--- title: "Top AI Investor Says Goal Is to Crash Human Wages" description: "AI totally \"crashing\" everyone's wages is a necessary stepping stone towards a better future, argues billionaire Marcus Andreessen." date: "2025-01-27" modified: "2025-01-27" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-investor-goal-crash-human-wages" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "generative ai" - "marc andreessen" - "the digest" --- # Top AI Investor Says Goal Is to Crash Human Wages ![AI totally "crashing" everyone's wages is a necessary stepping stone towards a better future, argues billionaire Marcus Andreessen.]() *\Image: Justin Sullivan via Getty / Futurism\* ## Waging War Marc Andreessen, cofounder of the massive venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz — which has its fingers in pretty much every pie in tech *—* has revealed an eyebrow-raising detail in his "techno-optimist" vision of the future. In a recent [tweet](), the American billionaire investor casually proclaimed that AI must "crash" everyone's wages before it can deliver us an economic utopia — one that'll definitely happen, and certainly not create a permanent underclass of have-nots. "A world in which human wages crash from AI — logically, necessarily — is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero," Andreessen wrote. "Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies." So fret not, lowly laborer: you may be destined for financial ruin, but paradise is right around the corner. Pinky promise. ## Suck It Up Andreessen's tweet is a revealing example of the ruthless economic logic that underlies tech moguls' utopic visions of the future, in which progress is a foregone conclusion, rendering everyone's economic suffering in the interim merely a means to an end. Like overzealous fitness instructors, they always choose to [emphasize the need for pain]() to achieve anything. The author of "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," Andreessen also embodies how these brutal economic paradigm shifts are dressed up in benign rhetoric. AI-induced wage collapse is a consequence that happens "logically" and "necessarily," according to the billionaire. Somehow, none of these AI evangelists' "optimistic" visions involve immediately improving people's lives in a meaningful way, or foreground measures to mitigate the tech's massively [disruptive potential to the job market](), except perhaps with [broad gestures to a universal basic income]() — an idea that Andreessen, ever the unapologetic capitalist, [happens to hate](). (Per his manifesto, it would turn us all into "zoo animals.") ## Bow Down Above all, many of these ultra-rich tech types like Andreessen can't help publicly fantasizing about punishing the poor. Larry Ellison for instance, cofounder of the software outfit Oracle, drooled about how [AI would supercharge the surveillance state](), ensuring that "citizens will be on their best behavior." When asked in an interview about AI killing creative jobs, OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Murati [glibly suggested]() that those jobs "shouldn't have been there in the first place." Andreessen seems to justify his disdain towards workers by claiming that many of them are "[America-hating communists]()" who are infiltrating his companies and destroying them from the inside out. With such seething contempt towards their employees, it makes sense why all the richest people in the world are suddenly throwing ungodly amounts of money at technology to automate the jobs of the rank and file. **More on AI:** *[Trump Embraced AI and It Exploded Spectacularly in His Face]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()