The Last Paycheck in America

As Washington burns and Silicon Valley feasts, millions of American workers are being erased; one layoff, one algorithm, one lie at a time.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Remember to follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

So here we are again — day 27 of the government shutdown — and everything in Washington stinks of extortion. The Republican hardliners aren’t negotiating; they’re holding the country hostage. Their “clean” continuing resolution would gut healthcare for more than 40 million Americans. Translation: they’d rather make the poor sicker than admit they’ve lost control.

This shutdown isn’t an accident; it’s a weapon. Federal workers are furloughed, contractors are unpaid, and community clinics are collapsing. The Trump administration calls it “fiscal discipline.” I call it cruelty with a spreadsheet.

But while Washington grinds to a halt, another crisis is accelerating in the private sector. It’s quieter, slicker, and far more permanent. As the government shuts down the paychecks, corporate America is shutting down the jobs.

Across every industry, the pink slips are flying. Amazon just axed 14,000 corporate workers — 4% of its workforce — while pouring billions into artificial intelligence. Microsoft followed with 15,000 layoffs in what it called “organizational changes,” even as it spends record amounts on AI infrastructure. Intel, desperate to keep up with Nvidia and AMD, cut nearly 25,000 jobs this year alone. UPS has slashed 34,000 workers and shuttered nearly a hundred facilities. Target is eliminating 1,800 corporate positions, blaming “too many layers.” Nestlé is cutting 16,000 jobs worldwide to offset rising tariffs and commodity costs. Novo Nordisk — riding high off Ozempic profits — is shedding 9,000. Procter & Gamble is cutting 7,000, citing Trump’s tariffs. ConocoPhillips is laying off up to a quarter of its workforce. Even Lufthansa is cutting thousands of administrative jobs in the name of “digital transformation.”

Every week brings a new headline, a new justification, a new euphemism for the same act: erasing people in the name of progress.

Economists call this “restructuring.” I call it an economic bloodletting.

A recent study from Harvard Business Review and Evercore ISI looked at 160 million American jobs and found that nearly all of them now contain tasks AI can do as well — or better — than humans. The machines aren’t coming for your back anymore; they’re coming for your brain.

For decades, we believed the gospel of “brains over brawn.” Go to college, use your head, and you’d be safe from the robots. But AI doesn’t care about your degree. It doesn’t care about your résumé. It doesn’t need a corner office or health insurance. It just needs data — and we’ve already handed it everything.

In this new economy, intelligence itself has been automated. What was once “white collar” is now target practice for generative algorithms. The lawyer, the analyst, the paralegal, the translator — the people who thought automation couldn’t touch them — are discovering what every factory worker learned decades ago: once a machine can do your job faster, cheaper, and without health benefits, you’re next.

And here’s the cruelest twist: the higher your paycheck, the greater your exposure. In finance, law, consulting, and tech, AI can already perform more than a third of all job functions. The six-figure consultant and the warehouse picker now share the same fate; one replaced by code, the other by robotics. The hierarchy that once separated brain from brawn has collapsed into one simple equation: efficiency equals elimination.

Some companies insist these layoffs are about “reallocating resources” or “optimizing productivity.” But when thousands are cut while billions are spent on AI data centers, the truth is obvious. This isn’t about innovation; it’s about control. Machines don’t unionize. They don’t get sick. They don’t talk back. For corporate America, it’s the perfect labor force: compliant, tireless, voiceless.

Even the so-called safety net is unraveling. Federal hiring data is frozen as the shutdown stretches on. Workers who once relied on the government for stability now find themselves adrift. And while economists debate whether we’re in a “no-hire, no-fire” lull, ADP’s most recent payroll survey shows something unthinkable in a supposedly strong economy: a loss of 32,000 private-sector jobs in September alone.

Trump’s tariffs have deepened the wound. Rising import costs are driving companies to raise prices while slashing staff. It’s economic whiplash — workers paying for policies that were supposed to protect them. The “America First” doctrine has become “Americans Last” in practice.

Tim Cook and others in Silicon Valley call this “progress.” They promise AI will make us “more productive.” But ask yourself: productive for whom? For the investors watching their stock portfolios swell while the middle class disappears? For the corporations replacing people with servers and selling it back as “efficiency”?

Let’s be honest: this isn’t an economic cycle. It’s an economic coup. The middle class isn’t shrinking; it’s being deleted. The very idea of work as a path to dignity is vanishing, replaced by the illusion that technology will save us from the chaos it created.

We’ve reached a tipping point. The government is paralyzed. Corporate America is cannibalizing itself. And millions of Americans are discovering that the only thing more efficient than artificial intelligence is artificial empathy — the kind our leaders have mastered.

The question isn’t whether AI is capable of replacing us. It already is. The question is whether we’re capable of seeing what’s being taken before there’s nothing left to protect — not our jobs, not our purpose, not even the illusion that hard work still matters.

Because this isn’t a shutdown anymore. It’s the dismantling of the American Dream — by code, by greed, and by design.

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