Democrats Invoking Specter of AI Apocalypse To Justify New Wave of Costly Government Benefits

Political winds are shifting at Washington, but some things never change. One is that some politicians always demand more government benefit checks in response to any disaster they claim threatens the country. In the past two decades alone, the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic, and even climate change all served as rationale for vastly increasing federal benefit rolls. The latest threat involves fears that artificial intelligence will cause widespread job losses. Those losses remain generally unseen as unemployment continues below 4.5 percent for the 60th consecutive month, the longest stretch ever. That hasn’t deterred advocates of paying more benefits, including some promoted and sometimes paid in response to prior apocalyptic threats.The current “doomsday scenario” over AI involves “fears that powerful computers might someday replace humans, leaving millions of Americans out of work,” reports a recent New York Times article. Fear not, though, because “lawmakers are starting to explore ways to bolster the nation’s economic safety net before it is too late.” The policy offerings include legislation “that would greatly expand the nation’s unemployment insurance program” to help get ready for “one of the biggest economic impacts on the economy in American history.”“Greatly expand” is an understatement. One major proposal would roughly double unemployment check sizes in many states. Eligibility for checks would vastly expand, including to those seeking only part-time work. Millions who never worked before would qualify for new “jobseeker allowances.” Check durations, today typically lasting up to six months, could stretch to a European-style two years.If that sounds familiar, that’s because many of the same benefit expansions were proposed — and some temporarily enacted — before.In the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, federal lawmakers offered record unemployment benefit durations stretching to 99 weeks, or nearly two years, in some states. Democratic “stimulus” legislation also bribed states with $7 billion in “incentive” funds if they paid unemployment checks to part-time and other marginal workers.During the pandemic, lawmakers expanded unemployment checks again, providing what Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader at the time, hailed as “unemployment on steroids.” The expansions included record $600-per-week federal supplements, which paid most more in unemployment benefits than they earned from working. Another temporary program paid checks for the first time to millions of unemployed independent contractors and self-employed individuals, along with others who hadn’t previously worked, previewing new “jobseeker allowances.” The Biden administration admitted the prior program had a staggering 36 percent improper payment rate, which understated fraud and abuse that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.Those prior expansions were mostly temporary, while the latest proposed unemployment benefit expansions would be permanently paid whether AI causes widespread unemployment or not. For Washington liberals, such permanent expansions have always been the real goal.Demands for more benefits in response to AI will not end with unemployment checks.Some have already issued calls for far broader benefits, like universal basic income checks, which are ruinously expensive. During the pandemic, Vice President Harris, then a senator, proposed paying de facto UBI checks totaling up to $120,000 per year per household, at a staggering cost of $21 trillion. Multiple Democrats would permanently revive and expand other vast pandemic-era expansions, such as the temporary payment of monthly tax credit checks to millions of parents who don’t work. Reviving that would effectively resuscitate work-free welfare checks lawmakers ended a generation ago on a bipartisan basis.Some might even dust off “climate rebates,” a vast welfare program liberals proposed two decades ago to mitigate high costs resulting from their “green energy” schemes. Such proposals generally ignore today’s dozens of safety net programs, many of which automatically grow when needs increase. Unemployment rolls similarly expand whenever more are laid off. Such benefits are called automatic stabilizers for a reason, but it’s not enough for some, because for them it’s never enough.Some lawmakers remain eager to leverage fear — of recession, disease, climate change, and now AI — to expand government benefits beyond their current boundaries. Yet regardless of the latest apocalyptic fear, the prescription is always the same—more people receiving bigger government benefit checks for longer, generally in lieu of working. Such calls frequently ignore the enormous costs and even greater current deficits. Yet they disclose much about proponents’ unceasing passion to expand benefit rolls, instead of addressing needs as they arise in a realistic way.

Democrats Invoking Specter of AI Apocalypse To Justify New Wave of Costly Government Benefits

Democrats Invoking Specter of AI Apocalypse To Justify New Wave of Costly Government Benefits

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