The Good Fight (Yascha Mounk) · Yascha Mounk

David Autor on the Scars That Money Can’t Heal

March 31, 2026·59 min·5 clips

Autor demolishes the idea that you can buy off trade losers with cash: you cannot write a check for injured self-esteem.

The question begins simply. Have political leaders learned anything from the shocks that changed work, trade, and public trust? Autor's answer is bleak: the political system learned nothing, or maybe worse, learned the wrong things from a period it never really understood. Mounk then widens the conversation. He asks whether the 2010s fear that capital would roll over labor was actually supported by the evidence. China enters as the hard case. Its entry into the World Trade Organization is treated as a shock that may have left lasting damage in the American Midwest, though the conversation leaves room for how much workers have recovered since. Again and again, the episode comes back to a stubborn gap: workers may have regained some footing, but clean headline numbers do not always reach public feeling. Then AI shows up. Mounk asks whether artificial intelligence is truly different or another turn in the old labor market story, where jobs disappear and new ones get reinstated. Autor sounds careful, not panicked. He points to a U.S. economy and labor market that have stayed remarkably strong despite policy turbulence, uncertainty, tariffs, wars, and pressure on technology companies, universities, and elected officials. Uncertainty gets its own weight here. Drawing on Nick Bloom's work, Autor says firms struggle to invest when they cannot see where prices, tariffs, or geopolitical risks are heading. Job growth has slowed. Last month's jobs report is described as negative, though Autor warns against making too much of one monthly figure. The irony is sharp: the U.S. failed to see how strong its position was, then answered that mistake with policies that may have made things worse. Mounk also catches the global side of the story, contrasting public pessimism with China's extraordinary growth, which lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty, reduced global inequality, and helped build a global middle class. The ending stays conditional. AI is not treated as fate. Policy choices still matter for ordinary workers.

As heard by us

A grounded labor-market conversation on the China shock, economic pessimism, and whether AI policy can still work for ordinary workers.

The Good Fight turns a conversation about work into a broader argument about what the United States has learned, or failed to learn, from recent economic shocks.

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Why you'd press play

You want a serious read on work, AI, and the policy choices that could shape both.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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