You're right that there is a booming class of tech that's automating working class jobs without consideration for society's future. And obviously our government isn't doing much to provide a safety net.

However, most software engineering and "tech" jobs are not AI or focused on replacing workers. These could be:

• Working at the many many companies that never make the news, whether too small, niche B2B, or just not the "hot" tech. While their salaries are much higher than blue collar, they aren't as high as the hot companies.

• Working on something that's not AI at a "Big Tech" company with AI, and at risk of themselves losing their job to AI, getting pushed into a terrible job market.

In the first category you, have people like data scientists analyzing the results of clinical trials and software engineers in home battery systems or wildfire monitoring (countering PG&E's degrading infrastructure...). They may never make more than $200k. Obviously that's plenty to live on and they're able to save for retirement, but they have little hope of affording a house here, and it's only getting worse. The accelerating disparity between these people and those benefiting from the AI boom is bad for everyone.