Will AI Create or Destroy American Jobs?

Recent polling says most Americans believe more jobs will be destroyed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) than will be created by it.  This is about the way the British reacted to the automation of the weaving industry.  That was certainly a disruptive period, but after a while, more and better jobs resulted.  The invention and production of the automobile followed a similar path.  History shows us that a Luddite reaction to new technology is exaggerated.  Technological disruption is followed by greater wealth in the general society.

Here is an early example of how AI may produce more and better jobs than it destroys.  I quote from an email I just received:

"Gastroparesis is hard to diagnose due to overlapping symptoms and inconsistent coding. Eversana Intouch applied machine learning to define clinical profiles, uncovering nearly 1.8M additional patients. Learn how this data-driven approach accelerates diagnosis and transforms patient identification.

A midsize pharmaceutical company needed to identify candidates for a newly approved nasal spray formulation of metoclopramide.

Eversana Intouch analyzed open claims data using both supervised and unsupervised machine learning. By comparing patient profiles to a control group and stratifying by disease severity, we built predictive models that surfaced nearly 1.8 million additional patients likely to benefit from treatment."

Now image how many new jobs can be created not just by the pharmaceutical company making and selling more of its product, but by 1.8 million untreated people coming under treatment by doctors, physician assistants, and nurses who had not known they could benefit from such services.

AI can be a tool for increasing human knowledge.  Increased human knowledge usually betters the human condition.  It creates new purposes, dreams, and jobs.

The French King Trump Threatens to End Support for the US Revolution

The British hold Philadelphia, New York City, Newport, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina,  Savannah, Georgia, and numerous forts west of the Alleghany Mountains and east of the Mississippi River.  The French King Trump is weary of supporting the British Colonies of North America in their rebellion against King George III, so he declares an end of his support for the Americans unless they cede all of the cities, forts, and their surroundings held by the British to the British.  If the USA makes these concessions, King Trump of France will offer a pledge to protect the sovereignty of the USA in the future.

What President Trump of the USA is trying to force Ukraine to do is worse than the hypothetical I just outlined.  The British Colonies had belonged to Great Britain.  They were not previously entirely sovereign.  They had not had a pledge from Great Britain to treat them as sovereign states.  On the other hand, Ukraine did have a pledge by Russia, the USA, and the United Kingdom to preserve its sovereignty.  Russia dishonored its pledge twice, in 2014 with the invasion of the Crimea and parts of the Donbas and then again in the on-going invasion of 2022.  The USA to its dishonor did not uphold its pledge to preserve the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine in 2014, has done too little to do so since 2022, and now proposes to end its support for Ukraine's attempt to maintain its sovereignty and independence.  King Trump is telling Ukraine not only to give up the territory held by Russian troops, but to give up the grounds that Russia has been unable to take with human cannon fodder waves for the last two years.  King Trump tells Ukraine to reduce the size of its armed forces to two-thirds of its present size, while ceding the most defensible ground between Russian forces and its two biggest cities.  In exchange, the USA will once again guarantee Ukraine sovereignty over the remainder of the country.

France did not assist the USA when Britain invaded the USA in the War of 1812.  The USA did not keep South Vietnam free from the Communists as it pledged to do.  It left its allies in Afghanistan in the most ignominious manner.  It dishonored its pledge to Ukraine, which was given so Ukraine would give up its nuclear weapons.  The word of the USA is not worth much.

Putin is simply an evil man.  He will happily accept the cession of the Ukrainian lands this Trump Treaty would give him.  He will sell his oil and rebuild his nearly destroyed military.  Then he will attack Ukraine again.  The valiant Ukrainians will fight hard, but without their fortified positions, with a reduced military, and without intelligence and weapons assistance from the USA, they will lose people at a faster rate than they have in the present just war they are fighting.  The evil Putin will be rewarded with the present Trump Treaty and with conditions easing his next war against Ukraine.

Russia aspires to be the Mongol Horde.  Ukraine aspires to be a part of Western Civilization, a country inspired by The Enlightenment.  All good men are on the side of Ukraine, whose people have put up a most determined resistance to the tyranny of Russia and Putin.  No moral individual could propose the Trump Treaty to Ukraine.  Trump should be ashamed of himself.  Unfortunately, he is shaming the United States of America.

Do you think Trump is anti-immigration?

Democrats, Marxists, and Social Justice Warriors all claim that Donald Trump is opposed to immigration.  Many libertarians and Objectivists agree.  Many of these people believe that this is obvious because Trump has acted to prevent the flood of illegal aliens from crossing our borders that had taken place during the Biden administration.  Mind you, Congress has created immigration laws which were signed by previous Presidents.  It is the duty of the current President to enforce those laws.

