Kathryn Anne Edwards
Labor economist, policy consultant, opinion writer at Bloomberg, and economics creator.
“Any type of regulation that this product and technology so desperately needs risks popping the bubble that we can all see. I don't think it's speculation anymore of whether there is one. It's just what will happen when it pops. Well, that's terrible, because it's propping up the stock market, and stock market wealth is fueling the consumption of the top 1% to 5% of Americans that is fueling possibly a third of our economy. And so we don't have economic policy right now. We have a hostage situation.”
Prof G Markets · Money & Markets · November 2026
Context
Ed Elson asked what should be done about AI and data centers after voters rejected most local data center proposals. Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards says AI is a bubble, and that regulating it is hard because a crash would hit the stock market and the spending of the wealthiest Americans.
Transcript
…their backyard with seemingly little accountability. So totally valid. And I think that there's this inclination to call people Luddites if they oppose technology, if they simply want the rollout to be done with accountability for either people's safety, the environment, or what have you. I mean,
it's so rude to people's, yeah, it's just so disrespectful to people's intelligence.
It's horribly demeaning to say like they just don't understand the future. You don't get. It you don't get it. I mean, I'm pretty sure I get it. You know, you're a monopoly. You have no accountability and you make a product that you, you know, probably are rolling out too quickly by your own measure in order to get a lot of money. And you hold up the Chinese as a boogeyman every time someone brings up something like your chatbot killed another kid. Well, the Chinese are right behind us. Apparently, they're right in bed with you. So, like, I guess it's these are these companies have, they are run by people who could not could not have worse PR if they tried. I mean, just could not to get up and say, I'm going to erase all jobs with my technology and the permanent unemployed will just have to live off of the wealth I create. For like, wasn't he like 25 when he said that? I'm like, man, you are doing yourself no favors that people are just more realistic. So, I, yeah, people are completely valid. And I, I think adding some rules and accountability and taxes, you know, make them pay extra in utility bills as opposed to less. This is all reasonable and can be done quite quickly, I think, is the other thing is it's that's fine. The, you know, I think the separate question about what…
So this is probably a good place to start to wrap up. And it gets to something that I've been thinking about, which is that in order to see the change that clearly you and I agree we need to see and that I think millions of Americans agree with that we need to see as well. Someone's going to have…
No, there's a bias to only see the costs that you will incur as opposed to the ones you are incurring, because who is losing now is most of us. You're going to have to make losers out of somebody, losers out of the homeowners that have honed their houses for 30 years who have gained a million in…
If a Democrat in Congress were listening to this right now, how would you sort of summarize the overall mission that they need to follow over the next two years? Like, what should they not be doing that perhaps Democrats have done in the past? And what should they be doing? What is if there were…
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