Our tech bros are hoping for some form of apocalypse that reduces the world population by 80%. Hence their rush towards accelerating climate collapse, pushing the world towards nuclear war and encouraging the development of AI and novel diseases. When they emerge from their underground sanctuaries or remote tropical islands, they will be in a position to rule over the remnants of humanity. The serfs will have no choice but to serve their new overlords by eking out a living serving their needs

IIRC during the great depression the unemployment rate was around 25%. So, if nothing changes 30% unemployment would be really really bad.

Unemployment would never get to 30% without either generous UBI, or societal unrest.

no longer have to work, or 30% joblessness?

I dont think 30% of people will be without work. But in the future if thats the case I think we'll see a reduction of work hours from 40 to 30. A reduction in quality of life, less pay more money taken up by the essentials, government increasing taxes and using that to create work via infrastructure projects and expansion of bureaucracy.

Maybe an increase in local markets, selling services and fresh goods.

Maybe an increase in war as the contention for resources becomes to great.

Pretty bleak stuff.

So currently in the US, job growth numbers have been in sharp decline for the last 5 years with negative growth some months of 2025 and 2026. If AI replaces 30% of the workforce those displaced workers won't have other jobs to transition into, so they would likely become long term unemployed. It would vary drastically state by state, but it's reasonable to assume bluer states would pursue legislative goals like extending unemployment benefits for worker displaced by AI or universal basic incomes, redder states likely wouldn't and instead off taxpayer funded incentives for more AI job destruction.

AI replacing jobs would actually create a minimal amount of new long term jobs to service the AI and the hardware it runs, but that would generously be maybe 10% of total jobs lost.

History shows us that in times where people in their 20's and sometimes 30's are our of work and desperate, civil unrest ensues. The redder states that opted not to extend unemployment or implement UBI would see the brunt of it. Naturally they would increase funding for law enforcement, pass new regressive laws around protesting and civil unrest, and try to increase funding and numbers for the national guard.

As desperation grew many would migrate from red states to blue ones creating an influx of new residents the existing systems might not be able to support. It's likely you'd find more permanent or semi-permanent homeless encampments and/or vehicle dweller gatherings.

A massive cut to jobs would look a lot like the great depression with increased interstate migration and large numbers of desperate, unemployed, and homeless people looking for security. In the 1930's we created a massive public works program to end the great depression, with today's politics though, we probably won't be able to pull something like that off again.

Seems to me this is begging the question. Like, you are asking for speculative fiction so there are no wrong answers. But here you go:

First, society would stagnate because all intellectual work will be done by LLMs which only know how to do things the way we always have. So progress comes to a halt. Profits inevitably stop rising as 30% of humanity no longer consumes whatever it is people working are making.

Those 30% will have to just create their own society. Maybe it looks like Mad Max with the outsiders raiding cities for food and supplies, or maybe they take over a bunch of arable land and just live.

More and more people are pushed outside of the city-states of the rich until it's just them hooked up to VR goggles and nutrition IVs and jerking off into virtual swimming pools of gold at a virtual Epstein island, living their dream, unaware that they are irrelevant and unmissed.

Everyone else carries on without them, and any time someone gets too rich or powerful they are promoted/exiled to go live in the gilded prison of the rich.

First of all, why 30%? We all know that in time 100% can be automated. Anyway, I see two posibillities:

1 Kings: AI's endgame in the west is realtime monitoring of it's citizens/potential protesters. They will not tolerate discord, anything threatening money or power will be found and ended. We will have a few "kings", and they will rule over us with the illusion of "democracy". Every so often we will vote for a puppet, but the kings will remain immortal and untouchable. Everyone will recieve a fixed ammount from these kings, but if you are not loyal, they will cut you off.

2 Communism/Socialism: We can already see "back factories" in China, meaning they are fully autonomous, materials in one end, product out the other. So they have already been trying to compensate workers who lost their job. My hope that provinces with high automation, robots/ai will provide universal basic income. Besfore you criticize China for being totalitarian please read some recent articles about things they built/opened, huge waterway-channel, two larges water-powerplants, thorium nuclear reactor, broke limit on new tokamak.

That's the way I see it at least.... Have a good day to you all. Try to stay positive.

I think we can already see what happens when jobs get scarce and salaries don't keep up with prices, because it has already been happening almost everywhere. Not because of AI, yet, but if AI accelerates it, you can sort of see where things are trending.

People can't afford even basic needs like housing and consume less. Even businesses like McDonald's, that usually do well when people are low on money, are starting to feel the pinch.

Economic troubles tend to become social unrest. Mass protests recently erupted in Spain over housing prices for instance.

Social unrest and economic uncertainty breed political instability and tribal thinking (we have to protect our homes, our country first) which result in violent power takeovers or democratic approval shifting to political parties that can most effectively "speak" to our fears and self-preservation instincts.

If AI really kills 30% of the jobs while, at the same time, driving energy prices up, it's exponentially more of what we're already seeing.

Wide spread poverty

I too would like to know.

I don't see how the companies trying to save money by replacing workers with AI expect to still have someone to sell their goods and services to when no one has any money because all the jobs have been replaced by AI.

Jobs and money are not natural laws; we could change our entire socioeconomic system to account for a new reality. But I just don't see that happening...