There are good reasons why the immigration laws create a process of evaluation for those we allow to reside in the USA.  Terrorists, murderers, thieves, slavers, rapists, child molesters, and those who would wind up on the welfare rolls of a country already deeply in debt are all very reasonably considered undesirables or even Deplorables.  Many a Democrat believes that most Republicans are Deplorables, so surely the above enumerated undesirable immigrants must qualify as Deplorables.

Wait.  Judgments are made in a context.  Democrats have a different context for their evaluation of immigration.  For Democrats, a Deplorable is someone who is not dependent upon government and therefore not easily controlled.  So these undesirable immigrants are actually quite desirable in the eyes of those who lust for power.  No one lusts for power more than the Democrat, Marxist, Social Justice Warrior elitists.  The quest for power justifies any act.

Is there a basis for people who are not lunatics to believe that Trump is anti-immigration?  On the surface, his implementation of a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas appears to justify a belief that Trump is anti-immigrant.  Let us consider this evaluation with some care.

The H-1B visa program allows people with special skills, generally based on years of education, to reside in the USA for 3 years.  They may renew their H-1B visa for another 3 years.  There is a lottery to apply for an H-1B visa for those who would work for a for-profit company.  Non-profits, universities, and federal laboratory candidates do not have to be filtered and limited by the lottery.  There is a general lottery of 65,000 visa applications for those with a bachelor's degree or higher.  There is a smaller lottery of 20,000 for those applicants with master's degrees or higher which were awarded by U.S. accredited universities.  In Fiscal 2025, there were 343,981 registrations for the opportunity to apply for the H-1B visa.  There were about 120,000 selections.  First off, there are many more nationals of other countries who have master's degrees or higher than 20,000 and there are many more total registrants than there are total slots available.  The $100,000 fee did not apply to these 2025 applicants.  It will apply in 2026, but not to those foreign nationals who are already legally in the USA.  Most of them have graduated from U.S. universities.  One of the main consequences of Trump's changes to the program is that the foreign nationals who are already legally in the USA and who have been educated here, will be much less likely to be forced to leave the USA because someone who is not already here is being brought into the U.S. to work.  About 250,000 international students graduate from U.S. universities each year.  There are almost certain to be more than 120,000 registrants for H-1B visas from these students in 2026.  The number of H-1B visas awarded will not be very different after the Trump changes than before them.

In fact, Trump made it very clear to Laura Ingraham, who hates the H-1B visa program, that he sees a need for the special skills of H-1B visa holders.  I fully agree with Trump on this.  I have sponsored four scientists for H-1B visas over the years to work for my laboratory.  I currently have one Ph.D. scientist on my staff who is awaiting word on his application, which appears to have been delayed by the government "shut-down."

Laura Ingraham, J. D. Vance, and other Republicans who oppose the program commonly cite the idea that there are plenty of American residents who can meet all of our technical and scientific needs without foreign workers.  I have news for you.  Getting a Ph.D. in the hard sciences is a much tougher challenge and much more work than most Americans wish to undertake.  The IQ requirement is very high to begin with and the U.S. population compared to the world population is about 4%.  Laura, this means that there are many more high IQ people in the rest of the world than there are in the USA.  Yes, we more than hold our own on a per capita basis, but we are foolish to not import as much of the intelligence and dedication to professional skill development that the rest of the world can offer us.  The people we keep in the USA under the H-1B visa program have proven to be so productive that they have raised the standard of living for all Americans.  These are people we should welcome with open arms.

There have been abuses in the H-1B program by some companies.  Trump has been addressing some of those abuses.  The $100,000 fee on hires from outside the USA is one way he is addressing the abuses.  There is a claim that companies pay H-1B visa holders less than they pay comparable Americans.  This is not the case for my laboratory.  I am required by the Department of Labor to pay my present applicant more than I pay my American scientists.  In addition to that, I had to pay application fees and lawyer fees and put in tens of hours of my own time to do the voluminous paperwork for his application.  Believe me, if I could find a comparable American citizen scientist, I would find it much easier and more profitable to hire him (or her).

I would like to see the U.S. immigration law be more welcoming of immigrants than it is.  I do believe in a vetting process.  Open borders is not a viable option for a country with concern for the safety of its people and when that country is substantially a welfare state in extreme debt.  We benefit from immigrants who are committed to being productive.  Productivity is a necessary measure of merit. I think Trump realizes this.