{"id":583,"date":"2026-07-07T16:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=583"},"modified":"2026-07-07T16:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:40:12","slug":"ai-is-powering-an-economy-in-which-many-americans-are-falling-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=583","title":{"rendered":"AI is powering an economy in which many Americans are falling behind"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"AI<\/div>

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At the Richmond Neighborhood Center in San Francisco, more than 200 people are on the waitlist for the food pantry. The center is just a couple of miles west of \u201cAI Alley,\u201d where a cluster of major AI companies take in billions of dollars in investments and pay out high salaries to employees \u2014 in turn making home prices and rent payments soar.<\/p>\n

San Francisco serves as a prime example of how the roaring AI industry is helping drive economic growth more broadly, but masking the economic inequality of lower-and-middle-income families.<\/p>\n

And San Francisco reflects the same patterns happening on a national scale: In the first three months of the year, the US economy overall grew at a solid 2.1% annualized rate, largely due to businesses ramping up AI-related investments, according to Commerce Department data.<\/p>\n

Yet consumer sentiment is languishing near record lows<\/a> over wartime price spikes, and the bottom quarter of Americans on the income spectrum have seen the weakest wage growth of any other cohort<\/a> this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inequalities in the neighborhood have just grown and grown and grown,\u201d Yves Xavier, community programs director at the Richmond Neighborhood Center, told CNN. \u201cWe can\u2019t draw a direct line to AI\u2019s impact and say \u2018That\u2019s exactly it\u2019 because it\u2019s been happening for a while, but it doesn\u2019t exactly take a rocket scientist to see how that\u2019s widening the inequalities in a city already dealing with those issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that demand for the nonprofit\u2019s food pantry is up about 10% this year.<\/p>\n

\u2018An economy of winners and losers\u2019<\/h2>\n

The diverging fortunes of the poorest and wealthiest Americans has emerged as a key theme in the US economy, and experts say AI is playing a significant role.<\/p>\n

The billions poured into the AI industry have minted a cadre of handsomely paid workers in tech hubs across the country, including San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose and Washington, DC, according to a report by Oxford Economics. <\/a>Those workers are part of the wealthiest 10% of Americans who are increasingly powering US economic growth with their spending, or as much as 62% of growth, according to Moody\u2019s.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re seeing incredible concentrations of wealth as a result of AI for these new companies, their founders and their first employees,\u201d said Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. \u201cIt\u2019s exacerbating an economy of winners and losers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The winners in today\u2019s economy are clearly involved in the development and funding of AI, including early investors, experts told CNN.<\/p>\n

SpaceX debuted on Wall Street last month as the largest initial public offering on record<\/a>. The AI and space exploration company is now worth more than $2.1 trillion, and investors widely expect it to be a windfall for Americans\u2019 retirement accounts. AI stalwarts OpenAI and Anthropic, both headquartered in San Francisco, are also gearing up for their own IPOs, which would add trillions in new market value. And San Francisco companies comprise nearly two-thirds of worldwide AI funding, according to data firm Crunchbase.<\/p>\n

Those losing out are vast swaths of Americans, particularly recent college graduates who are struggling to find a job<\/a>; low-income Americans who continue to rack up debt as they feel the sting of higher inflation<\/a>; and even workers in creative industries, according to Pastor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat people put on the internet or put into books is being privatized by these AI companies, making it more difficult for those same people to make money,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s happening to people who are authors, to people who are musicians, anyone who is a creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AI hype is also skewing the health of Main Street businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you exclude AI, business investment would be actually falling, which is quite unprecedented outside of recessions,\u201d said Maxime Darmet, senior economist at Allianz Trade. \u201cThe technology is powerful in propping up the economy, but at the same time, there\u2019s a lot of spending being cut in more traditional areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the gap between the broader AI-fueled economic growth and the lived reality for millions of Americans continues to widen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inequalities here are very, very stark,\u201d Xavier said of San Francisco. \u201cIt\u2019s been an issue for a long time, and I think it\u2019s just continuing to be an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Richmond Neighborhood Center in San Francisco, more than 200 people are on the waitlist for the food pantry. The center is just a couple of miles west of \u201cAI Alley,\u201d where a cluster of major AI companies take in billions of dollars in investments and pay out high salaries to employees \u2014 in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/amayei.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-2224043134-10001_jpg.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[846,1248,1249,1247],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-americans","tag-economy","tag-falling","tag-powering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}