This Expert’s Viral Substack Predicts Which White‑Collar Jobs AI Will Erase Next
A finance writer’s dystopian 2028 thought experiment argues that AI will soon take over in dramatic ways.
Van Geelen and Shah argue that AI doesn't just augment human productivity—it eliminates the economic "friction" and information asymmetries that have long supported millions of jobs. The scarce resource throughout modern history—**human intelligence and time**—becomes abundant and cheap via AI.
- **Early Displacement Targets (starting ~2026)**: Jobs centered on navigating tedious, rule-based, or information-heavy processes collapse first because AI agents handle them effortlessly and at near-zero marginal cost.
- Travel booking: AI assembles full itineraries (flights, hotels, transport, optimizations) faster/cheaper than humans.
- Insurance: Annual auto-re-shopping of policies erodes the 15–20% "passive renewal" margins.
- Financial advice, tax prep, routine legal work, and similar rule-interpreting/paperwork roles.
- Real estate: Agents' value from controlling MLS data and transaction history vanishes once AI accesses it directly, potentially slashing commissions.
- **The Feedback Loop**:
- Initial layoffs boost corporate margins → earnings beats → stock rallies → more investment in AI compute → faster/more capable systems → more layoffs.
- This creates short-term "triumphs" of efficiency (record profits, soaring productivity stats).
- But consumer spending craters as displaced white-collar workers lose income and purchasing power. Machines produce output but "spend zero dollars."
- Result: A deflationary spiral where companies cut even more aggressively to protect margins, accelerating the cycle.
- **By Imagined 2028**:
- Unemployment hits double digits (e.g., 10.2% in some retellings of the scenario).
- S&P 500 drops sharply (e.g., 38% from 2026 peaks in the thought experiment).
- Corporations become ultra-lean and technologically dominant, but the consumer economy hollows out.
- **"Ghost GDP"**: National accounts show soaring output (a single GPU cluster matching the productivity of thousands of workers), but little circulates through wages or spending—more "economic pandemic" than panacea.
- The economy no longer resembles the pre-AI version; what looked like contained, sector-specific disruption becomes systemic.
Broader Implications and Debate
The piece isn't presented as a firm prediction but as an underexplored "what-if" scenario to prompt discussion on second-order effects. It highlights a potential paradox: if AI optimists are correct about rapid, transformative progress, the resulting mass displacement could undermine the demand side of the economy before new jobs or redistribution mechanisms emerge.
Critics (including some AI commentators) have called it a compelling but flawed thought experiment—pointing out possible counterforces like new job creation, falling prices boosting real purchasing power, government intervention (e.g., UBI pilots), or AI-driven innovation creating unforeseen demand. Others see it as a useful warning about over-relying on consumption-driven growth in an era of abundant intelligence.
In short, if the optimists are right about AI's capabilities but wrong about smooth societal adaptation, the result could be a rapid unwind of the "human premium" in the economy—turning abundance into a crisis of circulation rather than shared prosperity. The essay urges proactive thinking while "the canary is still alive."