Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, stated that the priorities showed the agency was in danger of being a dead duck before it even begins. For too long, workers have borne the brunt of disreputable employers who have had carte blanche.
The ESRI revealed in its recently published quarterly economic commentary that the fall in the number of technology workers in Ireland was concentrated almost entirely among female workers in the sector.
The response was in Indonesian but shaped by values that centered individual autonomy over the consensus-building, social harmony and collective family dynamics that tend to matter more in Indonesian social life.
How will we be fed? That's the biggest question not seriously being addressed amid all this talk about whether or not artificial intelligence will end up taking over all of our jobs. Formidable though the technology appears, similar fears have popped up repeatedly since the Industrial Revolution, and most working-age adults remain employed. Still, what is sorely missing is a serious debate about what to do if this future in fact materializes.
It's human nature to judge your personal economics and mood on how you feel, influenced heavily by conscious and subconscious comparisons to others. So it's possible President Trump is right: U.S. growth and stocks soar in 2026. But even then, because the AI-connected hyperwealthy do so much better than everyone else, fear and resentment still grow. It's also possible the AI bubble pops, and everyone suffers. But the Have-Lots will (mostly) still have lots.
If a world without work is paradise, why are its architects still working? Our ability to create has exploded, but our ability to feel meaning in what we create has collapsed. Billionaires tell us AI will free us from work, but they still show up to the office. That's the clue we're ignoring. The danger isn't job loss, it's loss of purpose. As friction disappears, so does the proof that our actions matter. And without those tiny moments of impact, we don't become liberated.
I mean a structured system in which different tiers of economic actors are positioned - by design, not by accident - to either extract value or have value extracted from them. And what I found in the AI economy is not a bug. It's not an unintended consequence. It's the product itself.
