ask you your opinion on something than as a candidate. They offered me a contract to return at the end of my mayoral run.

Then the news came out that I was no longer a Democrat. My agent called me and said, “Hey, CNN is rescinding its offer to you. Apparently they don’t want to be seen as supporting a third party.”

I responded, “Wouldn’t that make me more valuable to them, not less, in that I’d be an objective voice that isn’t tied up in one party or the other?”

“They don’t think so.”

“Huh. Okay.”

It felt like rejection from a company that I thought really liked me.

So there was a lot of blowback when I left the Democratic Party. I was more mystified by it than anything else. This was just me doing what I thought was the right thing. It was clear to me that our two-party system was just going to get worse and more polarized and wasn’t going to fix itself.

On the TV front, I thought, “Okay, I guess this means I can go on any network. That’s cool.” Fox started asking me to come on all of the time.

I went on a couple times but became uncomfortable when a lot of it was, “Boy, those Democrats sure suck, don’t they!?! Tell us more Yang, you’re a former Democrat, why’d you leave those idiots?” I left the Democratic Party because I had become convinced that their approach wasn’t going to work, but it wasn’t like I thought Fox and the Republicans were the answer.

It was a lesson; in order to feed the narrative machine, it paid to be on one side or the other. That’s where the energy was. That’s where the money was.

I, of course, wasn’t really motivated by that. But it definitely made me understand what other people go through when they’re trying to do something a little bit different outside the machine.

During this time, my phone rang. It was Dave Chappelle. We are friends but he doesn’t often just call out of the blue.

“Hey man, I just called to say it’s inspiring to see someone do something that is actually courageous. I never see that happen. But seeing you do it makes me feel like there’s still some character left in the world. So thank you.”

I guess he’d heard that I’d left the party and was taking shit for it.

“Thanks Dave. That means a lot.” And it did. Take it from a guy who walked away from $50 million to do a comedy show with his name on it.

Dave’s call was a pick-me-up. But my response to the blowback I was getting was kind of contrarian and stubborn – it made me feel like I was on the right track.

And I was confident I’d find others like me who didn’t think the current path was going to work.

One of those people was Paul Rieckhoff.

For my conversation with Paul Rieckhoff, the host of Independent Americans, click here. To check out what Forward Party is doing in your area, click here. To get a copy of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” click here and use the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off. I get great feedback about the book all of the time, which is nice because it’s a different type of writing for me. For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, an absolutely crazy value that will save the average family $1,000. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch. Offline no-phones party returns to NYC on May 21^st! I’m going from that party to my college reunion. Look up.

I recently sat down for lunch with an elected official here in New York City. He asked me, “How is it raising a family and running a company in the City?” He was fishing for information on what business founders and parents are experiencing and what the city could be doing better.

“It’s fine,” I answered. “Most of my team is based here in New York and I’m not going anywhere.” He seemed a little bit relieved at my answer.

For me, it was an easy choice to start Noble Mobile in New York because, well, I live here already and so did my co-founders. My kids are in schools that they enjoy, in grades 8 and 4, and you try not to have your kids switch schools unless there’s a very compelling reason. Are my rent and taxes and cost-of-living higher than normal? Sure. But I’m in building mode and this is a fine place to build. I’m at a point where my choices revolve as much around my personal preferences or family priorities as optimizing for the last dollar.

There are a lot of advantages to building a company in New York. You have access to talented engineers and hires. You can establish a cohesive company culture that’s industrious and creative. It’s easy to meet with brands, celebrities, agencies, investors, media outlets and corporate partners. I go on CNBC or CNN or Fox or some other news network every week or so and it’s a short ride to a studio. Even podcasters are more likely to be either based in New York or visit.

The downsides of starting a company in New York City are primarily costs: everything is very expensive. This includes taxes, rent, employee compensation, food, healthcare, cleaning, you name it. Whatever a normal company might budget for, say, a company lunch, you can add 30 - 50% to it. We are based in the Garment District, which is highly convenient for travelers but kind of a no-frills neighborhood, partially to save money on rent.

We employ some young people at Noble Mobile. I think a lot about some recent college graduate arriving in New York the way I did back in 1996. (I graduated from college 30 years ago and am going to my reunion next week!) I was a random twenty-something-year-old wannabe entrepreneur trying to make something of myself. My rent was $1,080 to split an apartment with a friend. I walked or took the subway everywhere – a cab was an emergency measure. I would bring a book to read on the subway. I was in New York to try to access opportunities and meet people; I was the idealistic young hire who took a paycut at a small company hoping to achieve something. My parents lived in the suburbs, so I could take the train home for a nice meal during a weekend or holiday, but they moved away when I was in my mid-twenties.

The opportunities were both professional and personal; New York City had a great dating scene for twenty-somethings. I would go out late at night to an acquaintance’s birthday party in the hopes of meeting someone and having sparks fly, and even if the night ended in disappointment, the late-night subway ride home felt like the end of a quest that would start again the following day or weekend. During my twenties, I moonlighted as a part-time tutor and nightclub promoter while working at various start-ups.

For me, my big break came when the little education company I tutored at needed a new CEO in 2005. I became the CEO a year later, the same year I met Evelyn. When that company was acquired 4 years later, I became a millionaire. I paid off my law school loans and all of my youthful misadventures were wiped clean. I was 34 at the time, and married Evelyn two years later.

I would never have had this kind of journey any place other than New York. It was a pressure cooker that took me from a failed entrepreneur to a guy with three jobs to eventually a successful CEO in the space of 12 years.

I’m not sure if the New York equation still works as well for young people. There’s evidence that it doesn’t. My tiny bedroom in that apartment would cost $2,600 today as opposed to the $1,080 I spent in 2000. There aren’t as many growth opportunities where your compensation goes up at a rate that exceeds your cost-of-living. A lot of people live here for a few years and then depart because they can’t afford it. The fact that I’m still in the city as a middle-aged Dad is a mild shock, as I used to regard surviving here as a victory in itself. I pay for things that I never would have imagined when I was younger, like parking and food delivery and dry cleaning. Most of the people I came up with in my twenties have long since left New York City, if only to New Jersey or Long Island or Connecticut to raise a family.

