> A wide range of pro-employment policy incentives can help to slow or reduce job displacement, including: wage insurance policies that compensate people when they have to take a lower-paying job, retention tax incentives to encourage employers not to make layoffs, workforce training grants, or infrastructure to facilitate matching of employers to employees to speed the rate of labor market adaptation. While the particulars of which interventions are best will depend on what kind of labor displacement AI brings, we should readily accept the costs and market inefficiencies that these policies could entail, particularly as they are likely to be offset by AI-driven productivity gains.

People get income from one of three places: capital income, labor income, or the welfare state. If this technology truly unlocks a holy panacea of productivity with a commensurate drop in employment then capital’s share of the national income can and should provide for a wider and deeper welfare state. Nothing new need be invented here. Dario’s long and only somewhat organized list of policy interventions makes appropriate preparedness sound like a manic pulling of any and all levers when a simple theory of distribution will suffice.