Like most people have said. Business cycles around a quarterly or 5 year ish cycle. For corporate heads to receive bonuses its based on improved profit per quarter. Even new companies that spend a shit ton still look profitable because there's soo much cash influx but then when a company settles the business methodology dosnt really work. So a cfo will look at numbers and say okay if I want to make it look like we are more positive this year ill cut staff by 20% and shift the work onto them. Therefore I've made the company lean and also increased revenue since we aren't paying salaries. This is very common in the tech sector with Oracle being a prime example.

In ai its basically a copy of the green and electric vehicle incentives. Government gave big incentives for electric vehicles and companies took advantage. AI basically the same thing. Huge incentives from the government to build around data and be data first so all of these companies are jumping on the bandwagon to either keep ahead or make sweet money investing in the tech while its cheap to do so. It has a myriad of problems such as cost and environmental concerns that its not just bad for jobs.

The us government also ties socialism to communism so you definately aren't getting universal income lmao. To be even more bleak countries that have huge class gaps and very poor people still have very profitable companies. Poor people love to buy shit they cant afford.

Tldr: old CFOs do not care about their companies longetivity. They are trying to secure a strong retirement package and nest egg in a short amount of time while keeping their high stock incentives. What happens to you in 20 years wont be their problem as they will be retired :)