Joe: A software executive told Andrew Yang her AI would create a "lost generation of workers." A venture capitalist admitted 70% of his investments eliminate jobs. They both knew. They both saw it coming. And they both kept going. The war on normal people had already begun. Lewis: Whoa. That’s a chilling way to start. It sounds less like a business plan and more like a Bond villain's monologue. It’s one thing to suspect this is happening, but to hear the people building it say it so bluntly… that's something else. Joe: That's the chilling reality at the heart of The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang. It’s a book that argues this isn't a future problem. It's happening right now, under our noses. Lewis: And this isn't some academic just theorizing from an ivory tower. Yang founded Venture for America, a nonprofit to create jobs in struggling cities. He was on the ground, in places like Detroit and Cleveland, and saw the devastation firsthand, which is what drove him to write this book and eventually run for president. Joe: Exactly. He saw the first waves of what he calls 'The Great Displacement,' which is where this whole story begins. It’s this massive, silent shift in the American economy that’s leaving millions behind. Lewis: The Great Displacement... that sounds ominous. What exactly is it? Is this just about factory robots again? We've been hearing about that for decades.

Joe: That’s what’s so different this time. It’s not just factory robots. Yang tells these stories from his time meeting with tech insiders. He’s at a gathering in Manhattan, talking to an executive at a software company. Her company’s entire purpose is to replace call center workers with AI. He asks her about the job losses. Lewis: I can imagine she gave some corporate-speak answer about "synergies" and "efficiency." Joe: Not at all. She was brutally honest. She said, and I’m quoting from the book here, "We are getting better and better at things that will make large numbers of workers extraneous. And we will succeed... It’s impossible to avoid a lost generation of workers." Lewis: A lost generation. She just says it, like she's predicting the weather. That's terrifying. Joe: And it gets worse. He talks to a venture capitalist in Boston who feels, in his words, "a little uneasy" about investing in companies that eliminate jobs. But then he just shrugs and says, "But they’re good opportunities." He estimates 70 percent of the startups he sees will contribute to job losses elsewhere. The market is rewarding job destruction. Lewis: Okay, so the people with the money and the technology are actively building a future with fewer jobs because it's profitable. But what kinds of jobs are we really talking about? Call centers are one thing, but what about jobs that feel more... physical? More human? Like truck driving? Surely a robot can't do that. Joe: That's the next tidal wave Yang points to. Truck driving is the single most common job in 29 states. We're talking about 3.5 million drivers in the U.S., almost all of them men without college degrees. And self-driving trucks are not science fiction. They're already making deliveries. Lewis: Hold on, 3.5 million jobs? That's the population of a major American city. Where do all those people go? You can't just retrain a 55-year-old trucker from Ohio to become a coder in Silicon Valley. Joe: That's the exact point. The book argues that retraining programs have a dismal success rate. And the economic incentive to automate trucking is massive. Morgan Stanley estimated the savings would be a staggering $168 billion a year. Saved fuel, reduced labor costs, fewer accidents. For companies, it's a no-brainer. For the drivers, it's an apocalypse. Lewis: And I'm guessing it doesn't stop with trucks. Joe: Not even close. The book talks about the "Retail Apocalypse." We've all seen it—the closing of malls, the bankruptcy of chains like Sears and JCPenney. Between October 2016 and May 2017 alone, one hundred thousand department store workers were laid off. That’s because e-commerce, led by Amazon, is just fundamentally more efficient. Lewis: Right, and Amazon's warehouses are becoming more and more automated themselves. So you lose a retail job at the mall and maybe get a warehouse job, but that job is also on the chopping block. Joe: Precisely. And it’s not just blue-collar or service work. Yang makes it clear that white-collar jobs are next. He talks about AI that can write financial reports for Forbes, AI that can diagnose tumors on radiology films better than human doctors, and AI that can do the document review work that young lawyers used to spend years on. Lewis: So my podcasting job is safe, right Joe? Right?! Joe: For now, Lewis. For now. But the core idea is that any job that is routine and predictable is vulnerable. And it turns out, a lot more of our jobs are routine than we'd like to admit. The book quotes an MIT professor who says the real distinction isn't white-collar versus blue-collar. It's routine versus non-routine. Lewis: This is a much bigger storm than I thought. It’s not just one industry, it’s a fundamental shift across the entire economy. Joe: It’s a tsunami. And Yang’s biggest concern isn't just the economic fallout. It’s what happens to the people and the places that get washed away.

