An economics and policy podcast for professionals. Mattie Duppler on AI doomerism, the GAO's $6 trillion unpaid labor estimate, and who pays. While everyone is debating if AI will end the world, Mattie wants to talk about a more important question: if we aren't going to look at our close history to determine how this debate might play out, how do we know who it benefits? Because the straight math is that if AI replaces labor that society values at zero, any number times zero is still zero.
The Government Accountability Office just put the market value of unpaid household labor at close to six trillion dollars in 2024, roughly twenty percent of the economy, and even that undercounts. PwC estimates AI support for unpaid household care unlocks $330 billion in socioeconomic value at a 40% adoption rate. In Japan and the UK, automation of unpaid work was enough for 9.3% and 5.8% of working-age women to take a paid job. Ten minutes on the accounting question Washington has forgotten to ask - and why it matters now more than ever.
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