I talk to business leaders and hear that big companies are starting to shrink their footprints in the city in favor of places like Texas and Florida. New York and California are right now the states experiencing the most out-migration; that is, people are departing mainly because they’re too expensive:

Would I tell a young person today to move to the City for their twenties out of school? Of course it’s not for everyone – no place is. It’s a deeply individual decision, and people will do what’s inside of them. I would say it’s a great place for the sense of energy and to experience a special time of one’s life. If you’re fortunate, you can become a bit like Liam Neeson in Taken, and develop ‘a special set of skills’ that might serve you well wherever you go. But I would also say that the New York of the late 90s and early 2000s I came into my own in has gotten pricier and less welcoming. It’d be good to set a clear sense of goals and a timeline for yourself, because, like a lot of the country, it’s gotten tougher over time for the folks showing up here with a dream.

For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill with Noble Mobile, an absolutely crazy value that will save the average family $1,000. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to switch or explore. Offline no-phones party returns to NYC on May 21^st! I’m going from that party to my college reunion. Look up.

I’ve seen that sentiment among a dozen major social media accounts in the past week or so. It was like they had a meeting to talk about how to post about it.

Alas, I didn’t get the memo, and wasn’t invited to the meeting. My calls are with people who are freaked out about what their kids are going to do for work.

Part of it was that many of the bigwigs in tech have figured out that AI is . . . becoming deeply unpopular. It has a 26% approval rating, which is below just about every institution, including ICE. Data centers are being protested around the country. Two people even decided to take a shot at Sam Altman’s house (which is terrible, violence is not the answer). The industry has spent $150 million in PAC money to purchase compliance from the two major parties, but that hasn’t stopped ordinary people from coming to their own conclusions.

As one person online put it, “Okay, you’re saying that this is going to take our job and MIGHT kill us all . . . why am I supposed to be excited about this again?”

As you know, I’ve been deeply concerned about the impact of AI on employment for years, ever since I published ‘The War on Normal People’ back in 2018. People ask me all of the time, do I feel bullish or bearish on those projections now?

I answer, “It’s going to be even worse than I thought, because I imagined you’d have a government or public sector that is trying to mitigate the obvious harms of the displacement of labor.” Instead, you have an administration that is out to lunch on the potential impact and a multi-trillion dollar bet on the acceleration of AI that is the biggest outlay of capital in the history of business.

More money is now being spent on data centers than on commercial office buildings. If that isn’t the clearest metaphor for computers replacing human beings, I don’t know what is.

Yet, that is not something that ordinary people and families are going to like. So the new message is, “AI will augment and amplify human productivity, not replace it,” or “AI will automate tasks, not jobs.”

What’s the reality?

Part of the problem of today is that, in today’s information ecosystem, reality is a secondary or tertiary concern compared to what the perception is. It’s less important what is happening to millions of white-collar workers in real life than what the narrative is out there.

And yet, real life continues. This past week, Cloudflare announced that it was laying off 20% of its staff and attributed it partially to AI. Coinbase made a similar announcement.

I’m a numbers guy, and $700 billion is on track to be spent in 2026 by the hyperscalers on AI infrastructure including data centers. A major sports arena costs a couple billion or so. So imagine 7 new sports stadiums being built in every one of the 50 states this year and you have a sense of the scale of the investment. The only way to make those numbers work would be to replace millions of workers in corporations big and small in addition to efficiency gains or productivity growth. Simultaneously, you have mass layoffs at Oracle, Meta, Block and on and on.

These companies are voting with their wallets. It’s a bit like parenting; kids take their cues based on what their parents are doing, not necessarily what they’re saying.

It’s clear what these companies believe about the future based on their actions. No amount of spin is going to change that.

I interview Zach Graumann about this topic and answer listener questions on the podcast this week. I started Noble Mobile to ease people’s costs, and we have a Spring promo that is absolutely bananas of 6 free months as a thank you to the people who have supported me! That would save the average family $1,000. Email matt@noblemobile.com if you want to switch or explore. Offline no-phones party returns to NYC on May 21st – see you there! Go outside and look up.

As some of you may know, I’ve done the occasional comedy set this past year. It’s been a lot of fun. I did a quick five minutes in front of Dave Chappelle at his club in Ohio – it helps to know the boss – and in Raleigh and SF, and also at a couple Asian American comedy fests in New York and Los Angeles.

In Ohio, the crowd had approximately zero Asians in it. I opened, “Hello all, I ran for President! Did any of you support me?” Weak applause. “Well thanks! And to the rest of you, fuck you. Fuck you all. Magical Asian man from the future comes to give you money, and you’re like, ‘I’m not so sure about this guy.’ Congratulations, you’re why we’re all still poor.” I figured most people wouldn’t really know who I was.

In New York and LA, it was probably 80% Asian. I would go a little more insider-y and assume familiarity; I’d talk about my parents trying to talk me out of running for President, being a Dad and more personal stuff.

Back in 2020, during one of the presidential debates, I joked, “I’m Asian, so I know a lot of doctors,” to a healthcare question. I took a little bit of shit for that. Some said I played into Asian stereotypes.

You know what didn’t reinforce any Asian stereotypes? Running for President. I kind of thought that part would be obvious.

After the campaign, I was in Alabama for a charity event. A Southern gentleman in a business suit came up to me and extended his hand. “Mr. Yang, I don’t agree with you on a whole lot sir, but you’ve got a set of balls on you, and I respect that a great deal.” We shook hands.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said “Thank you. Just doing what I can for the country.”

I was at a nightclub a few months later, and a group of Asian guys freaked out when they saw me. One of them put his arm around me and started exclaiming to his friends, “See this guy? This guy fucks! He definitely fucks!!!” They offered to buy me drinks all night. I took a couple pictures and high-fived them before taking off.

I read a book by Jay Caspian Kang called “The Loneliest Americans” about Asian Americans. One of the main ideas was that no one cares about Asian American identity, and the author described the tension of writing a book that argues no one cares about the subject. It made me laugh, but it also felt familiar.

There’s a stereotype of an “Angry Asian Man” who goes to the gym, listens to hip-hop and is alienated, cursing to himself as he curls weights. I certainly resembled that in my twenties, before I met Evelyn.

