Back in June, we warned:
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“Mamdani’s primary win shattered the political firewall around capital’s dominance in New York real estate. That wasn’t ideological — it was economic.”
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His rise didn’t come out of nowhere. It reflects a growing economic tension that millions of younger Americans now face:
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• Rents are up
• Wages are flat
• Debt is constant
• And now AI is taking aim at the jobs they usually start with
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The data:
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• Entry-level job postings are down 32% since ChatGPT launched
• 40% of employers say they expect to reduce headcount due to AI
• 76% of Gen Z worries they’ll be “locked out” of the job market
• Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell warns that AI could eliminate entire categories of entry-level work
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Actionable angle: ServiceNow (NOW) stands to benefit as enterprises accelerate automation to replace both back-office and entry-level roles.

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This is why the biggest policy wildcard in the 2025–2026 election cycle may not be inflation, immigration, or even taxes.
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It may be Universal Basic Income (UBI) — not as a fringe idea, but as a mainstream response to AI-driven labor disruption and economic insecurity. UBI means everyone gets a basic, livable paycheck from the government, paid for by taxes on companies.
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Here’s the clearest signal: 72% of Americans already support some form of UBI.

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That includes:

• 83% of Gen Z
• 81% of Millennials
• 71% of Gen X
• Even a 58% majority of Baby Boomers
• 88% of Democrats, 72% of Independents, and more than half (53%) of Republicans

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Why UBI May Come Back

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Andrew Yang’s 2020 campaign made UBI a mainstream idea for the first time in modern U.S. politics. And it wasn’t just his message — it was his movement:
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• Over 50% of his campaign donations came from small-dollar donors — a rarity in national politics and a clear sign that a broad base of everyday people saw UBI as a real answer to a collapsing social contract.

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And what’s new is that this isn’t just an idea from the tech world anymore — it’s becoming a political response from the ground up, especially among younger voters and working-class renters who feel priced out and pushed aside.
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That’s the real signal. UBI may return not because a politician makes it a central plank, but because AI is accelerating the economic conditions that make people demand it.The left is framing it as survival. The tech world framed it as inevitability. And the job market is now forcing it into the conversation whether Washington is ready or not.
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Whether or not UBI becomes law, this shift matters. It shows how AI isn’t just reshaping markets — it’s reshaping political expectations, moving more voters toward redistribution, social protections, and post-work economics in ways that’ll define the 2025–26 cycle.

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Why This Connects to the AI Build-Out

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The story isn’t just “tech replaces jobs.” It’s that AI’s physical growth (chips, energy, cooling) is already colliding with economic and political limits.
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• If AI delivers productivity gains but displaces labor too fast, the pressure for redistribution (UBI, tax shifts, public control) grows
• If AI stalls due to physical constraints — like power — the risk shifts from “not enough jobs” to “not enough capacity”
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You can’t scale $2.9 trillion of AI capex if the power, water, or political will won’t support it.
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That’s why we look at Mamdani + UBI and AI + water scarcity together:
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• One is the political feedback loop. AI causes mass job loss = socialists elected
• The other is the physical bottleneck if AI burns through too much water
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Both are limits on the same exponential curve. One hits society. The other hits infrastructure.

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