AI's PR Problem

J.P. Morgan hits photographer with cane

This is just a brief post to explain to my old boss, Eric Schmidt, why he and his ilk are getting booed at college commencements, and why laws against data centers are getting passed. The explanation is below the fold.

Let us start from an under-appreciated fact. Paul Campos reports that:

The college wage premium, that is, the increased earnings associated with having a college degree as opposed to only being a high school graduate, hasn’t changed at all in the past 25 years, because median real wages have been flat as a pancake for everybody, no matter what their formal education level, for the past quarter century.

But:

I wonder what’s happened to capital over this time? Value of S & P 500, inflation-adjusted, 1/2000 to 9/2025 (same period as the wage data):

2000: $1,394

2025: $6,688

On average, for more than the students' entire lives, stock-owners like Schmidt and (to a much lesser extent) I have stolen every last drop of the productivity increase of US workers at every age and education level. (See the actual numbers in the appendix)

Now, the perpetrators of this theft are telling their victims, the students and the public at large, that whether they like it or not they will be subjected to AI because that will make the perpetrators even richer. The victims have been informed that this new technology will:

• Nudify their images.
• Leak their passwords.
• Increase their utility bills.
• Consume their scarce water resources.
• Coerce state and local governments into providing many billions of dollars a year in tax breaks.
• Force them to invest their 401Ks and index funds in an obvious bubble.
• Eventually require a taxpayer bailout.
• Eliminate their jobs.
• Render their expensively acquired skills worthless.
• Be so expensive that only the rich can use it.
• Destroy democracy.
• Accelerate global warming.
• Encourage them to commit murder and suicide.
• Autonomously target them with drones.
• Possibly even end humanity.
• Add glue to their pizza.

Nothing better illustrates the contempt of the Epstein class for the proletariat than that these oligarchs would expect the graduating class to enthusiastically accept this prospect.

Appendix

Here are the actual numbers from Paul Campos' 25 years of flat wages and no increase in the college wage premium, while value of capital has skyrocketed:

I was fooling around with FRED this morning, as one does, and here are some stats: (The FRED numbers are presented in nominal dollars; I’ve converted them to CPI-adjusted dollars).

Median usual weekly earnings of workers with a high school degree only:

2000: $968

2025: $980

Median usual weekly earnings of workers with a bachelor degree only:

2000: $1,587

2025: $1,580
...
Median usual weekly earnings of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher:

2000: $1,705

2025: $1,747

Here is a short list of YouTube videos on this topic:

• Kasia Baba's must watch Boomers just cannot grasp why we do not like AI
• Vanessa Wingårdh's Nobody Actually Wants AI Anymore
• Taylor Lorenz' You Are About to Become Economically Worthless
• Sam Seder's Everyone Is Fed Up With Tech's Ai BS
• Silicon Money's Why Tech CEOs Are Quietly Cancelling Their AI Plans
• The Rational National's Heartwarming: Gen-Z Hates Ai

As a boomer, I think this post might be the exception that proves Ms. Baba's rule.

Note that every single one of the ads that I saw watching these videos in an incognito window was advertising an AI company! As are 49% of all the billboards in the Bay Area. Read the room, guys!