Nah. OP's real point is that people didn't talk about translators _enough_. Of course people in the circle are devastated and are screaming at the top of their lungs right now, but at a societal level no one cared enough to for example seriously consider policy changes (like UBI for example).
In that context, a couple of programmers yelling about this on HN also isn't enough. If the group was big enough, we'd hear more talks from policy makers about it. But it's not.
Clearly the tech industry isn't big enough (nor at least, in enough lockstep enough) to push back against this either. So we're still the same as the translators.
Policy makers are very well aware of AI and its societal implications. But they also are aware that without the AI investments we’d be in a recession. Their horizons don’t span more than a couple years, what will happen to society in 15 years is none of their concern really.
On one hand, you are right about AI keeping the US from being in an official recession. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much longer they can gaslight their constituents into saying "the job market is great, unemployment is low" before that's starts becoming their problem.
Their only benefit here is that their most active voter base is also the least participating in the job market. But it seems like the current working class are starting to wake up.