Have I been mistaken for a delivery guy by a Manhattan doorman because I was carrying a plastic bag? Sure. Some teenagers yelled “Ching Chong” at me from a car window in New England a few years back, and I found myself more confused and saddened by it than anything else.

I know that the doors of this country are wide open to me in a way that they aren’t for most Americans. I can walk into a TV studio or a tech conference or to the entrance of a nightclub and the seas part. I started a political party and a wireless company that saves people money and gets them off their screen a bit more. Who gets to do these things?

The country I grew up in told me I could do anything regardless of my background or where I came from. I believed it. I still do, even though it’s becoming less true for more and more of our young people. Maybe we can do something about that.

Some of the above is excerpted from my recent book “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” which you can buy here with the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off or wherever books are sold. I interview YouTuber and occasional comedian Andrew Fung on the podcast this week. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family, and email matt@noblemobile.com if you want a human. Go outside and look up.

Who the heck is Seth Bodnar and why is he so pivotal? He is the former President of the University of Montana who in February stepped down to run for U.S. Senate as an Independent.

“As a father, I just couldn’t sit by and watch our country become more divided and dysfunctional. I believe we deserve better leadership than we’re getting. So I decided to run for Senate.”

This sounds like something lots of candidates might say, but Seth has demonstrated his patriotism over decades of service. He went to West Point and graduated first in his class (!!) on the way to becoming a Rhodes Scholar. He commanded an Airborne Special Forces squadron in Iraq, jumping out of planes in hostile territory over multiple deployments. He was basically a superhero. Seth remains in the National Guard to this day.

“Watching our members of Congress go on vacation while TSA workers weren’t getting paid is an example of subpar leadership. At West Point, we were taught that leaders eat last, and if there’s not enough food you don’t eat. Unfortunately, our current leaders often think they should eat first.” I bet many Americans would agree with that sentiment.

After returning from war, Seth became an executive at GE before becoming President of the University of Montana. “My wife is from Montana, and we have 3 kids together.” He served very successfully for 8 years before stepping away to run for the Senate in February.

In his first month, his campaign raised almost $1.4 million, more than every other candidate in the race, Republicans and Democrats combined(!!!). His endorsers include Jon Tester, who represented Montana in the Senate for years, as well as the former head of the state Republican party. He is building bridges in a state that has an enormous independent streak.

“When I talk to Montanans, they don’t think about politics day-to-day as much as they do how to keep their car working, getting food on the table for their kids, making sure their crop will make it to market this year, and that their kids will stay in the state instead of going away. They’re tired of people heading to Washington and then just putting on a jersey once they get there.”

You can see why Seth is such a compelling figure. The U.S. Senate could essentially be deadlocked in January, which means that an Independent Senator could be profoundly influential as a tiebreaking vote or a figure who could work with either side. The fact that he could come out of Montana - no one’s idea of a battleground – is also groundbreaking. Even though Montana only has 1.1 million people, every Senate vote is equal. I’ve donated to support Seth and I hope you consider doing so as well.

“Your money goes farther in a place like Montana where we can effectively reach out and talk to voters. When I get to the Senate, I’m not going to have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ on my jacket, but instead an ‘M’ for the people of Montana. I’ve already pledged not to caucus with either party, but I’m excited to work with other Senators who want to solve problems for the people.”

For my interview of Seth Bodnar on the podcast, click here and for his website click here. For a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill through April 30. You read that right. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to collect what is objectively an absolutely boffo value that will help you save for your family and your future. Look up.

That was one of my favorite movies coming up. I later got to meet Ben Stiller, who shot me a ‘Blue Steel’ tweet during one of my campaigns. It was a highlight.

A little more than eight years ago, I started running for President in February of 2018. My campaign was announced with a NYTimes article called, “The Robots are Coming.”

No one cared.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I only later learned that trying to get someone’s attention about a presidential race almost 36 months ahead of the general election was something of a fool’s errand. Just about all of the other candidates would declare after the midterms that November. There’s an ebb and flow to these things, and energy around the presidential only started running hot in mid-2019 when televised debates hit the airwaves.

In my case, the 12 months or so to have the field to myself were a godsend. I got to get comfortable campaigning, hone the message, build a little bit of a following and get my feet under me. Heck, in my case the biggest thing was getting added to the polls at all, which required me stumping around Iowa and New Hampshire for months in order to register.

Thank you if you were a part of that campaign. I was anonymous when it launched and together we mainstreamed a number of ideas that are all the more relevant today.

The energy maxed out in 2020 when the voting started. There were crowds everywhere I went, and my job was to rev them up. I compared it to holding a live wire, where you’re channeling a movement and trying to grow it.

My day-to-day was a barometer for how we were doing. People recognize you on the street and give you a thumbs up? That’s a great sign. I would see MATH hats in the wild routinely. You could actually feel for yourself what was happening in real-time.

It’s hard to believe that six years have passed. The past six years have been busy. I wrote a book or two, started a company and kicked off a political party. But not much compares with the electricity of a presidential campaign. My wife Evelyn recently pulled up a video of me saying “Chant my name!” in jest to a crowd of hundreds at a rally in Washington D.C.

I’m not someone who chases the energy in that way – I’m not naturally an extrovert or an adrenaline junkie. My idea of a great time is reading and writing, or spending time with my family. I didn’t run in 2020 to gain notoriety, but instead to advance solutions I believed would be necessary.

Lately, I’ve felt the energy around me picking up again.

Maybe it’s because AI is on everyone’s minds. Maybe it’s because several of my takes – AI eating the jobs, the need for UBI, the polarization of the two-party system, Joe Biden needing a primary – have aged well. Maybe it’s because more and more people are waking up to the deteriorating state of our institutions.

A friend over dinner complimented me the other night and said, “Somehow, you’ve managed to stay relevant pretty much the whole time since 2020.”

It was a nice sentiment, though I’m not sure he’s completely right. Sometimes it’s something you do, and sometimes the wave comes to you. When it comes, you do all you can to ride it.

Okay, you’ve seen the Noble Mobile promo, but this is a big deal – for a limited time only you can get 6 months off your mobile bill through April 30. Email matt@noblemobile.com and use my name to collect what is objectively an outstanding value that will help you save for your family and your future. A new study just came out showing that time off of Instagram and Facebook improves your mood dramatically. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

I spoke at the University at Albany last week and met with a number of students. They were bright and thinking about their future. A couple of them said they wanted to go to law school.

