The oncoming AI job displacement, and the deal that can stop it.

Across boardrooms and building sites, hospitals and home offices, the foundations of work are cracking. AI is very quickly being built to displace millions of jobs - and this isn’t a future crisis, it’s happening now.

I wrote The Prosperity Deal, a Universal Basic Income policy, to protect humans from the oncoming freight train. This is the system-level brief I wish every policymaker had on their desk.

There are three major forces driving job displacement today:

1. Large Language Models (LLMs)

"Up to 44% of current work tasks in white-collar sectors could be automated using existing LLMs." (OpenAI/McKinsey 2023)

Tools like GPT-4 and Claude can now handle:

• Customer service

• Basic legal drafting

• Journalism

• Data entry

• Internal comms

These systems are replacing roles once considered safe – junior consultants, copywriters, call centre staff, HR coordinators and marketing assistants.

2. Robotics & Machinery

Physical automation has been replacing labour in manufacturing for decades. But now it’s moving faster, into:

• Logistics

• Supermarkets

• Construction

• Aged care and nursing support

• Amazon warehouses and Kiwi Packhouses are adopting robots that don’t need breaks.

3. Agentic AI

The most disruptive. It’s an AI that can:

• Self-direct tasks

• Coordinate multiple systems

• Act on goals without human input

Think scheduling, procurement, project coordination—roles that fill the middle-income earners of our economy.

When these layers combine, you’re not just replacing a worker. You’re removing an entire career path.

New Zealand is more exposed than we admit, and far less prepared than we think.

Aotearoa’s economy leans heavily on automatable sectors. Public service back offices, logistics, agriculture, and admin-heavy professional services. We also:

• Don’t have a deep domestic tech industry to absorb displaced talent like the U.S. or Europe.

• Have Research and Development investment among the lowest in the OECD.

• Have a fragmented welfare system, punitive, and slow to adapt.

• Allowed wage growth to stall for most households.

And unlike major economies, we can’t diversify at scale. We don’t have 200 cities, we don’t have a deep capital market. However what we do have is agility. If we act early.

We’re Not Ready—But We Have Time (5 years)

Governments worldwide are responding to AI with panel discussions, light regulation, and vague optimism. That’s not a plan. That’s denial.

The Prosperity Deal is a system-level intervention designed to fund people, not jobs. It’s not a rescue package. It’s infrastructure for the next economy.

If we move before the collapse, we gain stability, sovereignty, and most importantly, we’ll know we did the right thing.

The Prosperity Deal: A System-Level Response

Here are the key mechanisms:

• Tiered UBI: A base income for all, plus top-ups for recognised civic contributions (care, creativity, volunteering, etc.)

• AI Displacement Contribution: A levy on companies that automate roles without rehiring

• Sovereign AI Fund: A national fund to invest in public-interest tech and buffer economic shocks

• UBI Bonds: Optional citizen investment products to fund and stabilise the system

• Trust Tiers: Governance model for community oversight and iwi co-leadership

• Displacement Index: A live model tracking automation trends and triggering proactive support

How Neoliberalism Got Us Here — and Why It Must End

Neoliberalism told us we’d all be better off if the market was free and government stayed out of the way. What it really delivered was:

• Deregulated labour markets

• Crushed unions

• Asset sales and austerity

• A welfare system designed to punish, not protect.

And at its core is a belief that your worth is your work. That logic collapses when machines outperform humans. Neoliberalism has no answer to agentic AI, because it can't imagine value beyond employment.

To survive what’s coming, we need to decouple survival from the paycheck. That’s why The Prosperity Deal doesn’t just tweak the existing system. It replaces it.

What Comes Next Must Be Human-Centered

This is a once-in-a-century moment. We can redesign our economy around care, creativity, and contribution. We can ensure dignity in a world where traditional work is scarce. And we can build civic infrastructure that values people as more than units of labour.

The robots are coming. But they don’t get to write the social contract.