Ben Castleman
speaker
13 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 6 May
Ben Castleman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The Headlines · President Trump’s Sudden U-Turn, and a $1 Billion Ballroom Proposal · 6 May 2026
podcast
I've been talking to economists and labor market experts, and the one thing that they all seem to agree on is that our safety net is not ready for an age of AI-driven job disruption.
They really point to two major shortcomings.
The first is our unemployment insurance system, which is sort of meant to be the first line of defense for people who lose their jobs.
That system potentially won't cover a lot of the workers who could be affected by AI.
If you're a new graduate just entering into the labor market, and this is the group that economists think may be hit hardest by AI disruptions,
you generally don't qualify for unemployment benefits.
The other problem is that our sort of last line of defense against real hardship, food stamps, Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the poor, those programs have been pulled back so that they really only cover people who are working.
And so that means that if you lose your job as a result of AI or for any other reason, you no longer have access to that piece of the safety net.
Economists are pretty divided about the impact that AI is going to have on the labor market.
They're pretty skeptical of the idea that this is going to lead to mass unemployment.
But they do say that there are almost certainly going to be disruptions, that people are going to lose their jobs.
And if that's going to happen, they say this is the time to start aligning our safety net with that coming wave of disruption.
And so far, that really has not happened.
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