I responded, “If you go, try to find an inexpensive way to get your degree. I’m not sure the numbers will work out.” We went through the math. Maybe $80k a year for tuition, room and board. Times 3 = $240,000 in debt. How much would you have to make for that to make sense - and would that job be waiting for them in 4 years? I was openly dubious but didn’t want to be a jackass raining on their ambition. It’s good that they even had an ambition, after all.

But it left me thinking about just how rough it’s going to be for the next generation.

“Things have gotten so much worse in the last 10 years.” This is what the CEO of a major AI-enabled company said to me this week. His company has tripled its revenue in the last few years. But he’s cutting staff and sounding the alarm about AI. “The truth is, the faster we replace people, the better we will do.” He’s for a negative income tax to give people a floor paid for by AI-fueled profits.

His summary of the situation in three words: “With the help of AI, capital displaces labor.”

That’s actually the best distillation of the moment we’re in.

Also this idea: “The easiest people to fire are those you haven’t hired yet.” It’s one reason why college students are going into the most unwelcoming job market in a generation.

I wrote last week about unemployed and underemployed college graduates. I said in 2019 “coders will definitely be automated.” I knew that was the case because what coders do is highly structured and rules-based, sort of like the corporate law contracts I reviewed in my twenties, and I knew that highly structured rules-based work would be catnip for AI.

“A lot of corporate workers are there to maintain a legacy system or manage a project that isn’t core to the company’s work,” a tech executive commented to me. “Maybe 25% are touching something vital to what the company is doing right now.” That leaves 75% scrambling to justify their role. The end of the office will be painful.

“AI is going to push millions of people up or down a class. People don’t take that well.” That’s what an AI executive said to me over dinner.

Capitalism plus AI will be no one’s idea of a good time.

I’m pretty sure the numbers will show that entrepreneurship is going to rise, simply because there will be a ton of unemployed college grads and techies and others and they’ll have no choice. I love entrepreneurship as it can bring out the best in people. But for every successful startup, there will be 9 or 10 failures. Starting a business is not for everyone, and this environment will be unforgiving as the work gets stripped away.

The footwear company Allbirds pivoted to AI and its stock popped 700%. Maybe your shoes will tell you that your feet stink.

The water level is going to rise quickly. Appreciate what you’ve got, build a boat as best you can and try to bring others in.

You know something we can all do better on? Our data. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. Email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. A new study just came out showing that time off of Instagram and Facebook improves your mood dramatically. I interview Princeton neuroscientist turned Congressional candidate Sam Wang on the podcast this week. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

This week on the podcast I interview Noam Scheiber, the author of “Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class.” Noam painstakingly interviewed and followed college-educated employees who tried to unionize stores and warehouses at Starbucks, Apple and Amazon for several years. He also followed a young Hollywood writer who was part of the 2023 strike.

“I showed up at one of the first Starbucks stores that tried to unionize in 2021 in Buffalo,” Noam relates. “I noticed that a lot of the unionizing workers were college graduates who had showed up to Starbucks as an interim gig but then found themselves there for years. I thought there was something to dig into.” He wound up following one Starbucks employee, Teddy Hoffman, for three years who had been working at a Chicago Starbucks location after graduating from Grinnell College as Teddy’s store voted to unionize.

“Underemployment of college graduates is all over the news today because of AI,” Noam says, “but the truth is that it’s a trend that has been building for years. A lot of college grads went to work at Starbucks or Apple as a waystation job before the pandemic until they could get the kind of job they got a degree for, but instead found themselves semi-permanently part of the retail workforce.” Indeed, Teddy had already been working at Starbucks for seven years with his degrees in Theatre and English before unionizing, though he eventually became a teacher. “Because they’re college-educated, they have a certain worldview and confidence about them. I was impressed when they would just look up the details of the National Labor Relations Act, for example, to see what employers could and couldn’t do.”

Where there were fewer college graduates, there were more social and cultural barriers to organizing. “Each Starbucks store was kind of the same in terms of the makeup of their employees,” Noam observes. “This is one reason why unionization at Starbuck stores spread to 650 locations, while at Amazon, it hasn’t translated to multiple fulfillment centers.” The 650 Starbucks stores in the U.S. represent about 6.5% of Starbucks’ 10,000 locations in the U.S.

One of the admirable aspects of Noam’s book is that it doesn’t sugarcoat how hard it is to unionize in these environments. “Technically, employers aren’t allowed to discriminate against workers who are looking to unionize. But any grievance with the National Labor Relations Board can take years, during which a lot of these employees might have already moved on. And employers can all of a sudden start enforcing rules that were always on the books that can make an environment very unpleasant or increase benefits for non-unionized stores.” For example, a worker could get fired or disciplined for being 5 minutes late because there’s a rule against tardiness that ordinarily doesn’t get enforced, or non-union employees could get a new benefit that unionizing stores don’t get because any new benefit has to be collectively bargained.

Indeed, the human aspect of “Mutiny” is its most compelling aspect; seeing Teddy and other retail workers try to organize over months and years makes you feel for them. Teddy becomes a father for the first time, and he and his wife apply for government benefits because money is short and Starbucks has reduced his hours. But he continues on because he wants to see the campaign through.

So what lies ahead? Noam says, “One thing I can say with confidence is that this population is going to change our politics. Young college graduates voted for Zohran Mamdani, for example, at a rate of 84%. When do you see a number that high?” Indeed, one of Peter Turchin’s conditions for revolution is an oversupply of elites. The ambitions of young people can go dark pretty quickly when the future they were promised fails to materialize, which is unfortunately going to be the case for more and more of them as 42% are currently underemployed - and rising.

When I ran for President I was more likely to talk about truckers or retail workers than I was college grads being displaced by AI. But every 23-year old who returns home to their parents' house with stifled ambitions and deferred dreams represents a big lost opportunity. As that becomes the new normal, the costs to both the individuals concerned and the country will be profound.

For a link to Noam’s book, click here and for my convo with him click here. I started a wireless company that will reduce your time on social media and save the average American $500 a year. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screentime and help you save for your family or email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

I’m not someone who enjoys cancel culture or a rush to judgment. But when the news came out I thought that he should drop out. I wasn’t alone as every endorser abandoned him very publicly and his staff deserted him en masse.