Lewis: That’s the part that really gets me. What happens to a town when its main employer shuts down? What happens to the people? Joe: That's the second major part of the book, and it's heartbreaking. He tells the story of Youngstown, Ohio. In the mid-20th century, it was a booming steel town. People had good jobs, stable lives, a strong sense of community. Then, starting in 1977, the steel mills closed. Lewis: "Black Monday," I think they called it. Joe: Exactly. The city lost 50,000 jobs and over a billion dollars in wages within five years. And the town just… fell apart. Unemployment skyrocketed. People lost their homes. Crime, drugs, and public corruption took over. A professor from Youngstown State University is quoted in the book saying, "When jobs go away, the cultural cohesion of a place is destroyed. The cultural breakdown matters even more than the economic breakdown." Lewis: It's not just losing a paycheck, it's losing your identity, your community, your sense of purpose. That has to do something to your mind. Joe: It absolutely does. This is where Yang introduces one of the most powerful ideas in the book: the "mindset of scarcity." He pulls from the research of Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan, who found that financial stress—just the constant, grinding worry about making ends meet—imposes a massive cognitive load. Lewis: What does that mean, a cognitive load? Joe: It means it literally consumes your mental bandwidth. In their studies, they found that forcing people living in poverty to think about an unexpected car repair bill caused their performance on an IQ test to drop by 13 points. Thirteen points! That’s the difference between "average" and "borderline gifted." It impairs your executive function, your long-term planning, your impulse control. Lewis: So poverty makes you perform worse cognitively, which makes it harder to escape poverty. It's a perfect, vicious trap. Joe: It's a perfect trap. And Yang argues this is happening on a national scale. As jobs disappear and financial insecurity rises, millions of Americans are being pushed into this scarcity mindset. It makes people more tribal, more fearful, more prone to short-term thinking. It’s what he calls "social disintegration." Lewis: And you see it everywhere. The rise in what economists call "deaths of despair"—suicide, drug overdoses, alcoholism—especially among middle-aged white men without college degrees, the very group hit hardest by the loss of manufacturing jobs. Joe: Yes, the book connects these dots directly. The opioid crisis didn't happen in a vacuum. It exploded in the very communities where the jobs had vanished and hope had dried up. People are losing their economic footing, their family structures are crumbling, and they're turning to anything that numbs the pain. Lewis: Okay, this is bleak. We have this unstoppable tsunami of automation, and it's creating these cycles of despair and societal decay. Is there any hope? What's the solution?

Joe: This is where the book pivots from a terrifying diagnosis to an audacious prescription. Yang's central solution is Universal Basic Income, or UBI, but he rebrands it brilliantly as the "Freedom Dividend." Lewis: The Freedom Dividend. That’s some good marketing. What is it, exactly? Joe: It’s a proposal to give every American adult between 18 and 64 a check for $1,000 a month. No strings attached. It’s a floor beneath which no one can fall. Lewis: A thousand dollars a month for everyone. That sounds great, like free money. But it also sounds like a complete fantasy. Where does that kind of money even come from? Joe: He lays it out. The primary funding mechanism would be a Value-Added Tax, or VAT. It's a tax on the goods and services that companies produce. It’s a system used by over 160 other countries, including all of Europe. The beauty of it is that it’s much harder for giant tech companies like Amazon, who are the biggest winners from automation, to avoid. They'd be paying into the system that helps support the people their technology displaces. Lewis: Okay, a VAT. But the big question everyone asks: won't people just stop working? If you're getting a free grand a month, why would you flip burgers or drive for Uber? The book even talks about the rise of video gaming among unemployed men. Joe: That's the most common objection, and Yang tackles it head-on with real-world evidence. And before you think this is some new, radical idea, he points out that Richard Nixon almost passed a version of UBI in the 1970s. It passed the House twice before stalling. This isn't a fringe concept. Lewis: Nixon? Seriously? Okay, you have my attention. What's the evidence? Joe: He points to two key examples. First, the Alaska Permanent Fund. Since 1982, every resident of Alaska gets an annual dividend from the state's oil revenue. It's usually between $1,000 and $2,000. The result? It has had almost no negative effect on employment, but it has dramatically reduced poverty, improved child health outcomes, and is overwhelmingly popular. Lewis: So it works on a state level. What about a whole community? Joe: For that, he looks to the "Mincome" experiment in the 1970s in a small Canadian town called Dauphin. For four years, every family got a guaranteed minimum income. The results were stunning. The only people who worked less were new mothers, who spent more time with their babies, and teenage boys, who were more likely to stay in school and graduate. Hospital visits dropped, domestic violence went down, mental health improved. The town just got healthier. Lewis: Wow. So the fear that everyone will just become lazy seems to be… wrong. It sounds like it gives people the security to make better long-term decisions for themselves and their families. Joe: That's the core argument. It's not about paying people not to work. It's about giving them the freedom and stability to find new kinds of work, to start a small business, to go back to school, to care for a loved one, to contribute to their community in ways the market doesn't currently value. It's a dividend from the prosperity that automation is creating.

Lewis: So the 'war' isn't really against robots or technology. It's a war against the idea that a person's value is tied only to their economic output. It's a war against irrelevance. And Yang is saying we need to change the rules of the game, to value people for being human, not just for being workers. Joe: Exactly. The book forces us to ask a fundamental question. Our current system is designed to maximize capital efficiency. It's very good at that. But what if we designed a system to maximize human well-being? That's what he calls 'Human Capitalism.' Lewis: Human Capitalism. I like that. It’s not about destroying the market, but redirecting it. Joe: It’s about putting humanity first. It's a shift from asking 'How do we create jobs?' to asking 'How do we create a society where people can thrive, contribute, and live lives of dignity, even as the nature of work changes forever?' The technology is a tool. The question is, will it be our master, or will we be its? Lewis: It makes you think. What kind of future are we building? One where a few people at the top reap all the rewards of technology, while a 'lost generation' is left behind? Or one where that technological progress benefits everyone? Joe: That's the choice he leaves us with. It's not an easy path, but he argues it's the only one that leads to a future we'd actually want to live in. Lewis: A powerful and unsettling book, but with a surprisingly hopeful message at its core. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.