COLLECTION • SEPTEMBER 24, 2025
For Whom the Machine Toils
Foreword: Productivity, Power, and Purpose
Are high wages and worker power in conflict with technological innovation and industrial strength? That depends on how we understand the purpose of American capitalism.
What AI Might Mean For Workers: A Discussion
Experts consider the labor-market implications of the other GPT: general purpose technology.
Two Cheers for Automation
We desperately need productivity growth, and an economy that gives workers the gains.
High Wages and Technological Innovation: There Is No Alternative
If you want your country to flourish in the modern world, it needs to adopt a high-wage, high-tech model.
What Is Reindustrialization For?
Americans prioritize workforce training in efforts to rebuild industry.
The (Other) Southern Strategy: Domestic Labor Arbitrage and the Road to Globalization
America has experimented with suppressing wages to attract industrial investment. It only paved the way for offshoring that investment and technology.
Mutual Disadvantage
Why predatory investment and labor suppression are a poor long-term strategy.
On Implementation and Innovation: A Conversation about Organized Labor and New Technology
The general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters joins American Compass to talk about how labor and tech can work together.
The Productivity Paradox: New Models for Organized Bargaining
Labor‐management conflict can enhance productivity—if bargaining is oriented towards mutually advantageous improvements.
Worker Power in the Age of AI
American workers need a constructive say on technology in the workplace—and new models of worker voice to provide it.
Don’t Rage Against the Machines—Own Them
The best strategy for securing a prosperous future for workers is to turn them into owners.
An Industrious Workforce for the AI Decade
Policymakers must redesign workforce development to link workers and tech.
Overview
Are American workers’ interests and American techno-industrial strength in tension? Many say yes, from labor activists who treat technological innovation as a threat, to libertarians who view worker power as an obstacle to technological dynamism, to economists who say that upholding labor standards and protecting domestic industry are both misguided.
They are wrong. An economy in which worker power and industrial power reinforce each other is possible. Rapid technological progress is precisely the formula for increasing both productivity and wages. Worker power, properly deployed, forces capital to invest accordingly, improves the return on that investment, and ensures labor enjoys its fair share. Protection of the domestic market—both workers and industry—was a central tenet of American economic strategy for decades.
But this arrangement is not guaranteed. In the face of rapid and disruptive technological change, including the advent of artificial intelligence, policymakers must grapple with these tensions—especially amid public anxiety about technological advancement’s effect on workers, even as American policy seeks to reclaim technological leadership and revitalize American industry.