I met Eric multiple times when he and I were both running for President; we saw each other campaigning in Iowa where he was born. His number is in my phone. Eric made the first debate in 2019, which he spent challenging Joe Biden to ‘pass the torch’ and quoting Joe in his first Senate campaign saying that the incumbent was too old and out of touch and it was time to give way to the next generation. Joe came up to him during a commercial break, took Eric by both lapels, and said to him “nice try, I’m not going anywhere.” Eric then dropped out a few days later.

After 2020, Eric became a fixture on cable news programs, particularly MSNBC and CNN, mouthing Democratic talking points. He burnished his social media following. In 2024, when Joe Biden’s age became one of the central issues of the day and Dean Phillips tried to force a primary, Eric was nowhere to be found. He had gotten the message that being a good partisan soldier was a better path.

His approach worked, as he became the frontrunner to become Governor of California after Kamala Harris and Alex Padilla passed up runs for the position.

I was surprised by this; Eric is a bit of a lightweight. He’s not an intellect or a deep policy thinker. He’s sort of a normal-ish telegenic guy who found a path in politics.

As you can imagine, running for President requires a number of character traits: vision, intellect, confidence, conviction, communication ability, charisma, maybe even morality or principle.

I didn’t find Eric to be remarkable on any of these qualities. He’s just a dude. He was in way over his head running for President. He recently has come under some heat for not maintaining a house in his district; I think he just didn’t have the money to have one home in D.C. and another place in northern California. His net worth in 2018 was reported to be negative due to student loans and is more recently listed at around $400,000. His Congressional salary of $174,000 has been the family’s main source of income.

Apparently, Eric’s being a creep toward young women was kind of an open secret in DC and California circles. I was nowhere near that stuff. But as soon as the news came out, I thought, “Yeah, that tracks.” There’s no way in my mind it was all fabricated. His denial/non-denial video only seemed to make things worse. His suspension was a formality after just about everyone associated with his campaign abandoned him.

Best case for Eric, in my opinion, is that he doesn’t get drummed out of Congress by his colleagues – which I think he probably will be – but that he then loses his seat in a couple years when someone is in position to challenge him. His days as a cable news presence are over and he’s likely done as a politician. My heart goes out to his wife and 3 kids, who now have his behavior splayed out on news programs for all to see. It’s going to be devastating for his family.

I sometimes think of some of the other figures from my presidential primary ‘class,’ many of whom I’m loosely in touch with. I feel like Eric is Icarus from the Greek myths; he flew too close to the sun, and now he’s crashed to Earth. Human failure and frailty take multiple forms. I hope his family is okay, and that those closest to them in real life can get them the help they are going to need.

You know who my pick for Governor of California is? Matt Mahan! You can hear my interview with Matt here or read my post on him here. You know something we can all do better on? Our data. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. Email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

As you probably know, I run a wireless company, Noble Mobile, that pays people to use their phones less. It’s clicked with people in part because we are all struggling with our relationship with our phones, what Hasan Minhaj calls our ‘rectangles of sadness.’ Noble today has thousands of subscribers and millions of annual revenue - thank you if you’ve been an early adopter!

How bad is your screen time? Well I’m proud to announce that starting today, you can find out! Introducing the Brain Rot Index (BRI), now in the free Noble Life app.

Your BRI is a daily score that tracks your phone pickups, screen time, and social media usage — and tells you exactly how rotted your brain is getting. If you’ve wondered how good or bad your phone use is, this is for you. For fun, if your score is in the acceptable range you can earn up to $100, plus 5.5% annual growth on your balance, on Noble.

Getting started takes about 60 seconds:
1. Download the Noble Life app
2. Create your free account
3. Track your Brain Rot Index daily

I founded Noble because millions of Americans are overpaying for wireless and losing hours of our lives to our phones. The hidden tax comes to over $100 billion a year and much more when you factor in our time and attention. This is a way to put money and time back in people’s pockets right now.

What’s my Brain Rot Index? Let’s just say that you will probably do better than I do. :)

Look Up.

– Andrew

We have Offline events coming up in LA and New York, as well as the Hudson Valley Ideas Fest later in April. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around, or email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. On the podcast on Monday I talk to the author of ‘Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class’ Noam Scheiber. Be present and try to look out for people in your boat.

This is tectonic. Those 30,000 workers cost about $8 billion a year. The message is clear – fewer human salaries, more data centers. The amount of money spent on building data centers recently surpassed the amount of money spent on office buildings for the first time.

The server farm is the new human.

Also last week, OpenAI announced it was raising $122 billion at a staggering $852 billion valuation, the heftiest raise for a private company in history. This seemed like an incredible vote of confidence in its business.

But if you dug a little deeper, you’d see that the vast majority of this $122 billion - $110 billion – came from only 3 companies: Amazon with $50 billion, Nvidia for $30 billion, and SoftBank for $30 billion. These companies are all already massive investors and partners to OpenAI – they need it to succeed for their own sakes. Only $12 billion came from other entities and individuals, including Microsoft which has already invested billions in OpenAI.

This reminded me of a business joke: “If I owe you one million dollars, I’m in trouble. If I owe you a billion dollars... you’re in trouble.”

Microsoft, Nvidia and SoftBank are so deep in hock to OpenAI that they need it to succeed.

OpenAI recently abandoned its much-hyped Sora AI-for-video offering despite high-profile partnerships with Disney and other media companies. There wasn’t that much demand, but the costs of the computing resources for Sora were at least a million dollars a day. Hence, they pulled the plug.

Instead, last week OpenAI acquired the technology YouTube / X show TBPN. I appeared on TBPN a few months ago to talk about Noble Mobile. Why is an AI company acquiring a new media channel for hundreds of millions of dollars?

It’s a great question. The answer, in my mind, clearly seems to be to try and shape the narrative among techies around AI and OpenAI.

It’s not a normal business practice and it doesn’t make much sense in a normal world; if your business is AI, why buy a media mouthpiece? That’s... just weird.

Of course, if your stock is now valued at $852 billion, you can spend a couple hundred million on some YouTubers / X broadcasters without it being too big a deal.

