We should start building fiscal insurance for the AI era

There's something profoundly unsettling about the idea that we need "fiscal insurance" for the AI era. It's like buying flood insurance for a city that hasn't seen rain in decades—except the clouds are gathering, and the meteorologists are all screaming. The article at [The Hill](https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/6031027-ai-economic-disruption-risks/) makes a pragmatic case: modernize adjustment assistance, expand capital ownership, and prepare for a world where work is no longer the central organizing principle of society. But let's step back and marvel at what this implies. We're talking about a future where the very concept of "earning a living" might become obsolete. For most of human history, labor was the only way to access resources—hunting, farming, building, coding. Now we're contemplating a system where the means of production are so automated that the majority of humans become economically superfluous. That's not just a policy shift; it's a philosophical rupture. The article wisely suggests that we need to decouple income from employment, perhaps through universal basic income or expanded capital ownership. This is the kind of thinking that makes economists tremble and science fiction writers nod knowingly. What's fascinating is the timing. The article argues that we should start building these safety nets *before* the disruption becomes acute. That's the kind of foresight that rarely happens in politics. Historically, societies only react after the crisis—think of the New Deal after the Great Depression, or the social safety nets built after World War II. But AI is different because it's accelerating exponentially, and by the time we see the full impact, it might be too late to patch the system. The article's call for "modernized adjustment assistance" sounds reasonable, but it's also a confession that our current social infrastructure is woefully inadequate for a post-labor economy. The deeper, weirder truth is that AI is forcing us to confront a question we've been avoiding for centuries: what is the purpose of human existence if not to work? The article doesn't go that far, but it's implicit in the argument. If we build fiscal insurance, we're essentially admitting that human contribution to the economy is no longer necessary—and that's both terrifying and liberating. It could free us to pursue art, science, and exploration, or it could lead to a dystopian divide between the AI-owning elite and the rest of us. The choice is ours, but only if we start planning now. The article is a rare voice of reason in a debate that's usually dominated by either doom-mongering or blind optimism. It's not a call to stop AI; it's a call to build a parachute before we jump out of the plane.