Jobs Matter

Jobs are more important to Americans than the stock market, interest rates, or any other economic measure. Jobs are not a statistic. Jobs feed families. Jobs feed children. How well a child eats depends on whether someone in that household has work. Jobs make people happy or miserable. Jobs are everything.

For a long time, the formula was straightforward. Lower interest rates, easier credit, tax incentives — give businesses the conditions to grow, and they hire more people. A good President and a functional Congress could pull those levers and workers would benefit. That era is over.

Almost overnight, everything has changed. Every worker — especially young workers — now fears that AI will permanently damage their career prospects and lifetime earnings. In a capitalist society, that fear is not irrational. It is horrifying. A large pool of qualified, unemployed workers is among the worst outcomes a capitalist economy can produce.

The AI train cannot be stopped. Even if the United States banned it tomorrow, the rest of the world would keep advancing without us. So America must stay in the race — innovating, competing, and leading. The telephone was not universally welcomed either. But you cannot stop innovation. It moves forward with or without you.

The only logical path is to become the world's best at AI while actively fighting to preserve good-paying human jobs. What does that look like in practice?

Require that packages and food be delivered by people. Ban drone delivery. Protect the jobs of USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, DoorDash, and Instacart workers. Permit self-driving trucks but mandate a human driver in the cab. Prohibit robot delivery where human employment can be preserved. Jobs for jobs' sake. Jobs for people's sake. Jobs for children's sake.

A robot does not go home worried about feeding kids. It will not stop to pick up a bucket of chicken for a hungry family. Only humans do that — the most valuable, most essential work of all. This is not just a sentiment.It is existential. Jobs are of existential importance, and they are the most consequential question of this century.

We need laws that ensure we do not lose jobs so rapidly that the economy contracts and collapses — as it has before. We start today.

Jobs first. People first. Support AI, but support jobs even more, at the same time.

If you are young and afraid you have no future, fight with us for jobs. If you believe America is on the verge of leaving you behind, help us figure out how to create more good-paying work and pass the laws to protect it.

They will tell you that protecting jobs hurts the economy. That is a lie told by people who profit at your expense. We build economies to create jobs and generate prosperity for our society — not the other way around. If a capitalist system cannot produce enough jobs to feed its people, people will find a new system.

Capitalist societies can be brutally indifferent to the homeless and the jobless. The wealthy shrug and move on. But you will grow poorer as a generation unless you recognize what is happening and fight back. Many people feel powerless. You are not. You can fight for jobs.

Join the Centrist Party. Help us reach every American with this message. Help us find the voters and the political will to pass a pro-jobs agenda — one that protects existing work, grows new opportunities, and ensures that human labor remains valued, compensated, and protected.

Better Pay. Better Benefits. More Jobs.

This is the defining issue for young people today and for the rest of this century. We need millions of voters — and the politicians who represent them — to put job creation first, and to make it the law of the land.