But still, I find this to be something that raises more questions than it answers.

OpenAI touted its massive revenue growth – up to $2 billion a month. ChatGPT remains dominant among non-business users even as OpenAI is trying to gain traction with companies.

OpenAI’s competitor, Anthropic, is now preparing to go public in one of the biggest IPOs ever. The folks I know use ‘Claude’ as shorthand for their ass-kicking colleague in the enterprise setting. This is where OpenAI wants to be.

What are the takeaways? First, the scale of investment in AI is now so breathtaking that people are just incidental costs. Data centers are the new offices. Layoffs are the go-to move for big companies trying to take advantage of AI and will only pick up steam.

Second, in order for OpenAI to justify its new valuation, it will need to increase revenue by an additional tens of billions of dollars, which suggests to me that either it’s going to replace a huge chunk of the workforce, or it’s going to fall short of its current projections. Or maybe both.

Finally, OpenAI is the new ‘too big to fail’ company, similar to the big banks during the mortgage meltdown. Of course, the banks wound up with the federal government as a backstop. If OpenAI ever needs the Feds to step in... the market will be in big trouble.

None of this is good news. Be prepared for strange – and tough - times for people ahead.

Would you believe I started a wireless company that will reduce your time on social media and save you up to $1,000 a year? Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen-time and help you save for your family or email matt@noblemobile.com to get a human being. I interview Mindy Finn on why she joined Forward on the podcast this week. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

Yes, this feels frivolous. There’s some part of me that is like, “Man, AI is going to kick off an automation wave unlike anything we’ve ever seen. How are you paying attention to sports at a time like this?”

Now, I know that’s harsh. We all have to enjoy life and appreciate what we have while we have it. I find that I’m more effective when I’m positive.

But there’s something that’s gnawing at me that I’m going to try to express.

9 times out of 10 when we log on or turn on the TV, we are looking at the winners.

The State of the Union, our pro athletes, performers, actors, even influencers and writers. Most people we see and track are at the top of a pyramid, outliers and anomalies.

It distorts our sense of what’s happening.

Perhaps revealing of me - I have a grotesque fascination with pro athletes and celebrities who have gone broke. I watched a couple YouTube videos of this variety and now they get served to me all of the time.

If 10 million white-collar workers were to get kicked to the curb, what would we see change? In the real world, things would be different. The offices would be emptier and our neighborhoods bleaker. Maybe our neighbors would have to sell their house and our friends would need some help. Maybe we would too. But the media and social media we see would probably look just about the same.

One of my great learnings these past years has been that our media organizations are terrible at telling us what’s actually going on out there. Our news networks have become chroniclers of the news-of-the-day in your preferred lighting and flavor. The American standard of living has slipped so far over the past number of years – a record 57% of us are pessimistic and 70% are having trouble affording a decent life – with very little meaningful genuine coverage. I sometimes think that instead of all of the hours of talking headery we are subject to, we should just get graphs and bar charts showing how we are doing free of distractions or commentary.

Yet our favorite anchors have to go out there and perform their task each night, and they’re allowed few flare-ups or failures. It’s a tightrope they walk, and they either become pleasant or inflammatory automatons or they get kicked off the rope.

I’m an anomaly myself now.

We are living in a K-shaped economy that is getting all the more extreme. Oracle just laid off 30,000 workers. What happens when the winners are vastly outnumbered by the losers, but the losers are invisible?

Studies have shown that being successful is less fun in a highly unequal environment. Even if you’re at the top, you’d prefer that it gets spread around a little more. More people have to have a chance to win.

Did you know reading books lengthens your life expectancy? You can pick up a copy of my new book “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” here with the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off or wherever books are sold. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around. Hudson Valley Ideas Fest is on April 25th. Look up and give someone a chance.

Last Thursday, a Los Angeles jury ruled that Meta and YouTube were negligent for designing addictive features such as infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos, and beauty filters that contributed to a then-teenage girl’s mental health struggles. The jury determined that Meta was 70% responsible and YouTube was 30% responsible, and awarded her a total of $6 million in damages.

The ruling came shortly after a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for $375 million in damages after the state Atty. Gen. Raúl Torrez alleged that the platform’s features enabled predators and pedophiles to exploit children. A former Meta executive said that, in their experience, 1 in 8 underage Instagram users received unwelcome outreach or harassment through the platform.

Immediately, politicians emerged on cable news programs saying that social media companies need to be reined in. “These verdicts mark an unsurprising breaking point. Negative sentiment toward social media has been building for years, and now it’s finally boiled over,” said one market analyst.

Meta’s stock went down 7% and Google was down 2% on Thursday on a down day for the market generally. Both companies suggested that they were going to appeal the verdicts.

A legal genie has now gotten out of the bottle. Millions of families have been adversely affected by social media platforms over the past number of years, and juries have now upheld that the companies should bear some responsibility. You can easily see lawsuits coming out of the woodwork in every state, and more attorneys general are going to want to burnish their credentials by getting a pound of flesh.

The tech companies are quickly becoming deeply unpopular; if you were a juror and you had a bajillion-dollar tech company on one side and a young woman with an eating disorder or depression on the other, it would be very easy to think “Huh, the money doesn’t mean anything to the company. But it would help the family a lot.” Any public official who holds them to account will seem like a hero too. Meta’s revenue in 2025 was $200 billion and YouTube’s was over $60 billion.

Even as the social media companies are appealing, they’re also advertising their new precautions for teens. I’ve seen the advertisements. You might have too. But the damage has been done, and newly adopted tweaks may only make the legal cases more compelling. Why did they only start making these changes when their feet were held to the fire?

I personally love that this tide has turned. Data was out as early as 2017 that these platforms were terrible for children, teenage girls in particular. Jonathan Haidt’s seminal book, “The Anxious Generation,” has resulted in policy changes in dozens of states. His reaction to these verdicts:

“As of today, we are in a new world: a new era in the fight to protect children from online harms... Big Tech is harming kids on an industrial scale. For years, parents were told these harms were exaggerated, anecdotal, or simply the unavoidable cost of growing up online. Today, a jury affirmed what parents have long known: Meta and YouTube were designed to exploit young people, with devastating consequences... They were negligent and dishonest . . . This is just the beginning. Thousands of cases will follow, bringing Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube to court.”

