America after World War II entered an era of economic growth and intermittent societal cohesion. It also created the American consumer, an economic system based in large part on earning money to buy things, at first to change your life (a washing machine!) and then to signal to others (another new car?).
That simple instinct—to not fall behind—combined with easy credit and rising expectations, helped fuel the debt culture that still defines American life. Market capitalism naturally creates winners and losers. When growth slows or inequality widens, that sense of relative deprivation becomes a psychological trap. As in, success isn’t objective; it’s relative.
The Great Disgruntlement of the modern era has less to do with the perception of falling wages, purchasing power, and actual standards of living, and almost everything to do with social comparison: the big gap between the top & bottom of the economic leaderboard and the ability to see others doing “better” than you via social media. It’s aspirational poison that people can feed on with debt, which is what you resort to when you “need” things you can’t afford. Yes, I’m oversimplifying. There is obviously a great deal of real deprivation and struggle in this country and the world, healthcare bankruptcies, crazy house prices, etc. Right now, I’m talking about the luxury purse economy.
It’s safe to say at this point that some tasks once reserved for humans will be done by some variety of machine. It’s happened before, has been happening continuously, and will happen more so in the future. It’s possible that human capital will simply shift to more human, social, squishy tasks. We certainly need more of it than we have now, and the economy could shift in that direction. More teachers, fewer bankers.
But, if we take the bullish AI view, there’s also a possibility that the haves vs have-nots will transition from the current comparison via purchasing power to comparison via the ability to construct a (visibly) meaningful life. The transition from a work-based identity to one where large portions of society may not need to work—at least not in the traditional sense—would be more psychologically jarring than the postwar consumer revolution.
We’ve learned how economic inequality leads to material arms races. The next inequality may be existential: between those who can find meaning without work and those who cannot.
If the postwar era was defined by the democratization of consumption, the AI era may be defined by the democratization of purposelessness—and the challenge of rediscovering meaning in a world where being economically useful is no longer the foundation of identity.