The rich of tomorrow will happily be quite a bit richer than today's rich. That’s because the proliferation of AI meant to do and think for us will unearth superhuman qualities in a growing number of us.
Even better about a rising wealth gap is that as it grows, the lifestyle gap between rich and "poor" will shrink. Oh, to be poor in America in the future...
So many oddly fear what Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says about AI representing “work,” and more crucially “thought,” but Huang is in truth signaling a beautiful future in which individual weaknesses on the job matter less thanks to mechanized work and thought. No longer held down by our deficiencies, we will achieve our true potential in ways presently unimaginable.
Living standards will soar for all of us, as will human happiness, but as is the case in any scenario, the “vital few” (Reuven Brenner) will match their talents with the advances described by Huang on the way to remarkable advances. Put another way, rich as Huang is today born of remarkable ingenuity, the technological, transportation, healthcare, entertainment, and previously unimagined fortunes that his genius will enable is poised to make even Huang’s wealth appear small by comparison.
It recalls a recent Federal Reserve report on rising inequality. Kailyn Rhone of the New York Times perhaps unsurprisingly reported it in downcast fashion, that the “net worth of the top 1 percent of households climbed to a record share of nearly 32 percent of the national total in the third quarter of 2025.” Rhone unfortunately portrayed the statistic as evidence of a “K-shaped” economy, “ in which higher-income households pull ahead while lower-income households fall further behind.” Rhone could perhaps be persuaded to rethink her pessimism, as perhaps could Dario Amodei, the wildly rich co-founder of Anthopric.
Rhone, Amodei and many more view wealth as a fixed pie. More realistically, wealth is created and it’s in the creation that we see the living and work standards for everyone rise. As you read this, the supercomputers known as smartphones are presently in the hands of much of the world thanks to the late Steve Jobs, and thanks to Huang, Amodei, Sam Altman, Elon Musk and many others, the ability of individuals to employ theoretically unlimited amounts of AI grows by the day. This is progress.
Not only will AI make work better for us all, the wealth associated with a much more productive workforce will result in the creation of work the world never imagined. Here’s the upside.
The insufficiently discussed downside will be rapidly expanding government revenues. It calls for action now that puts to bed present-day thinking from the warring ideologies.
Members of the left say that there’s federal debt because the rich aren’t taxed enough, conservatives say the debt is an effect of Democrats spending too much, libertarians say the debt is an effect of too much government spending, too little entitlement reform, and not enough taxation, while supply siders unwittingly side with the Democrats in their promise that a lower tax rate on the rich will result in more tax revenue from the rich. They’re all wrong.
Missed by them all is that what takes in a lot of tax revenue can logically borrow a lot. Treasury can borrow with ease now because forward-looking markets foretell a day not too far from now when tax revenues skyrocket as consequence of remarkable wealth creation.
To be clear, the wealth creation is a good thing that contra Amodei, Rhone et al, signals a much happier, healthier, and well-employed U.S. workforce. What would reduce its grandeur is the growth of government in the process, along with the government’s ability to borrow even more.