Lawsuits and new regulations are on tap, and they will materially affect the social media giants. These companies made decisions years ago to maximize engagement and ignore the social and human costs. Those costs are finally coming home to roost, and they will be massive, if far too late for the millions of kids whose lives were changed irrevocably. Our leaders were asleep at the switch, and a generation of kids paid an unthinkable price. For the social media companies, the paying has just gotten started.

Would you believe I started a wireless company to reduce your doomscrolling? Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. I interview Arthur Brooks on his new book “The Meaning of Your Life Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness“ on the podcast this week. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.

During our fifth workout or so, Aaron said to me, “Hey, have you seen some of these personal training apps? Should I be worried that my job is going to disappear?” Aaron was about to propose to his girlfriend and had money on his mind.

His thinking: ChatGPT will give you a comprehensive 40-minute routine if you take a picture of gym equipment, and an AI bot will yell “You’re fat!” in your ear for next to nothing.

I said to him:

“Look, at the margin, some people might use a virtual personal trainer and a home gym. But your job is going to be among the safest ones for a few reasons.

First, you’re in a job where some people are going to value the human touch. Having a real live trainer pushing you and stretching you is tough to replace.

Second, you do this job in Manhattan. This is one of the wealthiest places in the country. Your clientele is what’s called cost-insensitive. They’ll pay a premium and not think too hard about it.

Third, your clients are on the older side. These are among the folks who also would prefer to have a person as opposed to a bot over a screen.”

“Okay, that makes me feel better. Thanks!” Aaron said. Even better, his girlfriend said yes to his proposal a few weeks later and is now his fiancee.

Around the same time, I was doing a call-in show on NPR and a sixth-grade teacher called asking whether her job is safe. I responded, “Yes. We are going to need a teacher to be with our kids for a long time to come, and your school principal or supervisor doesn’t think replacing you with AI is a good idea. Also, AI wouldn’t be able to keep your sixth-graders from walking out the door if they felt like it.”

Teaching jobs are going to be reduced because of city and state budgets being under pressure and lower enrollments as people have fewer kids, but we’re talking about something gradual and an erosion of job security, not wholesale replacement due to AI.

Every day, I get people asking me whether their job is safe or not. The truth is, it’s complicated. Millions of people are going to be employed for years to come. But 44% of American jobs are either manual repetitive or cognitive repetitive and many of them are going to disappear. AI is to office parks what machines were to factories in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

A bunch of firms have come out with ratings and reports of how replaceable a job is by AI given the nature of the tasks involved. Here’s one from Microsoft, for example. But these ratings focus on the nature of the work and not other aspects of organizations, such as whether they are publicly traded and under immense scrutiny to optimize. If you work at a small, sleepy foundation, for example, they might not automate your job because they are just kind of chill or old-fashioned and you’re nice.

How do you know where you are? Here are a bunch of risk factors that your job might be automated away in the next little while:

Factors that Suggest Your Job Might Get Automated

Do you work in tech?

Are you a coder?

Do you make six figures?

Do you work for a publicly traded company?

Are you in a big department?

Does your job involve looking at a computer all day?

Do you work in customer service?

Do the words ‘analyst’ or ‘research’ show up in your job title?

How about ‘designer?’

Are you an interpreter or translator?

Would it be accurate to call you ‘an administrator?’

Do you work in finance, not as a rainmaker?

Do you work in law or consulting, not as a rainmaker?

Do you work in media or content production?

Are you being urged to finish up a particular project and/or monitor your decisions and activities?

Does your project not touch company revenue?

Is your supervisor not making eye contact with you as much?

Are you over the age of 48?

Are you a journalist?

Could you easily imagine a bot doing 80% of your job or more?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to one or more of these questions and you’re not in charge, I’d say you should start making contingency plans, saving some money, reaching out to professional contacts, and generally not be too confident that your present situation will stretch out over a period of multiple years.

Personal note: as a serial entrepreneur, I assume that whatever money I make will be the last I ever make unless I go do something else. Everything is eat what you kill. What a joyous approach to the world. I also eat with my back to the wall and send my kids out into the woods at random.

On the flip side, here are some factors that suggest your job may be resilient for the time being. Hooray!

Things that Might Make Your Job Safe(r for the Time Being)

Do you work for the government or a university? (Less institutional pressure to automate)

Are you in a union? (Require collective bargaining and have some protection)

Do you deal with people all day?

Do you deal with children all day?

Do you deal with sick people?

Do you work with your hands?

Do you repair things?

Do you get dirty?

Do you make house calls?

Do you deal with animals?

Do you touch another human being as part of your job (and it’s okay)?

Does your job involve going outside?

Are you between the ages of 30 and 45?

Do you work for a charity or philanthropic organization (that isn’t running out of money)?

Do you get paid less than $55,000 a year?

Do you serve the top 20% or so of consumers (i.e., rich people pay you)?

Do you have a lot of people who pay you a little bit for something?

Is your job something that people can’t do without?

Do you know something that can be used against the decision-maker such that they kind of want to keep you around?

Are you the person in your organization that other people ask about AI?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to one or more of these questions, congratulations! Your job will likely not be eliminated in the current round of AI-driven automation. People tell me that the robots are coming next, but that won’t be for… at least 12 months.

This is obviously a mildly tongue-in-cheek quiz - the truth is that the ground is shaky even in traditionally safe environments nowadays, as even if you work for a non-profit or the government, budgets are under strain. The big growth area has been health care, but a lot of that money is from state and federal budgets and it can’t go up forever. Someone has to pay for the health care after all.

So… what can you go into that you know has a future?

I’m reluctant to say this because it’s not for everyone, but try to own something. Be the person deciding where the resources go. I ran into an OG Yang Gang supporter at my book talk in Connecticut who said, “I joined my family’s contractor business, and it’s going great.” I could tell he was happy because he was an owner.

The best way to keep the boss from automating your job is to become a boss, because then the only person who can fire you is yourself.

I know, I wish I had better news. I’ll write more on other practical steps for people to take soon.

I started Noble Mobile mainly because it’s a way to save the average American family over a thousand dollars a year. I was spending $150 a month on Verizon and now I’m down to $49, and that’s just for me. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will help you save for your family and look up. Email matt@noblemobile.com if you want the human touch. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25^th. Spring is arriving.

