Revenge of the Blue Collars

Economist Peter St. Onge sees something unfolding that most people miss: the same AI boom that is about to gut white-collar generalists is simultaneously creating a blue-collar renaissance. The construction, maintenance, and infrastructure work required to build out AI data centers is already driving the strongest blue-collar wage growth in sixty years. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates 4.7 million construction jobs from AI data centers alone, with one in five permanent. Meanwhile, freshly minted psychology and economics graduates with no concrete skills are about to get "absolutely savage," as St. Onge puts it — their cubicle jobs are the ones AI replaces first.

The AI Bubble: Real Technology, Real Profits, Real Mania

St. Onge cuts his teeth on the dot-com bubble — he bought Yahoo at $60 in 1996, retired at 25, then lost it all when the crash came. He brings that experience to reading AI stocks today. Yes, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Marvel have gone up enormous amounts. Yes, that is bubble behavior. But there are two critical differences from 1999.

First, valuations are far lower. Dot-com companies had no profits — internet stocks as a group earned not a single dollar in the 1990s. Nvidia's P/E ratio today is around 30, not a thousand. These companies are "minting profits, profits you put in your pocket," not selling eyeballs and vapor.