The ambitious of all stripes flock to where the economic growth is. Which is no insight. Where growth is greatest, so are wages.
Consider what you’ve just read in relation to the photo attached to this opinion piece. It was taken by a colleague outside of a restaurant in Palo Alto, CA. Where wealth is on the rise, so is the value of workers adjacent to the wealth creation.
It calls into question Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei’s recent contention that the “natural policy response to an enormous economic pie coupled with high inequality (due to a lack of jobs, or poorly paid jobs, for many) is progressive taxation.” Amodei is implying a wealth-creation outcome (low wages) at odds with visible realities.
To suggest, as Amodei does, that the creation of wealth coincides with the battering of mere wage earners ignores that wealth creators have exponentially greater needs than typical W-2 workers. That’s plainly why the greatest number of restaurants, law firms, gyms, personal training facilities, wine shops, and countless other businesses cluster where wealth creation is greatest. With wealth yet again on the rise in Northern California, so are work opportunities at the businesses opening around all the wealth.
Yet there’s more. It’s not just Amodei’s zero-sum, fixed-pie-of-wealth view of the world that is being rejected here. Deeply held economic views of the right aren’t looking so good either.
They’ve spilled abundant ink in recent years about California’s minimum wage laws, and how those laws have allegedly correlated with rising unemployment, particularly in restaurants. Without defending wage floors, the right-leaning have unwittingly reminded us that correlation is not causation.
Figure that the 2025 minimum wage for the Golden State in 2026 will rise to a mere $16.90/hour. Stop and think about the latter relative to what businesses are being required to offer as a way of merely luring potential employees in the door.
Without defending wage floors or regulations of same, it's difficult to draw a correlation between minimum wage laws errantly imposed by California and unemployment within it. If restaurant jobs have declined in California, it’s more likely because there aren’t enough restaurant workers, not because the cost of hiring exceeds what employers in the state will pay.
It speaks yet again to the happy truth about wealth creation. Where it’s taking place is where the value of productive human endeavor of all kinds is enjoying the greatest wage gains. Rather than apologizing for his enormous wealth, Amodei should proudly embrace what corresponds so directly with remunerative employment opportunities for all.
Looking beyond Amodei, it’s worth contemplating how his views of the world inform Anthropic’s Claude. While Amodei denies ongoing ties with the so-called “Effective Altruism” community, his historical ties signal a perception that wealth creation harms those not creating it, thus requiring more charity from the wealth creators.
The on-the-ground reality in the center of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) universe signals something else altogether, that wealth once again begets enormous opportunity for those who lack it. Will these more bullish viewpoints make it into opinions offered by Claude, and for that matter will a more nuanced explanation of minimum wages and unemployment make it into conservative-leaning AI? Time will tell.