“So what do we do?”

I answered, “We generally tax things we want less of. In this situation, we want to preserve labor in every corner and environment. So we should stop taxing labor and instead take the advice of Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, and start taxing AI.” This could be used to fund Universal Basic Income among other measures.

Dario Amodei, in the past number of weeks, has been saying two things: First, his company, which produces Claude, is going to automate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next several years. Second, he thinks his company should be taxed on it. He suggests a 3% of revenue ‘token tax,’ which could raise billions very quickly.

That’s right, one of the biggest AI CEOs thinks we should tax his company.

Why don’t legislators take him up on this suggestion?

Right now, lawmakers lack any real vision for how to deal with AI except to cheerlead and pave the way for data centers. The AI lobby has compiled $185 million, which makes them a feared industry to get on the wrong side of.

Meanwhile, the favorability rate of AI among Americans is only 26%. This is lower than, for example, the rating for ICE.

The argument I made on CNBC is that a popular backlash is coming and some kind of sensible taxing of AI is going to be necessary. The argument that “we can’t interfere with the AI industry for fear of losing the competition to China” ignores the facts that 1. This competition won’t be won on the last dollar spent, but on the models’ abilities to improve themselves and whether there’s a real moat and 2. Chinese and American AI are already separating into two ecosystems and spheres of influence.

My comments on CNBC went viral, in part because of both the logic and the appeal. Who would be mad at taxing AI instead of people, especially when at least one of the companies is literally asking for it? It would make both workers and employers happy and put more money into people’s hands. It would also help preserve millions of jobs in a time when that should be the top priority. Whether our putative leaders can understand this vision and make it happen is one of the big questions; it may be that someone has to force their hand.

Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around, that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25^th! Go outside and look up.

I heard this from Matt Mahan a couple of years ago after he became mayor of San Jose in 2023. He was young, impressive, and purely solutions-oriented. But he also understood the human side of government. He had been a schoolteacher in the classroom and had young kids at home. “The goal of government should be to help people succeed and live the kind of lives they want.” Pretty simple, straightforward mission statement.

Now, Matt is running for governor of California. “The spending of the government of California has gone up 60% in the past 5 years, to over $340 billion today. Has California gotten 60% better in that time? No one thinks it has.” Indeed, California today is experiencing net population outflows primarily because it’s gotten too expensive to live and raise a family. “I’m running for governor because I think I can make the government deliver more value for the people than we are currently getting.”

One example Matt cited to me in my interview of him for the podcast this week: “When I took office in San Jose, we had a homelessness program run by an organization that employed 40 outreach workers. They were averaging only 1 referral per month per worker. Now, it wasn’t entirely their fault, as we also didn’t have enough beds. But we shifted the resources to beds, and now we have only 10 outreach workers but they’re much more productive because they actually have resources to offer a person on the street.” Very common sense, but imagine that kind of recalibration across a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. Matt worked in the private sector after his stint as a teacher so he understands how to effectively use resources. The potential benefit for the state and its people is enormous.

His campaign slogan is “Back to Basics.” A lot of our politics has devolved into arguing about this priority or that. Matt’s approach is to get the machine of government actually delivering what it’s supposed to. What a straightforward, yet critical, mission.

The governor’s race in California is a non-partisan affair; the all-party primary is on June 2^nd with the top two vote-getters proceeding to the general election in November. If Matt gets over 20% of the vote in June he will probably go to the general election, where I think he would be very tough to beat.

As you can tell, I’m enthused about Matt’s campaign as I think it has enormous potential to improve the lives of tens of millions of Californians. For my interview of Matt, click here. To check out his campaign, including to donate (as I have), click here. I’m glad someone like Matt decided to make this kind of case in such an important race. He’s got the track record to demonstrate what kind of governor he’d be. And if enough people see his message, I have no doubt that he’ll be in Sacramento next year delivering massive wins for the people.

You know something we can all do better on? Our data. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around, that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. Go outside and look up.

What were the takeaways of the “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” tour?

For one, I was generally surprised by the number of completely new faces. I kind of expected it to be a reunion tour, but it wasn’t. At each event, there were a few people who would say, “I finally get to meet you!” These were people who supported me back in 2020, but had never gotten a chance to say hello. One of them was abroad for several years, for example. So that was nice.

Some people came by who had already read the book and enjoyed it. That felt good.

I got a lot of questions about AI. It’s on everyone’s mind, rightfully so. I debated the topic, “Will AI make work obsolete?” for Open to Debate in Washington D.C. last week while on tour. I took the affirmative side. The recording will be out this weekend. I thought my side won.

As if on cue, Block on Thursday announced that they were laying off 4,000 of their 10,000 workers, the highest percentage of layoffs in the history of the Fortune 500. Jack Dorsey explicitly attributed it to AI and building smarter. Their stock jumped 20% immediately. Expect other companies to follow suit in the days ahead. The Fuckening is on and picking up steam.

Attendees were out on the two-party system and eager for an alternative. I made a stop in Richmond for a speaking event about the American political system that drew several thousand people. No one thinks the status quo is working. One person said, “I didn’t know what to expect. But you’ve made me hopeful again.”

The mood out there is generally not awesome and looking for something.

Some old friends came to one stop on the book tour who I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Have you had that experience lately? Maybe if you went to a high school or college reunion. They looked good, but also like… 20 years had passed. You know what I mean? My life has been remarkably constant for the past 20 years, which is coincidentally when Evelyn and I met.

Many people wanted me to run for President again. Obviously, this is among an incredibly self-selected group, but it was heartwarming. Apparently, my platform that AI was coming and we should give everyone money has aged well.

The tour definitely had a campaign-type vibe. I had a wonderful time on the road, and the book has been a welcome reason to get people together. We got requests for a lot of other stops, so stay tuned. And thanks again for coming out if you did! I feel terrible for families as we are about to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs as corporations follow Block’s lead. It’s either cut workers or your job will be on the chopping block soon, and we all know which one CEOs will choose.

You can pick up a copy of my new book “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?” here with the code “UBIUBI” for 25% off or wherever books are sold. Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen-time and help you save for your family. Go outside and look up.