Scenario 1

We’re all millionaires who ride the bus

Remote work becomes less common, technology promotes less Inequality

Companies in California realize the value of having workers in the office or workplace together—to learn from one another, to network, and to collaborate in real-time. Closer connections at work extend into relationships outside of the workplace, with workers of all wage levels living near their jobs. AI-enabled productivity gains cycle directly back to companies’ workers, prompting a rapid growth of the middle class that supports the agglomeration economies that emerge in well-balanced cities. 

Long-standing race and ethnicity wage inequalities show rapid improvement, owing in large part to the fact that AI and automation are furthest along in low-wage industries. California’s companies realize that in-person work cuts down on the amount of free time its employees have to pursue education or other career-enhancing opportunities. With less physical and economic distance between coworkers, companies implement robust on-the-job learning programs to upskill its workforces.

An economy with a large middle class consisting of workers in offices and on campuses increases the proportion of workers who live close to their jobs. This scenario enables California to tackle some of its pressing climate issues: Reduction of energy-intensive mega-commutes, return of land use to conservation and water treatment rather than suburb and exurban housing, and targeted prevention measures to protect populated areas from natural disasters.

Scenario 2

Inviting California dreamers

Remote work becomes more common, technology promotes less inequality

The rapid development and deployment of both remote-working technologies and AI enables Californians to live and work wherever they want while the state’s productivity continues to improve.

In turn, California businesses and policymakers develop ways to attract workers to California via monetary incentives, housing subsidies, and unlimited leisure/vacation time. California’s workers choose to locate based on their desired surroundings, housing size and price, and family units. Workers from all over the world come to California to enjoy its natural amenities and the booming leisure industry.

Technology is put to use to maximize productivity while empowering and benefiting workers from all walks of life and in all regions. As a result, the state has money and a public appetite for large investments into critical problems such as climate, transportation, and housing.

A rise in remote work and equally-distributed economic growth from AI enables immigrants already residing in California to remain and contribute their expertise and skills while simultaneously enabling companies to find foreign workers to continue developing new technologies.

Remote work and an increasingly equal economy prompts many workers to decide to live in California for its natural beauty, but work for companies in other states or countries. California policymakers must make tough decisions about payroll taxes and other critical sources of the state’s income.

Scenario 3

Champagne and shantytowns

Remote work becomes less common, technology promotes more inequality

In a post-pandemic “return to normal,” businesses shun remote work in favor of in-person work, leading to a resurgence of agglomeration.

This comes at a time when AI and robotics reach major milestones, performing many physical and cognitive tasks affordably. These technologies have been developed and integrated with a strong focus on automation, rather than augmentation, and have disproportionately affected lower-wage occupations. Education and training have not facilitated skill development for lower-wage workers. A large portion of occupations become deskilled, low-wage, and scarce.

Californians live in mega-cities to attend in-person jobs. Corporate real estate and luxury housing are in high demand, and NIMBY attitudes proliferate. This leads to novel land development projects to increase low-income housing and create permanent homeless encampments along the coasts near major cities.

The demand for corporate real estate has led to a resurgence of corporate-owned and operated, mixed-use campuses in locations near major hubs. These towns offer subsidized housing to current and retired employees as a benefit, but lock workers into contracts that make mobility across firms almost impossible.

Sensing the encroachment of AI and other advanced technologies into their occupations, technology workers gather and organize. They refuse to build new technology that puts their job or occupation at risk while collectively bargaining for better working conditions.

Scenario 4

A real California exodus

Remote work becomes more common, technology promotes less inequality

The rising cost of real estate and growing proof that productivity increases can continue in a remote-first world drive companies to make more than 70 percent of jobs remote, allowing workers to live anywhere in the state.

At the same time, however, technology firms are able to source cheaper labor to develop algorithms and hardware than they could in the pre-remote world.

The result is that both lower-wage workers and tech workers who previously earned high wages see a decline in job availability and income, while executives and top managers see an increase in their pay.

Recognizing the move toward automation, workers with means take out loans to purchase robots they can operate from home and deploy their bots in various locations (“send your robot to work”).

The increasing capabilities of AI and the size of the now-global workforce drive a new form of wage and income polarization in which executives become so wealthy that they can live anywhere on Earth and beyond.

The growing population of elderly lower-wage workers lacks the means to support themselves. With nowhere to turn, they choose to commit crimes in order to be incarcerated, which provides a guarantee of food, shelter, medical care, and social activities.

The ballooning prison system services primarily the elderly, and by 2050, becomes the largest provider of eldercare services in the state.

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